How I Lived as My Symptoms
For a long time I didn’t feel like I had symptoms, my friends. I felt like I was the symptoms. Every little shift in my body felt personal, like proof that something was wrong. I lived inside those moments, and because my attention was glued to the body, the whole world started to shrink around them. Joy, food, work, simple conversations, everything was filtered through the lens of discomfort and worry.
From Diagnosis to Experience: Changing My View of Sensations
The real shift didn’t come when the sensations disappeared. It came when I stepped back and watched them unfold instead of living inside them. I started to experiment with seeing sensations as experiences rather than verdicts. That change in perspective was huge. When I stopped treating every twinge or ache as a diagnosis, the automatic panic that used to follow began to lose its power.
Why seeing it as an experience matters
When a sensation is a diagnosis, the nervous system hears alarm. It assigns meaning like this: I am unwell. That meaning turns the body into surveillance. But when I looked at the same sensations as something happening in the moment, the nervous system had room to relax. Witnessing creates space, and space reduces threat.
What Witnessing the Symptoms Looked Like for Me
I started using a simple mental image. I imagined my sensations like kids on a playground. They weren’t good or bad. They were just playing. When I could sit back and observe, really watch, I had choices. I could react, or I could notice and let passing things pass. I wasn’t denying the discomfort. I was changing my relationship to it.
A small example
If a sharp feeling showed up, instead of instantly spiraling through worst-case scenarios, I would say to myself: there’s a sensation. It’s happening. I would notice the quality of it, how long it lasted, and where it sat in my body. Often, simply naming it and allowing it to exist without interpretation made it soften.
Why the Nervous System Makes Signs Seem So Threatening
The nervous system does more than detect. It assigns meaning. When meaning becomes threat, pain escalates. For years I didn’t connect how my perception of danger was fueling physical pain. The more I believed something was wrong, the more my body shifted into survival mode. Fight or flight glued to my daily rhythm. That loop keeps sensations alive and loud.
The loop between meaning, threat, and pain
Meaning creates a threat response. Threat keeps the body in hypervigilance. Hypervigilance amplifies sensations. Amplified sensations strengthen the meaning that something is wrong. It’s a tight loop. My work became about loosening that loop by changing what I believed and how I reacted.
Practical Ways I Began to Watch Instead of React
This is not a checklist you must perfect tomorrow. For me it was a repeated practice, day after day. Here are the moves that helped:
Start small: notice without action
When a sensation came, I practiced naming it. “That’s a flutter.” “That’s a pressure.” I didn’t ask what it meant. I just observed the quality and the timeline. Often the intensity would drop just because I didn’t feed it with frantic interpreting.
Use curiosity instead of fear
Curiosity is a surprising ally. I asked neutral questions: Where exactly do I feel this? Is it moving? What does it remind me of? That shift from panic to curiosity gives the nervous system different signals, safety signals, and those quiet the inner protector.
What I did when pain spiked
If my brain wanted me to act, I breathed. I let my breath be longer than my story about the sensation. If I needed to do something practical, I did the small logical step and then returned to watching. The point was not to be in doership all the time. Doing was often a reaction that kept my system in alarm.
How My Relationship with Symptoms Changed First
Here’s the single line I want you to keep: my symptom did not change first. My relationship to it did. I stopped identifying with the discomfort and started identifying with the part of me that could witness the discomfort. That stance created neutrality, which created safety signals, which over time allowed the nervous system to unwind.
The scale I used
If I imagined a balance, on one side was reactivity and franticness. On the other side was witness and openness. I practiced tipping the scale toward witness. Sometimes it dropped instantly, often it took repeated practice. That’s okay. It’s not about speed. It’s about small, persistent shifts.
Closing thoughts and an invitation
If this idea feels like too big a leap, just play with it for a while. Try seeing sensations as something happening rather than a verdict on your health. For me, that tiny change in perspective altered everything. My nervous system stopped being the judge of every body signal and started learning that not every feeling equals danger.
If you want structured guidance for this skill, my 12-week program at anxietyguyprograms.com teaches safety signals and practical steps to stop identifying with sensations and rebuild calm in the body. But even without a course, the practice of watching, naming, and choosing curiosity over panic will move you forward.
You are more than the fear. You are not your symptoms. I love you. I know where you are, and you are heading to much better places. Forward together.
Citations
Krautwurst, S., Gerlach, A. L., & Witthöft, M. (2016). Interoception in pathological health anxiety. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 125(8), 1179–1184.
Leonidou, C., & Panayiotou, G. (2018). How do illness-anxious individuals process health-threatening information? A systematic review of evidence for the cognitive-behavioral model. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 111, 100–115.
J Vollestad, Nielsen, M., & Nielsen, G. (2016). Mindfulness- and acceptance-based interventions for anxiety disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Nih.gov; Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (UK).
Lovas, D. A., & Barsky, A. J. (2010). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for hypochondriasis, or severe health anxiety: A pilot study. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 24(8), 931–935.
Mind and Body Approaches for Stress. (2024). NCCIH.
