Today on the health anxiety podcast I’ll share with you the 4 health anxiety stages a sufferer goes through on their way to true healing. Which stage or stages do you find yourself in most recently?
The Essential Guide To Health Anxiety, my 4th book comes out October 2022 and you can pick up your copy on Amazon right here.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Thank you so much for joining us. For you to begin your healing journey, visit anxietyexit.com to start the program today. Now, here’s your host, The Anxiety Guide. Warriors, welcome back to the Health Anxiety Podcast, episode number 55. I’m Dennis Simsek, and I’m so happy to be back with you here on this very important podcast episode.
Announcement: The Essential Guide to Health Anxiety
Before I get into this episode, let me remind you that The Essential Guide to Health Anxiety, yes, my fourth book, is out now. You Can Check Out The Book Here
Place this date on your calendar. This book will change your life. Make sure that you pick it up in the first week of October on Amazon, The Essential Guide to Health Anxiety.
Topic: Reflecting on Health Anxiety
And friends, in today’s episode, I’m going to be talking about the essential guide to I thought it was important to do some reflecting, reflecting in terms of where we are right now or where we’ve been and where we’re going with health anxiety.
The Four Stages of Health Anxiety Healing Journey
I want to show you, introduce you to four different stages within the health anxiety healing journey, okay? Of course, when we think about these stages, there are… There are many, many different micro-components to each and every stage, but for the most part, it really comes down to these four stages, the first, the second, the third, and the fourth.
Personal Experience and Perspective
And if I look at my own health anxiety experience, I can really relate to these stages. And when I introduce these stages to you, we mustn’t go into them going, oh, yes, that’s me. I feel bad for myself. I’ll never get out of this rut. No, no, no, no, no. This podcast, along with the main podcast, is about showing you what you need to reveal to yourself in order for you to heal it yourself.
Shifting from Victimhood to Reflection
So my friends, we are leaving a place of victimhood. We are moving towards a place of reflection and curiosity because you couldn’t learn the lessons that you need to learn. You don’t need to any other way than through the health anxiety healing journey. Remember that. You’re bringing up feelings, emotions, ideas, connections with the world that, for a big, large component, are false, lies, irrational fears. And it’s up to us to see beyond these things.
Health Anxiety Stages #1 – The Frantic Stage
Stage number one, and this is where a lot of people find themselves instantly, is the friendliness. The frantic stage, okay? The frantic stage is stage number one. What does that mean? That means that you are completely enthralled with your anxiety symptoms, completely being led by your body.
Characteristics of the Frantic Stage
In the frantic stage, you wake up in the morning and you feel something in your physical body and automatically, unconsciously, you start to play out images of yourself. You start to play out images of yourself. You start to play out images of yourself. You start to play out images of yourself. You start to play out images and movies of how the day’s going to go. And you’re constantly setting yourself up for failure because you’re so in tune with your sensations and with your body that you don’t give yourself the opportunity to connect with anything on the outside, nor anything on the inside that’s working properly. You can only focus on what can and will go wrong.
Acknowledging and Admitting the Frantic Stage
So this is the frantic stage, okay? If you’re in this stage, as I mentioned, it’s important to admit it, right? I mean, I can’t tell you how much healing I ran into when I started to admit that I was a hypochondriac. That was it. That really was it. It wasn’t this potential illness. It wasn’t that potential mental health craziness. It wasn’t this. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t this. It wasn’t that. I was a hypochondriac. And my friends, you are suffering from health anxiety. Key word, suffering. But whatever we can create consciously and unconsciously, we can move away from and recreate something new. Remember that.
Health Anxiety Stages #2 – The Exploration Stage
Now, after the frantic stage, okay, we’ve gone through this. Yes, the body is overtaking our lives and our focus and our energies. We. At this point, we are open to something new. Okay, we’re going, I don’t want to be frantic anymore. Okay, there’s got to be a roadmap, a path that can take me out of this place. Then we move to stage two, which is the exploration stage.
Opening to New Perceptions
In the exploration stage, after the frantic stage, we are introduced to new perceptions, new root causes. New actions and new directions. So in terms of the exploration stage, we are introducing ourselves to new perceptions. And what that means is that we give ourselves the opportunity, the opportunity to see what the body is screaming out loud differently. Our anxiety symptoms, the ideas. We are perceiving them. From a different place. Okay, this is very, very important because you cannot heal health anxiety through the I or the identity of health anxiety. Okay, so you can’t heal health anxiety while being frantic. Okay, that’s like a hamster running on a hamster wheel. You’re just going to keep going and circling over and over again.
