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Thanks to both of you! @Holls I haven't really found anything. I do get them when I bend over or stand up sometimes, but I've learned to ignore those. And those are always just one at a time. @bin_tenn thanks for the suggestion to call! I always forget that that's an option. I always assume they'll just say "sorry, you'll have to come in" and I'll feel like an idiot. These just freak me out so much. I hate the ones that are just one skipped beat, but this disorganized rhythm that I feel like will never end puts me on edge for at least a week as I feel like I'm waiting for it to happen again or just drop dead, haha.

I’ve gotten pretty good with palpitations. Most of them I can, if not totally brush off, at least ignore enough not to send me into a spiral of panic. I had one yesterday that o still haven’t been able to let go of. i was sitting and talking to a coworker and my heart went haywire. It was an absolutely disorganized beat. Like it was just fluttering around in there doing nothing. I have a second of this before but this time it went on for probably three or four (very long) seconds. I don’t think I felt any other symptoms during it though I felt extremely dizzy and weak for the rest of the day. Is this something anyone has experienced? I’ve seen a cardiologist and I know I have a structurally normal heart. The only thing that’s showed up on ekg was your usual PVCs, PACs. One time an EKG showed “unspecified ST wave changes”. I just feel my palpitations have gotten worse as I’ve gotten older (I probably had my first ones around age 13 and I’m 28 now). Maybe that’s normal. Bit it freaks me out. I was at the cardiologist not two weeks ago so I don’t feel like running back to them right now is the best idea. Especially is what I experienced sounds like a common experience. (And yes I know, you guys aren’t doctors and can’t doagnose me and the best thing if I’m really worried is to go see a dr. But sometimes knowing if other people have lived through the same thing helps me move on)

Thanks so much! You guys have no idea how much this helps. Often, coming on here isn't so much about reassurance, but more about having a conversation with people where I feel comfortable to express all my irrational thoughts and feelings and know I won't be judged for them or called crazy. And I can also practice reminding myself of all the RATIONAL thoughts that I have. My breathing has been on and off today. Right now I'm having some trouble because I just got off a long phone call and I often feel like my breathing is constricted after I talk a lot. Also, it's getting closer to night time here and I always struggle with that -- especially because I had a panic attack two nights ago and I'm so afraid of it happening again. My throat just feels SO tight and it's so hard for me to rationalize why that WOULDN'T be a real (non anxiety related) problem. I just know it's going to clap shut at any moment and then I'll have the horrifying experience of trying to breathe in and realizing that I'm completely unable to. Yay fun times! And thanks for keeping me in your thoughts @Kindra! My surgeon has a really good track record with this surgery, but still....frightening!!

Thanks for your thoughts. I agree that I tend to focus on my breathing and that never leads to anything good. I’ve never had a fear about my diaphragm suddenly not working or my brain suddenly not telling my body to breathe correctly. But I think having one thing wrong in my brain has opened a whole can of worms about what else might be going wrong in there! Irrational, I know, but what else is new;-)

I’ve also been having this issue of feeling like my body inhales when I don’t ask it to, if that makes sense. It occurse randomly theoughout my breathing cycle. So sometimes I’m already on an inhale and my body kind of double inhales. Or I’m on the exhale and all the sudden I’m inhaling. Terrifies me that theres something wrong with the breathing centers of my brain or with my diaphragm. Having a a really hard time dealing with that in particular.

Thank you so much for your reply! It’s honestly so helpful to talk about it because it helps me find the irrationality in my thoughts. Trusting the diagnosis is so hard. I know a lot of us struggle with that. I just get so worried that I wasn’t clear about my symptoms and maybe accidentally led my doctors down the wrong path! My surgery is scheduded for 10 October (eek!). The other surgery that I’ve had was on my hand and was so minor so to leap to brain surgery is pretty scary!

Hey guys! I had a period of time where I was doing a little better but things have slipped again. Im facing some major brain surgery. The condition for which I’m having surgery for is actually not SO bad. What has me worried is two fold: 1. The surgery itself 2. What if I have a DIFFERENT condition that is actually more dire than the one I’ll be having surgery for. For the last week, I have just been on edge about not being able to breathe. Sometimes it feels like My throat is closing, or I have mucus stuck back there, or my soft palate has collapsed. Often it it just feels like my brain is just going to forget to send the messages to my body to breathe. This last one is a new one and I think brought on by the fact that my brain feels like a more dangerous place right now. I’m not even really sure what I’m asking. Reassurance that I’m not just going to stop breathing? Or an affirmation that if I did will with surgical anesthesia before, it will be fine this time too? Maybe I just want to hear from people who have gone through all this breathing nonsense are are still here to tell the tale. Thanks

Also if it’s any help, when my anxiety is real bad my pulse rate has been know to get up close to 160. So 110, while fast and uncomfortable is definitely not dangerous!

