scary new physical symptom. what should i do?

Do you have a therapist or a counsellor or someone who is trained to help?

Anxiety and depression have the ability to mess with every part of the brain. They can conjour up an amazing number of 'symptoms' to add to the usual ones; shortness of breath; feelings of profound dread; hot and cold flashes; irractic heart rate, to name but a few.

The important thing to realise, to really understand, is that every one of these symptoms are internal. They only exist inside your head. Meaning they only exist to you. Beyond the confines of your own mind, they really do not exist. That doesn't diminish their impact but nonetheless, the symptoms you are experiencing don't exist beyond the confines of your own brain. They thrive on recognition. As each new symtoms appears, you give it your full attention, which feeds it because this is exactly what it wants. The more 'symptoms' your mind creates, the more time you devote to worrying about them and the more time you spend internalizing their effect. Your brain exists in total darkness. It can only relate to the Universe through your five senses. When the brain is deprived of this external stimulus, it creates its own stimulus. While we sleep, our eyes are closed and no visual imagery gets in. So our brain creates its own visual imagary through dreaming.

 When you are awake, you spend most of your time worrying about these symptoms, which means you are spending way to much of your waking life inside your own brain, leaving parts of it deprieved of healthy inputs.

The answer? Theraphy, drugs, meditation, yoga, drum circles, exercise, art, sculpting, learning a new language, yodelling, anything that re-directs your attention outside yourself.

Try this: Take one symptom, the newest one if you like. Now ask yourself (your subconscious) what this symptom does for you. Not what is does TO you, we already know that, but what it does FOR you. If you haven't had a meaningful dialogue with your subconscious before, it may take an hour or two to gain access, but once you do, you may be suprised by what your subconscious reveals to you. To get there, close your eyes and ask, aloud or to yourself, if your subconscious can hear you. You may wait before it answers but it will always tell you Yes. Then ask it if it will answer a few questions. Again, it will tell you Yes. Then ask it what this new symptom does FOR you.  

Understand one thing: your brain is designed to protect you, not to hurt or damage you. I know right now you feel your brain is doing a lot of damage to you, but it isn't. It is responding to what it perceives as a threat, something that it feels will harm you. So it creates these symptoms as a barrier, as a wall that it has built to protect you from something it perceives as harmful.

You may disagree that the brain is designed to do no harm, especially where suicide is concerned. But in these cases, the brain believes that ending its life is less painful than living with the pain from which it suffers. So it's goal is to protect you from all things painful. And it is very, very good at doing this. You need to develop a dialogue with your subconscious because right now it believes the anxiety and fear it is causing you is preferable to the pain it believes it is protecting you from. You need to understand what this pain is, and to ask your subconscious for better ways to deal with it.

I hope this makes sense to you, Star.

Best always,

myc       

           

I was the same this last year and kept picking at wounds on my skin.  It is definitely anxiety related but try and relent from harming. live a calm lifestyle and it should stop itself.

rich