Seeking Advice for Overcoming Health Anxiety

I’m posting here seeking guidance on healing both my mental and physical self. I'm a 68-year-old woman who has been on the TMS journey for the past six years. After reading Dr. Sarno's books, I’ve put in the work and managed to heal several minor symptoms. My main struggle has been with anxiety, particularly health-related anxiety, which has improved significantly but hasn’t fully gone away. I journal periodically, which I’ve found effective, and I’ve also benefited from talking to my brain—it’s helped me see short-term relief.

My main issue now is that whenever I experience even a minor symptom, I instantly jump to the worst-case scenario, and my heart starts racing. My basic health tests have all come back normal, so I know I’m generally in good health. However, I’m looking for a way to finally let go of this fear. For example, today I felt a brief spasm in my pelvic floor muscle, lasting just 3 or 4 minutes, but it immediately triggered panic, and my heart raced. I told my brain to stop my mind from thinking it was serious, and the sensation went away quickly.

I want to live without this constant fear response whenever a small pain or symptom appears. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

@suchi
Well, you have it right!
“For example, today I felt a brief spasm in my pelvic floor muscle, lasting just 3 or 4 minutes, but it immediately triggered panic, and my heart raced. I told my brain to stop my mind from thinking it was serious, and the sensation went away quickly.”
Then carry on with life.
The truth is, you need to learn to become comfortable with discomfort, both emotionally and physically.
You need to keep reminding yourself about the nervous system and that if you react in panic, it’s going to set you into fight/flight/freeze. What you did was simply respond gently and you self-regulated. Good job.
This is a re-training period. You are retraining your brain to do the exact function it was created to do: help your body swing gently between nervous system states.
However your mind also needs retraining. Have you done the emotional work Sarno laid out for us? It is important because if you aren’t doing it consistently, you may be a person who slides into old habits.
Address rage (including age rage which we found a common factor in folks our age), anxiety and fear in general, noting self-talk and manage self-expectations, personality traits etc.
Health anxiety is rarely an isolated form of anxiety, it’s usually a distraction from generalized anxiety for whom Claire Weekes is so helpful. Any of her books will describe methods like the one you successfully used recently. She has many, many more. It takes a lot of vulnerability to face the areas in our life that might contribute to our symptoms and sometimes working through it takes time. Like peeling layers off an onion. We have to be ok with feeling the discomfort of vulnerability to face the things TMS tries to shield us from.

 

Thank you so much for your thoughtful and insightful advice. Your words resonated so much especially when you mentioned the importance of becoming comfortable with discomfort and recognizing the role of the nervous system in managing responses to these sensations. The reminder to gently self-regulate rather than react in panic is something I truly needed.

Thank you again for sharing this advice—it feels like an important guide for moving forward.