Flexibility and Tension in the Exploration Stage
So in the exploration stage, we are introducing ourselves to new perceptions. Wow, I didn’t realize I could perceive my sensations, my symptoms from this viewpoint. Okay, it’s not like those ideas, those perceptions are ingrained. They’re not habitual yet. We’re just starting to introduce ourselves to them, right? We’re becoming open to them. And so much of this exploration stage has to do with becoming more flexible in how we approach life, right? So much of health anxiety comes down to tension, right? So much of it comes down to tension. And I know a lot of people out there that do yoga, okay? But they’re doing yoga for the wrong reasons. They come to me and say, Dennis, I’ve got this yogic habit every single morning. You know, I really want to get more flexible in my body. I really want to connect with source energy. Well, I’m going to them. You can’t become more flexible in your body. Until you become more flexible in your mind, the flexibility in your body is a result of the flexibility in your mind and how you approach and how you perceive the things that once caused you so much fear.
Tapping into Root Causes and New Actions
So in the exploration stage, we’re also tapping into some root causes, okay? We’re realizing that we are a mirror image of some of mom’s personalities. Dad’s personalities. This has become very unconsciously driven. We’re exploring new actions and new ways for us to function in environments that used to cause us a lot of fear, right? And we’re exploring a new direction. This hasn’t been ingrained, as I mentioned. This isn’t a lifestyle habit. This isn’t a moving from the ego to the higher self yet. This is just exploration. And it’s a wonderful, wonderful stage. And it’s a wonderful, wonderful stage to be in, right? When you’re in this stage, you must keep going forward into that world, into that friendship with the unknown. Don’t go back to franticness just because it’s familiar, okay? Don’t go back there.
Warning Against Secondary Gains
Don’t go back to franticness just because people are being more sympathetic towards you than being in the exploration stage, right? When I was in the exploration stage, a lot of people were going, oh, I’m so happy for you, right? That’s great that you’re rebuilding. You’re building your identity and seeing through some of these things. But I wasn’t getting the same love, attention, and connection that I was getting when I was frantic. When I was frantic, people were feeling sorry for me. My level of self-worth was actually going up. Don’t let this be you. These are called secondary gains. There’s nothing to gain from living a worryful, anxious life. Just keep going forward.
Health Anxiety Stages #3 – The Becoming Stage
Now, after the frantic stage, we move to the exploration stage, followed by the becoming stage. Ooh, let me explain. In the becoming stage, the process and the implementation of mindsets and skill sets start forming, right?
Transformation in the Becoming Stage
These new processes and implementations of different mindsets and skill sets start forming, and they bring us out of the ego and into our higher self. So, we’re in the becoming stage. When I say ego, I’m talking about the inner child. When I’m talking about the inner child, I’m talking about the subconscious programming that you’ve been under all these years. In the becoming stage, it feels like if you were on a bridge, and on one side of the bridge, there’s anxiety, right? And all the labels and judgments and feelings and thoughts that come with it.
Progress Toward the Higher Self
And on the other side of the bridge, there is moving into your higher self, right? You, in the becoming stage, are three-quarters of the way there towards your higher self. That’s basically what it means. You are becoming someone else. As you’re becoming someone else, you’re going to find that the shackles from your past, the shackles that are connected to irrational fear, the shackles connected to safety around the idea of worrying, the shackles connected to you competing with every single person in the world, all of these shackles start coming off.
Liberation and Spontaneous Remissions
And as they come off, the body starts to feel lighter. And my friends, this is when you start to really tap into spontaneous remissions. I’ll give you an example. My mother, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer just a few years back. And, of course, we got a second, a third, a fourth opinion, and it confirmed, constantly confirmed that this was the case. Now, I wanted to look back on recent things that were happening in my mom’s life. And my uncle had passed away. My grandfather had passed away. And with all of that came anxiety. A tremendous amount of guilt for not being there for these people.
Understanding the Message of the Body
So I believe that my mom carried this guilt with her at such a heavy level that caused her to tap into ovarian cancer to let her know that the guilt was overflowing in her body. I do believe that guilt, shame, you know, any of these things, these negative feelings and emotions, when they start overflowing, the body starts to let us know, which doesn’t mean that we have to be afraid. It just means that we have to get the message. We have to get the message. The emotional body is the physical body. The physical body is the emotional body, right? So let’s understand this healing journey just a little bit better.
