I wouldn’t describe myself as a hypochondriac because I don’t obsess about my health or eventual death, and I’m generally a functional person. But I have something I can only describe as “episodes.” The first time it happened, I was making a long trip on the turnpike. I was in my early 20’s and in excellent shape, but I started to have weird pains in my torso and it freaked me out. Was I having a heart attack? What was going on? Since I was driving, I had to maintain my concentration, but a cascade of stress hormones started a process that I guess is best described as a panic attack. I’m not expert on these things, and back then I don’t think I’d ever heard of a panic attack. I had no coping skills.
That process repeated itself off an on for a year or so, and it definitely preferred to pick on me while I was driving. It got to the point where knowing I was going to have to make a long drive could trigger it. I never really had a good explanation for why any of that started or why it suddenly stopped.
It came back in my early 40’s, and by then I had some theories. I was drinking too much, smoking too much, and not getting enough sleep. I quit drinking when I turned 45, and the problem disappeared again. If it ever cropped up again, catching up on my sleep seemed to solve it right away.
Then, about two years ago, I started to have a problem where I’d get nerve pain in weird parts of my body. I live in the woods, and I’ve had Lyme disease at least three times. One symptom of Lyme is that you get strange pains, sometimes in your joints, sometimes in your nerves, and sometimes in your muscles. Fortunately, the antibiotic they give you for Lyme is very effective, even if it makes you incredibly sensitive to sunlight. I went to the doctor and told him that I wanted to be tested for Lyme. It came back negative, but that worried me even more. More tests were run, and the doctor even seemed to think cancer was a possibility, which obviously freaked me out. But eventually he sat me down and told me that he believed all the symptoms I was experiencing were entirely a product of my mind.
He didn’t mean I was crazy or that what I was experiencing wasn’t real. He meant my mind was causing the nerve damage. I had trouble accepting that this was possible, but he told me that ever since Donald Trump was elected, he’d seen a number of patients present with these kind of stress-induced problems. I went home that day unsure of what to think, but the nerve damage was gone within a week and it didn’t return.
That was the first time I really understood how my mind can make me sick. But knowing this also gave me new power to recognize the difference between real and imagined symptoms. There was less of a distinction than I had understood, but the two things were still not the same. I now had more control over how my subconscious affected my health.
The Covid-19 pandemic has put these skills to the test in a big way, but I can recognize what’s happening now. Once I read about the symptoms, I started to experience those symptoms. Then, a new article would come out and say that doctors had identified new problems caused by the virus, and I would begin to experience those symptoms, too. But, instead of assuming I had been infected and starting a cascade of panic, I knew it was far likelier that my mind was producing this and that it wasn’t real.
One problem I’ve had with this is common to most men, which is that it’s just very hard to admit to anyone that you have panic attacks. I remember that this was a major theme of The Sopranos, where the lead character sought psychological treatment for the problem but couldn’t let anyone know because it was the kind of weakness a mob boss wasn’t allowed to show. Even locked in my my house with my wife and son, I’m reluctant to tell them that my body is absolutely pulsing with stress hormones and that I need to go lie down.
It’s harder now, too, because I actually do have to be very attuned to my body and any possible symptoms in case I need to separate myself from my family. My wife has asthma, which is fortunately not turning out to be as correlated with Covid-19 death as some feared, but it’s still not something we want her to test. So, if I’m experiencing shortness of breath, I can’t just write it off as stress-induced.
One thing I can tell you is that it’s impossible to write if you’re overwhelmed with stress. I felt fine last night while I was watching television, but as soon as my programs were over, I began to experience symptoms that worried me and made it hard to sleep. The moment I woke up, the same symptoms returned. It would literally have been impossible for me to write about anything other than this today because I can’t take my focus off myself long enough to write about some item in the news. By acknowledging this, and writing about my experience, I was able to calm the stress I’m feeling and along with it a lot of the symptoms.
One thing that’s unusual about this is how it is almost entirely driven by the subconscious. In that respect, it’s no more predictable than dreams, and not a whole lot more rational. I’m not living in waking fear, but am instead sporadically overtaken by fears that operate below the surface.
I know what to do: drink less coffee, exercise, get as much sunlight as possible, and use breathing and other relaxation techniques. I think a different president would help, too.
I hope some other people will benefit from reading about my experiences, because I’m sure I’m not alone. I suspect many people are going through this for the first time and don’t understand how much power the mind has to make you sick. It won’t help to tell you not to panic, but it might help to tell you not to panic about panicking.
Yo homes. If you can get a walk in every day, that will help too.
Yeah what he said. My wife has similar problems. She just cries a lot and imagines the worst. But over the years she has gotten so much better. Not gone but rare now. I could go on but ….
Yup. Today, I woke up and wrote this piece and went back to bed and slept to 3:30pm. I’m up now, but I’d be happier back in bed and asleep. I may go for a walk shortly.
I really hope that Trump doesnt go ahead as planned and end the lockdown this week, that seems almost guaranteed to result in an almost guaranteed disaster.
