I'm reading a book written by a man who has a ton of no-shit anxiety disorders. Although I'm a lightweight compared to him in the worrying department the book is well-researched and has been helpful to me in the same way that a book about a dramatic low-bottom drunk would be. While I can't relate to the specifics and the severity of a lot of his reactions to the world I can identify with the feelings that produce these exaggerated responses. I like to collect information on topics that are relevant to me - I'm not buying into his reasoning hook, line, and sinker, but from time to time something will make me pause.
Here, for instance, is some stuff he wrote that resonated with me re: my overemphasis on my own body:
This (behavior) is consistent with a trait called anxiety sensitivity, which research has shown to be strongly correlated with panic disorder. Individuals who rate high on the so-called Anxiety Sensitivity Index, or ASI, have a high degree of what’s known as interoceptive awareness, meaning they are highly attuned to the inner workings of their bodies, to the beepings and bleatings, the blips and burps, of their physiologies; they are more conscious of their heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, breathing rates, digestive burblings, and so forth than other people are. This hyper awareness of physiological activity makes such people more prone to “internally cued panic attacks”: the individual with a high ASI rating picks up on a subtle increase in heart rate or a slight sensation of dizziness or a vague, unidentifiable fluttering in the chest; this perception, in turn, produces a frisson of conscious anxiety.
Here, for instance, is some stuff he wrote that resonated with me re: my overemphasis on my own body:
This (behavior) is consistent with a trait called anxiety sensitivity, which research has shown to be strongly correlated with panic disorder. Individuals who rate high on the so-called Anxiety Sensitivity Index, or ASI, have a high degree of what’s known as interoceptive awareness, meaning they are highly attuned to the inner workings of their bodies, to the beepings and bleatings, the blips and burps, of their physiologies; they are more conscious of their heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, breathing rates, digestive burblings, and so forth than other people are. This hyper awareness of physiological activity makes such people more prone to “internally cued panic attacks”: the individual with a high ASI rating picks up on a subtle increase in heart rate or a slight sensation of dizziness or a vague, unidentifiable fluttering in the chest; this perception, in turn, produces a frisson of conscious anxiety.
I recently came across an article in the medical journal "Gut" that explained the circular relationship between cognition (your conscious thought) and physiological correlates (what your body does in response to that thought): people who are less anxious tend to have minds that don’t overreact to stress and bodies that don’t overreact to stress when their minds experience it, while clinically anxious people tend to have sensitive minds in sensitive bodies - small amounts of stress set them to worrying, and small amounts of worrying set their bodies to malfunctioning.
First of all, there really is a journal called "Gut." And there really is a journal for proctologists called "Asshole."
Second of all, I had to look into the Anxiety Sensitivity Index, an action that made me mildly anxious about what I would find. It's a simple test of 16 questions that I believed would provide the same result that those tests to help you decide if you're an alcoholic did - you know, the ones that give you 20 questions to answer and you're proud that you only gave 10 answers in the affirmative until you find out that if you give 2 yes answers you're probably an alcoholic and you lied on 5 or 6 of them anyway?
Zero. Zippo. Nada. I was oh fer 16. Some of the situations or actions that they describe can occasionally make me mildly to moderately anxious, but not in a paralyzing fashion. Same thing when I looked up the symptoms for Panic Disorder or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Once again I'm trying to make a hangnail into evidence of a brain tumor.
All of this knowledge doesn't make my feelings any less real. It's not especially helpful to know intellectually that how I'm feeling isn't evidence based. I really have been feeling crappy.
I continue my headlong assault on everything, though. It's satisfying to take action. It's frustrating to sit patiently. I went to my medical doctor yesterday - on my therapist's recommendation - to investigate options vis-a-vis the medication I take: trying something different, changing the dosage, and the like.
They checked my vitals and then put me in The Little Room. I hate The Little Room. I'd rather stay in The Waiting Room. At least there you know what the deal is. I waited for 45 minutes in The Little Room. I could hear the doctor's voice - inaudible - as he talked to a woman in the exam room next to mine - very audible. She didn't seem too sick to me. I set the appointment up on short notice because the office had a lot of times available on short notice. I assumed this meant I'd be seen in a timely fashion so I slotted my visit 1 1/2 hours before a dentist's appointment. Naturally, the longer I waited the more anxious I became.
I do see the irony here. The doctor makes an anxious patient waiting for an appointment to discuss his anxiety - if he had decided to be cruel he couldn't have picked a better way to do it. The fact that it all worked out didn't ease my mind and I must assume that this knowledge won't be helpful in the future. When I was leaving I asked him what percentage of his patients were in his office with anxiety related ailments.
"25%," he said flatly.
Wow.
First of all, there really is a journal called "Gut." And there really is a journal for proctologists called "Asshole."
Second of all, I had to look into the Anxiety Sensitivity Index, an action that made me mildly anxious about what I would find. It's a simple test of 16 questions that I believed would provide the same result that those tests to help you decide if you're an alcoholic did - you know, the ones that give you 20 questions to answer and you're proud that you only gave 10 answers in the affirmative until you find out that if you give 2 yes answers you're probably an alcoholic and you lied on 5 or 6 of them anyway?
Zero. Zippo. Nada. I was oh fer 16. Some of the situations or actions that they describe can occasionally make me mildly to moderately anxious, but not in a paralyzing fashion. Same thing when I looked up the symptoms for Panic Disorder or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Once again I'm trying to make a hangnail into evidence of a brain tumor.
All of this knowledge doesn't make my feelings any less real. It's not especially helpful to know intellectually that how I'm feeling isn't evidence based. I really have been feeling crappy.
I continue my headlong assault on everything, though. It's satisfying to take action. It's frustrating to sit patiently. I went to my medical doctor yesterday - on my therapist's recommendation - to investigate options vis-a-vis the medication I take: trying something different, changing the dosage, and the like.
They checked my vitals and then put me in The Little Room. I hate The Little Room. I'd rather stay in The Waiting Room. At least there you know what the deal is. I waited for 45 minutes in The Little Room. I could hear the doctor's voice - inaudible - as he talked to a woman in the exam room next to mine - very audible. She didn't seem too sick to me. I set the appointment up on short notice because the office had a lot of times available on short notice. I assumed this meant I'd be seen in a timely fashion so I slotted my visit 1 1/2 hours before a dentist's appointment. Naturally, the longer I waited the more anxious I became.
I do see the irony here. The doctor makes an anxious patient waiting for an appointment to discuss his anxiety - if he had decided to be cruel he couldn't have picked a better way to do it. The fact that it all worked out didn't ease my mind and I must assume that this knowledge won't be helpful in the future. When I was leaving I asked him what percentage of his patients were in his office with anxiety related ailments.
"25%," he said flatly.
Wow.
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