Detaching from Societal Programs
But in the becoming stage, you are truly becoming something and someone you never thought you would be. And you start to find yourself detaching from the societal programs that so many people are under. You no longer feel tired and wired, but energy is starting to come to you at this stage, right? You’re starting to look at your anxiety symptoms and say, thank you. Thank you for that message, because now I know what I’m still holding on to.
Empowerment and Gratitude
Thank you for the message. Now I realize that I have to focus on my sleep patterns. Thank you for the message. I have to focus on my diet more. I have to focus on letting go of these things from the past. I have to make sure that I replace these feelings and thoughts with something new. Thank you, anxiety symptoms. No longer are we a slave to the anxiety symptoms and ideas or other people’s stories anymore. We are becoming someone else.
Health Anxiety Stages #4 – The Arrival Stage
Then we move to the fourth and final stage. In this stage, we like to call it the arrival stage. Ooooo, the arrival stage. What this means is a wholehearted arrival into a new identity and all that comes with it. A feeling of living through an afterlife. Seeing through childhood and present fear-centered beliefs and systems.
Reflecting on the Journey
Now, this is important because when you arrive, you feel like you’ve gone through the same thing over and over. You feel like you’ve gone through hell, right? You’ve gone through hell and you’ve come out on the other side. That doesn’t mean everything goes away from before. That doesn’t mean you don’t experience anxiety, sensations, or symptoms ever again. That doesn’t mean that you’re not led sometimes by a fearful thought or a catastrophic idea. That doesn’t mean that when somebody else comes to you with a catastrophic story that it’s all just going to go away.
Shifting Consciousness in the Arrival Stage
No. In the arrival stage, you have arrived into a place where you no longer spend as much time on these things as before. The arrival stage and the frantic stage are two completely different dimensions that we live in, completely different states of consciousness. We are raising our consciousness when we are in the arrival stage. We start to see our bodies differently. We start to see ourselves from a more energetic standpoint. We’re more aware of the programming coming from the outside. We’re no longer allowing our energies to be used up through reality shows, video games, or bad music. We’re no longer being led by the fearful programming from the outside. We are thinking and feeling things at a deeper level.
Heightened Sensitivity and Empathy
When you’re in the arrival stage, you become sensitive in a different way. You’re no longer sensitive to the fears, but you’re more empathetic towards other people. The arrival stage means that you start to feel what other people are feeling. Your entire life experience no longer has everything to do with you. If you feel that, it’s important to make sure that you build on this. You’re becoming more intuitive, and you’re starting to trust things more. You’re starting to trust the good. You’re starting to trust the bad.
Embracing the Flow of Life
In the arrival stage, you’re no longer shooting for happiness in all you do. You’re allowing things to come to you as they may. You’re no longer forcing things to happen like you did in the arrival stage. You’re embracing the flow of life and learning to navigate its currents with a newfound wisdom. The constant struggle to control every aspect of your existence becomes a thing of the past.
Acceptance of the Unknown
You’re no longer forcing things to happen like you did in the frantic stage. The desperate need for certainty and security gives way to a profound acceptance of the unknown. Life’s uncertainties no longer trigger the same level of anxiety they once did. Instead, you find comfort in the ebb and flow of the unpredictable, understanding that growth often arises from the unexpected.
Transformative Shift
The arrival stage signifies a transformative shift in your relationship with yourself and the world around you. It’s a testament to your resilience, strength, and the journey you’ve undertaken. While the challenges of life may persist, your capacity to navigate them with grace and understanding expands exponentially.
So, my fellow warriors, as you traverse the stages of the health anxiety healing journey, remember that the arrival stage is not the end but a remarkable beginning. It’s a declaration of your triumph over the shadows of anxiety, a step into a life where you are no longer defined by fear but empowered by resilience.
Conclusion
Continue to embrace this journey with courage, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to your well-being. You are more than anxiety. Keep going, and may the arrival stage be a beacon of hope guiding you toward a future filled with newfound freedom and joy.
I love you, and you’re starting to love yourself. I can feel it. Keep going. Bye-bye.
Warriors, if you are enjoying this podcast, please subscribe and give it a positive rate and review. Also, don’t forget to check out the original Anxiety Guide podcast on iTunes, with new episodes airing every Monday morning, Pacific Standard Time. Remember, you are more than anxiety. See you in the next episode.
Anxiety Guy
