health anxiety

I don’t understand how a person can get well from anxiety and panic disorder when all I can feel is agitation and restlessness because I’m so uncomfortable and can’t relax in my body and feeling super sensitive to everything in my body that feels off.

 

I don't know how to overcome this when I worry about my health all the time and feel so weak.

Neither the benzos nor the withdrawal will get you well from anxiety or panic disorder.  That's something that you will need to work out.  I found therapy very useful in helping me to see the thought patterns that led to my anxiety and anger.  Now, I see that I have choices that I wasn't seeing previously, and that's made life a bit easier to live.

 

Overcoming your thoughts of health concerns is challenging, but it can be done.  When you find yourself beginning to worry about something health-related, deliberately think of something else.  I think it helps if you can see or taste or small or feel whatever it is that you're thinking about.  Clouds in the sky, birds flying, people walking, the taste of a strawberry...  Put all of your concentration there (not a time to multitask).  Count the number of red cars, or the number of birds in a flock.  How big is that cloud in the sky?  Stay with those thoughts for as long as you can, then create new thoughts about something else interesting (but not health-related).

 

Don't allow yourself to Google symptoms or health maladies.  Don't watch hospital drama shows on TV or read books of that genre.  If you want to stop worrying about your health, then (deliberately) put your mind on something else, and keep doing it until it sticks.  It will take some time and practice.

badsocref is right i went through a 2 month phase where i thought having everyday health scares  its all in your mind your brain is very powerful  in my case i thought i had or was getting appendictis  then it was infected kidneys  or a uti    and googling symptoms only makes it worse  this all happend cause i was  getting weird pain that would come and go either in my left or right lower abdomin  or my right of left sides or back pain  health anxiety is very scary when you have anxiety and a panic disorder i was diagnosed with both also but it will pass just DONT GOOGLE SYMPTOMS 

My health fears have automatically gone away for the most part. I used to obsess night and day about symptoms. It's something with the hippocampus, I read somewhere. Intrusive thoughts that just won't quit. But as I've healed more, I realize that those patterns are pretty much gone. I have the ability to quickly think of something else, and sometimes I'll forget all about what I was thinking about before. This never happened earlier in withdrawal/recovery. I'd think about something, and suddenly it would blow way out of proportion and cause great anxiety. I couldn't seem to get the thoughts out of my head. They'd go one thought into another. Now I feel a lot freer in my mind. YOU WILL GET OVER THIS!!!

 

Unfortunately, I could never master getting over these thoughts while they were bombarding me. I spent time on the Internet looking things up, too. But the thoughts did fade away, just like the other symptoms. I'm not healed yet, but I had so many symptoms to manage. They all fade away in time.

 

I did write down all my fears a few times and put the papers in a drawer. It kind of freed my mind after that, for awhile, anyway. When I found the paper again, I was surprised at what I'd written. Those fears didn't come to pass at all.