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Like for my physical. My heart races my blood pressure through the roof. My stomach a mess. Dizzy, headache. I can’t calm down. I have a few more test and appts coming up and I dread it because I calm down. I used to drink sleepy time and camomile tea and that seemed to help but now nothing does. The drs just dismiss my anxiety and order test and meds. When I get stressed about something I just can’t function.
My wife is the same way, I always tell her that "It's like taking the dog to the vet". She just doesn't like going to doctors. I suspect there are a lot more people like you and my wife.
Like for my physical. My heart races my blood pressure through the roof. My stomach a mess. Dizzy, headache. I can’t calm down. I have a few more test and appts coming up and I dread it because I calm down. I used to drink sleepy time and camomile tea and that seemed to help but now nothing does. The drs just dismiss my anxiety and order test and meds. When I get stressed about something I just can’t function.
Have you considered talking with a psychiatrist?
I had a 90 minute video visit with one last year. He diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder and prescribed medications.
You might want to try a video visit. You don't have to leave home for it.
I just had my first video dr visit. It was great. I also have white coat syndrome. My blood pressure is high when I go to the doctor, but would be fine when I'd go give blood. Dr. wanted to put me on meds for high blood pressure, but I showed her my donor card where they record my blood pressure. She suggested I also take it at home and at home and show her a record for my file.
What's helped me is cognitive behavior therapy, which helps with changing how I think, and I am into meditation now, too, and Buddhism. That's helped a lot, too. Learning how to relax and calm my mind.
You can learn how to control your anxiety and reactions. Takes time, but it can be done.
My Father, with all his complaining about gatekeeper medicine when I was a teen, put a terrific fear of doctors in me. Oh, the ways parents unknowingly condition their children. I ended up avoiding, dodging them as much as possible. Using mind over matter to define my world into what was acceptable to me.
Life eventually catches up with you, one way or another. While I am terrified that this or that doctor is going to tell me something terrible now that I have lost my Mount Olympus card (once, we were Gods), I also know I have power in stepping up to the bat.
Part of the change does come in these Covid times. I had cataracts, I was going blind, was I going to be able to get my operations? I did get them but I learned not to delay my medical appointments for they are very hard to get.
On a side point, I found out I was getting cataracts because I learned that it was a law that one needed their eye exam once a year, because of driving I guess, and it was during that yearly exam, they were found. Laws, interesting things for behavior modification.
Finally, the other day I had an eye appointment with my retina doctor where he is giving me steroid shots into each eye ball with a hypodermic needle. He numbs each eye, has me look in the opposite direction. There is no pain but I do feel the pressure and I have been clenching which I should not do......but who wouldn't?
Well, this time, I went "rag doll", where right before the shot, I "cut the strings" to my arms, let my feet slip off the step of the chair, (and entered an imaginary world, too, for a second) and just let everything hang.........and the shots went better, hardly any clenching at all.
I am that way. I have a rare thyroid condition where a cement-like substance was growing off my thyroid and invading my trachea. I knew I had nodules on my thyroid, but my neck swelled up and felt like a rock. Not until I was gasping for air when I spoke did I go see the doctor.
I've fled the World Trade Center terrorist attacks twice, survived an abusive marriage, dealt with losing everything in a house fire...but the thought of going to a doctor makes me so ill that I avoid it as much as possible. It is irrational, and I know it, but that doesn't make that intense anxiety go away.
I do go to the endocrinologist regularly ever since the thyroid thing happened back in 2013 and I get all my bloodwork done, but I haven't had any of the other normal tests and whatnot or a regular physical in years. As soon as I make an appointment, I will go into an intense state of anxiety, and I just can't stand it.
I'm OK with the dentist and the eye doctor, and I'm scheduled for my vaccine. Shots don't bother me.
Try this, before the visit close your eyes and imagine you are walking from your car to the front door. Feeling anxious, start over. Be sure to use as much detail as possible so you are deconditioning yourself. So, you get to the front desk to check in and again you start to feel anxious so start from the beginning again with detail. Keep repeating this imaginary visit until you are no longer feeling anxious, just remember to stop and start over again each time you get nervous. This works well also for surgery or any stressful situation you know about in advance.
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