I wanted to give a quick update and put some thoughts out there today.
The last 4-5 days now, I've been feeling a lot better. On Friday I had a few epiphanies. One was thinking about the brain fog/dizziness/headachy-ness as an actual fog, and allowing myself to lift it away, like with a fan, or emerge from it like a car with fog lights. Its been a pretty good visual for me.
The other epiphany was about how much of my work is doing tasks where I am relatively alone in a room doing someone repetitive tasks that don't require my full concentration, so I end up spending a lot of time thinking about my symptoms. So I need something new to fill my thinking time with. So I thought about starting a new writing project and carrying around a little notebook with me all the time so I can write my ideas down and fill my time with it instead of symptom analysis.
Another thing I noticed this morning was that the more time I go without feeling symptoms, the more I find myself anticipating that something will go wrong soon. That its just waiting for me around the corner and I better not let my guard down. Thats going to be hard to let go of.
And finally, I've been having a fair amount of exercise anxiety lately. I never used to have it, but a little over a month ago, I had a weird heart palpitation and panic attack after running at the gym. And since then I've been especially sensitized. And I've been able to break it down to some degree, but I find that I still get scared because I'm afraid my heart with explode or something. But I keep reminding myself that I have no personal or family history of heart conditions, and I've been to the doctor and got a perfect EKG (a while back). So logically, there is no reason to be worried. I think the anxiety is definitely triggered by that previous episode and fear of dying, but also I think I have a lot of insecurities and body judgement all wrapped up in my emotions about exercise and diet. I'm trying to get to the bottom of them.
Anyway, things are slowly improving! And its been really comforting to see on this forum that there are a lot of folks that are having slow recoveries, but its still happening. Slow doesn't mean no recovery. I'm trying to constantly remind myself!
The last 4-5 days now, I've been feeling a lot better. On Friday I had a few epiphanies. One was thinking about the brain fog/dizziness/headachy-ness as an actual fog, and allowing myself to lift it away, like with a fan, or emerge from it like a car with fog lights. Its been a pretty good visual for me.
The other epiphany was about how much of my work is doing tasks where I am relatively alone in a room doing someone repetitive tasks that don't require my full concentration, so I end up spending a lot of time thinking about my symptoms. So I need something new to fill my thinking time with. So I thought about starting a new writing project and carrying around a little notebook with me all the time so I can write my ideas down and fill my time with it instead of symptom analysis.
Another thing I noticed this morning was that the more time I go without feeling symptoms, the more I find myself anticipating that something will go wrong soon. That its just waiting for me around the corner and I better not let my guard down. Thats going to be hard to let go of.
And finally, I've been having a fair amount of exercise anxiety lately. I never used to have it, but a little over a month ago, I had a weird heart palpitation and panic attack after running at the gym. And since then I've been especially sensitized. And I've been able to break it down to some degree, but I find that I still get scared because I'm afraid my heart with explode or something. But I keep reminding myself that I have no personal or family history of heart conditions, and I've been to the doctor and got a perfect EKG (a while back). So logically, there is no reason to be worried. I think the anxiety is definitely triggered by that previous episode and fear of dying, but also I think I have a lot of insecurities and body judgement all wrapped up in my emotions about exercise and diet. I'm trying to get to the bottom of them.
Anyway, things are slowly improving! And its been really comforting to see on this forum that there are a lot of folks that are having slow recoveries, but its still happening. Slow doesn't mean no recovery. I'm trying to constantly remind myself!
