IBS, OCD, anxiety, panic attacks, & heart palpitations.


All of these & the emetophobia are definitely related...it's just a question of which causes which. I've been anxious since I was a kid. The heart palpitations have almost completely stopped once I had an echocardiogram done & found out nothign was wrong with my heart. The IBS has been minimal since I accepted it was related to anxiety & stopped worrying about it. The panic attacks are a new thing...just started April '06. But my wife and I were both changing jobs, our incomes stopped, we were moving & we couldn't find a house to buy after we sold ours. So the panic attacks made sense & have since subsided. The OCD, once I admitted to my wife, friends & family that I have had it for years, has been easier to control because I mentally force myself to not do rituals, counting, etc. I still have issues with OCD, but they are mild. The 2 constants are the anxiety & the emetophobia. I have been on Zoloft for 3 months & seeing a therapist for the same amount of time. Both seem to be helping to some degree but the emetophobia has not improved. My therapist attributes my physical symptoms of anxiety to the fact that emotionally I don't deal with things. Hence, the IBS, heart palpitations, panic attacks, etc. This is my body's way of saying something is wrong since I won't listen to my mind. It's interesting because I am an extremely logical person, which is why I think I can minimize the OCD issues on my own. But my therapist has also said that I have a very strong mind-body connection & a very powerful imagination, so when my mind starts thinking crazy thoughts, they become very real very easily and it starts the anxiety. Because the logical part of your brain and the primal part of your brain are in different areas, it creates these problems. I am very in tune with the logical part of my brain, but I can't tap into the primal part (the emotional part), which is where all of these fears come from. In my next session, we are going to try hypnosis, which is designed to get at the part of the brain that neither the therapist, or myself for that matter, seem to be able to get to. It's locked up like a vault. We'll see what happens. Just thought I'd share what I've learned in case someone else finds it helpful!