05: The Health Anxiety Trigger Cycle (Here's What's Happening)

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When you've felt confused why you keep getting triggered, why your body completely freaks out when you logically know you are safe, you will learn exactly why in this episode.

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Transcript

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Why do you have health anxiety? Why do you have a panic attack in your bedroom when you're completely safe? That's what I want to talk about right now. Because maybe you've gone to the doctor and they just say, it's just anxiety. It's all in your head. Take this medication, go on with your life, everything will be fine. And it's not. So let's talk about why you are actually experiencing health anxiety. Why is this happening to you? What is actually going on? So I'm going to walk you through something I call the health anxiety trigger cycle. When you download the workbook that you can get in the show notes, this will be a lot more clear because you can visually see what I'm talking about. But I'm going to do my best to explain it in simple, easy to understand ways so that even if you didn't download the workbook, you would still get this. Okay. So let's start with the first the reason why you know you have health anxiety is something's happening today. So you might be having a trigger, you might be having something or one moment, you're just fine. You're just drinking your coffee or getting ready for bed, and then bam! Anxious, panic, all of these things, right? Spinning and circles and in anxiety spiral. This is the start of the health anxiety trigger cycle. This is step number one. Is something happens today. Something is happening today in your life that starts the trigger cycle. So for a lot of people with health anxiety, this is something you might describe as the problem. This is the thing that maybe you're trying to get rid of. This is the thing you're trying to avoid. This is the um heart racing. Like you're like, oh, I'm not gonna work out because my heart rate goes up too high. Or I'm not gonna leave my house. I'm not gonna go to the park because I'm afraid of germs, or I'm not gonna go to the grocery store because I might have a panic attack. So you start avoiding these things, and this is the start of the trigger cycle. So when you we all have a subconscious mind, the subconscious mind drives 95% of our lives, which is pretty hard to fathom because I like to think, and probably you like to think, that you're pretty smart and you're you know you're very aware and all of these things, but 5% that's only 5% of what your brain does. The subconscious mind is so vast, and so the subconscious mind has this scanner that is searching for threat or danger all of the time. It's always looking for threat or danger. We don't get to turn this off, we don't get to shut this off because, like, you know what, I'm tired of that. It's always on, it's always looking, it's always scanning for threat or danger. So when something happens today, this scanner is looking in your memory files. Imagine that there's thousands, millions of files within your subconscious mind. That your subconscious mind is within seconds scanning through, looking for. Have I ever felt this before? It's scanning sound, sights, smell, sensations, tastes, all of these things like have I ever been here before? Last time I experienced this, was it dangerous? And so it's it's always on this alert, and it only brings to your attention the things that are dangerous. That's why you don't notice so much in your life, so much around you, because your brain is automatically filtering things to for you to pay attention to the things that matter to you. And on the top of the list of the things that matter to you are your health anxiety symptoms, the things that your subconscious mind literally thinks you're going to die from. And so it looks through these files. So step number two is your subconscious mind scans your files, starts looking for files. Step number three is when it finds a charged memory. So a charged memory is something that happened in the past combined at the same time with a really strong emotion, a negative emotion. So some people like to say this is trauma, which it absolutely is trauma. Trauma is huge and it is life-altering. But I don't like to categorize charged memories only as trauma because then you might automatically downgrade what you've been experiencing. The reality is charged memories can happen from when you were really little. And as an example, you dropped your ice cream cone on the ground. For a five-year-old dropping their ice cream cone on the ground, that is devastating. To them, their world just ended. And as an adult, we might look at them and be like, ah, that's not that big of a deal. Like, oh my gosh, why am I still affected by that today? But the truth is when your subconscious mind for that five-year-old, it was a threat and was dangerous. And that moment, that feeling that that five-year-old had in that moment becomes a charged memory. And so when that five-year-old now, as a 30-year-old or as a 50-year-old, experiences that feeling, the mind is going, oh, we remember the last time we had this feeling, our world was ending. The last time we experienced this, we did not like it. We felt a lot of pain. And we don't want you to feel that again. You are in danger. And so it finds a charged memory. And the thing, the interesting thing about charged memories is your subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between the present and the past. And so it is just bringing up all of these things that happened in the past and it is reading them as if it's happening now. This is why you keep reliving past memories. This is why you keep reliving things that happened 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, and you can't stop. It's not because you're broken or weak or something wrong with you, it's because your subconscious mind has these files that inform it that you're in danger today and it's doing everything it can to protect you. And so it pulls up these charged memories and it's like, oh my gosh, five-year-old is experiencing this emotion. Today you're experiencing it, and then it causes fear. And it's like, we need to get you out of here. We need to stop this at all costs. We're gonna make sure you pay attention, we're gonna turn up all the alarms, all every full stop, and override every single thing so that you pay attention. And then step number five is the anxiety, panic, triggers, all of that. So this can show up as sensations in your body, like your heart starts pounding faster, your chest gets tight, pit in your stomach, cold all over, all of those things, any sensations in your body can also show up as feelings of like shame. It's a it's a when you get triggered, you feel this strong emotional feeling, feeling really angry or shame or guilt or sadness or something. And then the other thing that can happen is the thoughts, racing thoughts, intrusive thoughts, the panic spiral, that spiral that you just cannot get out of thought after thought after thought that sends you down this terrible panic spiral. And this is also panic attacks, anxiety attacks. This is the whole trigger cycle from start to finish. And this is what is running your health anxiety. The reason you have health anxiety is because your subconscious mind is reading a charged memory of something that happened in the past. It's not happening anymore. But it's happened in the past and it's causing anxiety about that. Isn't that really annoying? Isn't that annoying and actually really frustrating? It can almost make you angry that you are stuck in this state because your mind is reading something that's over and over and over again. So it's almost like you're paying the price for this situation. Not just the one time that it happened, but 5,000 times over and over and over again. That's gotta make you angry. It's gotta make you frustrated enough to say enough is enough. Because what you can do is when you clear that charged memory, you completely break the trigger cycle. Because think about it. If the charged memory is what is causing your whole body and mind to react, let's take an example. If you were to have the very first step, it's like, okay, I do not, I can't exercise because my heart starts to beat faster, and I it feels really like tight. It's scary when my heart goes faster. And then you find a charged memory where um you had this experience of your heart beating really fast, and you felt a lot of fear, and you thought you were gonna die in that moment. Maybe you went to the hospital. So there's this charged memory. Maybe this happened five years ago, and ever since then, now you can't exercise, now you can't move your body because anytime your heart beats faster, you're just you get panicky and get stuck. So again, in the moment, can't exercise. And if your heart does beat faster, you start to panic, fear, right? All of this stuff. So your life is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And then if you just went and took the charge out of that memory, so if your subconscious mind goes and searches, you're in the moment, your heart's beating faster because you're trying to work out. Your subconscious mind goes and searches, it doesn't find any threat about your heart beating faster. There's no danger, there's no problem with your heart beating faster. Nothing has gone wrong. And your mind finally gets that, it's not causing the panic and the anxiety and the threat and worry about this anymore. So it's actually very simple to break the health anxiety trigger cycle. You have to simply clear the charged memory, you take out the charge out of that memory, and then there's no more anxiety. It's not that you have to try to calm yourself down more or breathe harder, none of that. It's just gone. So in the next episode, I want to walk you through your own health anxiety trigger cycle, but also I want to show you exactly why everything that you've tried before hasn't worked. If you've been feeling like, I have tried everything, nothing works, I can't do this, I can't figure this out. Listen into the next episode because there's a reason what you've done hasn't worked. And I'm gonna show you exactly why.