It may not be helpful but I had an INSANE panic attack a few months ago and I seriously thought I was dying. Felt like someone had their hands around my neck and like I was wearing one of those lead aprons they give you at the dentist when they do X-rays. I have never felt such pressure/heaviness/rightness. I told my boss I was going to die. That’s how certain I was. Laid me flat out on the floor. But....I’m still here! It was a panic attack plain and simple but god if it didn’t scare the living daylights out of me.

That’s encouraging to hear. I have never felt this way before without having an identifiable illness that’s clearly making me tired (flu, pneumonia, virus, etc). Ive been under some stress recently (if you’ve read any of my recent comments about this thing growing in my brain ;-)) but I’m having a hard time pinning this to anxiety. Sure, I always feel tired after a full panic attack but this is just day in and day out exhaustion.

And I mean extreme. Yes, I’m sleepy-tired, but I’m also just body-tired. I feel like I have to rest just walking from my car to the office. Standing up feels hard. I called to get an appointment set up with my primary care dr to get blood work done but I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get in. Anyone ever experience this with anxiety? Going on three weeks now like this. I just feel like a barely vertical zombie.

I spot all the time! USUALLY it's very predictably mid-cycle. Right around ovulation time which is super super normal. My period ended two days ago and I had some spotting today! Weird and unusual for me, but I"m not too worried. Stress can wreak havoc on our cycles so I usually chalk up any anomalies to that. It's always good to mention anything unusual to your gyno, just to be on the safe side, but I don't think you need to make a special appointment or anything. If things still feel out of whack by the time your next appointment rolls around, just bring it up and I'm sure your doc can reassure you. But, yeah, to answer your most direct question -- I spot mid cycle almost every month as do a lot of other women ?

Oh my god I constantly use worry as a means of control...When I’m on a plane, I somehow think that if I stop worrying about crashing then we will crash. constant vigilance!! It’s a totally flawed way of thinking but a very difficult pattern to escape. Because every time I fly and I worry about crashing, we don’t crash. That reinforces the idea in my mind that we didn’t crash BECAUSE I was worrying. When, in reality, we didn’t crash because plane crashes are extremely rare and the pilot knew how to fly a plane:-) so I do that with health though — maybe if I’m constantly watching for symptoms to appear either they won’t appear or I’ll be “ready” for them when they do show up. It’s ridiculous, but I’m a control freak and it’s a very deep rut I’ve gotten myself into. So I get it. It’s hard. But we have to learn to live with the uncertainty otherwise o don’t think we’ll ever get better. And remember, everyone gets scared. It’s okay to be nervous about your test results just like it’s okay that I’m nervous about mine! That’s a normal human response! It’s when we let our thoughts run away with us and we jump immediately to the worst case scenario that we don’t do ourselves any good. That’s when we’ve gone waaay past reasonable fear:-) and thanks for your kind thoughts! I’m hoping to hear my results soon!

Interesting that you mention this because I’ve been having some really horrible pins and needles that have definitely been stressing me out. They are nothing like the “asleep” feeling you get when your limbs aren’t getting enough blood. It’s very much like needles. Like hot needles pricking me. Started happening on the back of my neck. Then it would spread down my arms or across my chest. Sometimes on both sides. Sometimes on one side. I don’t know why it’s happening. I’m taking comfort in the fact that it hasn’t killed me yet ?

I’m waiting on test results too so I totally get how frightening that can be. Mine are not from a mammogram, rather a brain scan. The thing is, I already know I have something in my brain. It was found on the last mri and this most recent one is to see if anything has changed. Do I get freaked out about it? Yep, definitely. The possibility of brain surgery and all the things that could go wrong before that totally freak me out. But what I’m trying to focus on is that this thing grew in my brain whether or not I had worried about it. Nothing I did or didn’t do prevented it from happening and I try to carry over that thought process whenever I’m worried about other things. It doesn’t always work but, we are all just doing what we can right now. I don’t know that that’s super encouraging but, as many people have told me before, the only way to pull ourselves out of the pit of health anxiety is to recognize that we are not in control of everything and we have to be okay with that. WAY easier said than done ? I think you’re going to be just fine. But even if things are not 100% fine, it doesn’t mean that they will be 100% bad either. We tend to think in black and white but life it’s not like that. It’s mostly grey. If it helps at all, my mom just went though the “unthinkable” a couple of years ago. Overall, she was/is fine! In her case, it was surgery, some radiation therapy, and some meds with essentially no side effects. Obviously that’s not everyone’s story, but it is a good reminder that it’s not always the worst case scenario. Things can be not great, but still completely manageable. Ill keep you in my thoughts as we both sit in the uncomfortable space of waiting for our results:-) you’re not alone.