Introduction
This episode of the Health Anxiety Podcast is brought to you by the Health Anxiety University, an amazing group of loving and supportive people ready to welcome you in to start your health anxiety healing today. Learn more through the link in the description of this episode, and we’ll see you at the Health Anxiety University. Friends, welcome to another episode. I’m Dennis Simsek, your host, and today we’re going to discuss breakthroughs and how health anxiety breakthroughs can be as detrimental as setbacks if, in fact, you do these things that I’m going to talk about today.
Table of Contents
The Importance of Attitude and Mindset
Now, you may be wondering, well, Dennis, isn’t the work that I’m doing supposed to lead me to breakthroughs and, therefore, to healing? Well, yes. However, if you don’t have the right attitude, mindset, and response to these breakthroughs, you can find yourself like you’re chasing your tail. Round and around you go, and often the breakthrough doesn’t really live that long within you, and you find yourself worrying, catastrophizing, and being completely fixated on your symptoms again soon after the breakthrough.
First Point : Clinging to Health Anxiety Breakthroughs
The Consequence of Clinging onto Health Anxiety Breakthroughs
The first thing is that if you cling to the breakthrough and the feeling that accompanies it, you are, therefore, clinging, which aligns you right back with fear. When you suffer from health anxiety, you are clinging to an idea. Related to a better feeling, the lack of symptoms, mental clarity, and the ability to be more functional as you go about the day. There’s a hoping, there’s a begging, there’s a clinging to that.
Letting Go of Health Anxiety Breakthroughs
And the thing is that when you wake up in the morning and you are clinging to that, you will be disappointed very, very quickly because you’ve been in such a sensitized state for so long. And I would recommend that you basically anticipate. Symptoms, ideas, and such will be there, will be present in the morning, and not be disappointed because they are there. But we’re talking about, in this first point, the idea of clinging to a breakthrough.
So, you may have a breakthrough and you may be going about your day with very little symptoms or very little catastrophic ideas that are crossing your mind. And you may really love that state that you’re in. That, my friends, is clinging.
Instead, what you want to do is you don’t want to cling. You want to say, I’ve had a breakthrough. I’ve done some good inner work, and this has been the result. And I’m glad it showed up. And if it leads me or leaves me in the near future, then that is fine because I’m not going to cling to this new feeling. I trust enough in the unfolding of life. I now give up control over ideas, over symptoms, over bodily feelings, over the future. And once you give up control, you’re basically home free. But it takes time.
The Magic of Indifference
So, you don’t want to cling to your breakthroughs. You want to say, okay, well, there it is. Okay. I like this. I’m not attached to it, but I like it. If it goes away, great. And if it sticks around, great. We talk about indifference a lot. In the Health Anxiety University, an indifference is that magic key. When you no longer have a preference in relation to how you go about the day, preference in terms of, I prefer this over that. I prefer this feeling over that feeling. I prefer these ideas over that ideas.
When you no longer have preferences, you are within that realm of indifference. When you’re in that realm of indifference, do you realize how at ease you are, how much inner peace you experience? You are no longer clinging. And you’re going to hear me say that word often, clinging, because it’s the clinging that brings us right back into the familiar state of health anxiety.
Second Point: Avoiding Overexertion After Health Anxiety Breakthroughs
Second point is if you mentally or physically overdo it, meaning if you take on too much too soon. If you do not give your lower self or little me time to adjust to this newfound perspective and feeling, then the breakthrough will be as detrimental as a setback is. So you don’t want to go, oh, I feel so good right now. You know, I’m going to take this trip. I’m going to socialize. I’m going to go out for a really long night with friends and have an amazing time because I feel better.
Understanding Fatigue’s Role in Health Anxiety Breakthroughs
Well, the interesting thing is that you don’t want to go out for a really long night with Health Anxiety breakthroughs and anxiety in general is that so much of our fatigue and exhaustion mentally, emotionally, and physically continue to perpetuate the anxiety. So in turn, yes, you are dealing with the ideas, the feelings, and the beliefs in relation to anxiety, but you’re also dealing with the fatigue aspect of things. I talk about adrenal fatigue. I talk about dysregulated nervous systems. And these must be respected.
And if you are taking on too much too soon, you are not respecting that aspect of health anxiety healing. So you must go, well, okay, I’ve had a breakthrough here, which is great. And I’m just going to continue on this path and not try to take on too much and say yes to everybody because I feel a bit better because that could bring you full circle back into a crash. And many of you know what it’s like to go. You have these symptom flare-ups. You’ve got the dizziness that gets worse, the depersonalization, and all those things, right?