I wrote a long piece for you the other day of ideas to combat stress, biologically. Do you want to read them?
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I had a panic attack 4 weeks ago, just sitting and eating lunch and starting to read an Andrew Sullivan article (I know; stupid mistake but it wasn’t even a particularly dumb or enraging piece). It came out of nowhere, with my heart rate racing up from mid 70s to mid 130s. After about a minute of deep breathing and drinking about a pint of water, it was over. Scary, though, and I’m 52 and in decent shape. Have only had that happen once before 23 years ago.
My reaction has been fear and deep sadness. It breaks my heart to see how this fool’s madness, insecurities are hurting the most vulnerable among us.
My wife has a ruined lung from cancer treatment. I know if she gets it, she will die. I feel very much responsible for this NOT happening.
I empathize with your struggles. I fight every day to stay balanced and focused on just taking care of business this day, this hour, this minute. I also find that mediation helps me.
I don’t have any fast and easy solutions to offer you. I only know that the responsibility of caring for my wife helps, it gives me purpose and clarity. Additionally, I am a teacher and feel responsible for helping my students cope not just making sure they “learn’ my subject.
Hang in there man, you really are NOT alone.
The entire country is in this together.
I am almost certain that n-acetyl-cysteine is likely to help, and also resveratrol may help. Both – are just smart things to take when you are older, generally. Daily.
Live longer! We’ll make it through this.
I went to Costco last week with my wife, and that was not a fun experience. I was pretty freaked out by having to be in close contact with so many people (i.e. more than normally freaked out. I don’t much like crowds.) . And everyone wearing masks, it’s just surreal. Someone my wife knows stopped to chat in the middle of the store and I just kept walking. It was rude of me, and I hate to be rude, but I did not want to spend a moment longer in there than I had to.
Now, on the brighter side: I actually enjoy working at home. It’s quiet, I get a lot of thinking and work done, And there are NO FACULTY MEETINGS!!!! Also, no stressful commuting, and what commuting there is is fantastic compared to normal. Gotta say, if it wasn’t for the chance of death and the economic hardship for so many, I’d say the apocalypse has a lot going for it.
I live in an area that rarely has them any more but recently when I wake up in the morning to pee or something and the time is around sunrise Ive been seeing the most beautiful sunrises. Like sunsets in California. The air is a lot cleaner than it is usually.
I wish it would continue! I keep reading studies that draw a causal link between Covid-19 mortality and cumulative exposure to air pollution.
It sure is strange times–and high stakes, too. Plus, I’m getting old. I see a shrink and take meds–that helps. .
“I know what to do: drink less coffee, exercise, get as much sunlight as possible, and use breathing and other relaxation techniques. I think a different president would help, too.” I would add take a nap to this very fine list.
Also want to note from my experience working at a medical school and spending a lot of time with the students and interns; they frequently believe they are coming down with the symptoms of the conditions they are studying. It is actually a real thing called: Medical student syndrome.
I had a quite a bit of stress for a bit over two decades. I was a fugitive from justice (burglary of a business, nothing evil, just stupid*) and went to sleep every night imagining the sudden knock on the door, the 4×4’s (handcuffs and leg irons), the orange jumpsuit and all the fun of prison. I got through it with neither therapy nor (too many) drugs. My method: imagine the worst. Imagine it in detail, spare yourself nothing. See it all. Look right at it.
Then imagine yourself surviving. Do this in detail as well. Step by step. Don’t sugar coat anything. Take the time to do it, forcing yourself to take the time is part of it. Eventually the routine of it becomes boring. Keep doing it because the tedium itself starts to work for you.
Do this every time the stress rolls up on you. Because the truth is you will survive. You may take a beating but sometimes – as an old waiter buddy of mine said as I was bitching about tips – sometimes that’s what you do: you take a beating. And then the beating ends. And there you are, still standing.
As for writing, it was during the 22 years that I started to write, became published and can now claim 150 books under various names. (Not aliases, pseudonyms.) I became a bestselling author. Even got moderately wealthy.
Your mileage may vary, we are not all the same, but try it. I have some experience with fear.
*All long since cleared up, charges dropped.
Your advice is really good advice. Decades ago I used to work in a research setting, and had a coworker who who had grown up in China, a scientist. It turned out we had a common interest in strange films and television. He grew up in Dandong, China which is right across the river from the DPRK, i.e. North Korea. He could literally see it from his bedroom window. At that time North Korea was going through the end of many years of absolutely terrible times, a totally made up famine which vanished as soon as one crossed the river into China.
My friend used to hear machine gun firs and it was basically te guards on the North Korean side shooting at people who were trying to cross into China. This led me to explore the situation there and it was just heartbreaking. Story after story, all different but all the same too. Now whenever I feel sorry for myself, I always snap out of it very quickly by thinking of the things I know other people have gone through. I dont waste any food either. never.
Thanks for sharing this with us, Martin. Thanks for your willingness to be vulnerable. Having even a small glimpse of someone’s challenges makes that person so much more real, more human.
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