What to Do After Health Anxiety Breakthroughs
So don’t take on too much after a breakthrough, but instead just go, okay, well, well, this is good. This is good. I’m just going to kind of float along, right? I’m going to surf these waves, whatever it is. But I respect the fact that I have a breakthrough and I’m going to, I’m going to continue to trust my intuition. In terms of what it’s telling me as I go about this day, but I’m not going to overdo it.
Third Point: Letting Go of Identification with Health Anxiety Breakthroughs
And the third point is if you go through the breakthrough, but continue to identify with being a Health Anxiety breakthroughs sufferer, there’s that word being, you will soon after fall back into a state of fixation over your symptoms and approval over the potential idea around physical catastrophe.
Breaking Free from Identification
So. This point is important because you may have breakthroughs, but you still identify with being a perfectionist or an anxiety sufferer or an over-warrior. As long as you continue to identify with being something in relation to anxiety, then you are connected to the addiction to suffering.
If you are connected to the addiction to suffering and have a breakthrough, then you will not, you will not realize the elements that create. The breakthrough, and you won’t give yourself credit for it either. So when you look in the mirror, what do you see?
Questions to Ask Yourself
- Do you see someone who is curious about their healing?
- Do you see someone who is open-minded in terms of how they, or who they allow information to come from in terms of health, anxiety, healing?
- Do you identify with someone who already knows everything?
- Do you identify with someone who is going to meet with some level of suffering each and every day, no matter what?
- Who are you?
- Who have you identified with?
Personal Transformation
Because in truth, during my Health Anxiety breakthrough days, I was a health anxiety sufferer. I use the words, I am suffering. I am a sufferer. And then I started to let go, surrender to the whole process and to start opening up, to the potential breakthroughs. And when that happened, I started to look in the mirror and see somebody else.
Embracing Change after a Health Anxiety Breakthrough
But I couldn’t identify with anybody I was seeing. I was basically a nobody. And because I was a nobody, that gave me an opportunity to take a health anxiety idea and to not really fall for it anymore, right? Or a symptom and go, okay, well, that symptom’s there, right? There’s nothing I necessarily need to do about that symptom. Right?
Finding Power in Surrender
So I started to allow myself to experience what my body’s going through, and simply by being here with the symptom and the idea, I’m already doing something, right? Something that will help my true self, my higher self, come more often into the picture of my life. And that really was a massive breakthrough.
Ending Thoughts: Embracing Change
I can’t tell you how important it is to begin to disidentify or detach yourself from being, being a sufferer of some kind. Right? And honestly, that’s a huge part of it. It really, really, really is. So the next time you have a breakthrough, my friends, keep these points in mind, write them down, and just pay attention to where your focus is going. Because if your focus is going on to clinging on the breakthrough, or overdoing it after the breakthrough, or continuing to identify with being a health anxiety sufferer even with the breakthrough. Then you’re going to find yourself within a setback very, very soon.
Adjusting to New Perspectives
And people unconsciously live in setbacks all the time because it’s their default state, their emotional state that they’ve been so accustomed to. But whatever you’re accustomed to, it’s like, it’s like taking off those shoes and putting on new shoes.
Metaphor of New Shoes
When you put on new shoes, what happens is you start walking around and you’re kind of testing the shoes. Are they light? Are they heavy? Do they feel different than the old shoes? It takes time before you get used to those shoes.
Transitioning into Healing
And notice that often when you get new shoes, you don’t start running right away. You kind of walk first a bit, then you start running if you’re a runner and enjoy that kind of thing. Then you start doing different things, right? Playing sports, whatever it may be.
Embracing Change
And you’re looking at those shoes going, well, I really love those shoes, or I really don’t like those shoes, right? They’re uncomfortable. But either way, in this regard. You’re going to put on new shoes and you’re going to become accustomed to what comes with those new shoes.
Accepting the Uncomfortable
And some of the things that come with healing are comfortable and some of the things that come with healing are uncomfortable. It’s up to you to embrace both of those things with the idea of indifference.
Conclusion: Trusting Your Journey to Overcome Health Anxiety Breakthroughs
It doesn’t matter what it feels like. You just intuitively know that you’re on the right track. And that’s the key. You have to let go of what you know that you aren’t going to experience. In fact, the delicate part about day one is how you talk about it to yourself and to your friends and to the spouse and with your partner when they come unconsciously.
You are automatically part of your breathing. Time to call it a day though? Maybe. Or maybe it’s getting a little more electronic in the slides. Maybe you started saying something without thinking. You’re still trying to communicate out loud. Depending on the day. Depending, depending. And I see it happening very quickly. Right in time. across time. and I’ll see you very soon. Bye-bye.
