A Journey Through Anxiety, reveals how this disorder can be a whole-body illness—and how she’s learned to cope.
WHEN WE THINK about anxiety, we tend to consider what happens in the mind—the excessive worry and catastrophic fears—rather than what occurs in the body. And while many anxious people do make a beeline to a therapist, others visit a physician’s office first. “They’ll talk about chronic abdominal pain, pelvic pain, neck pain, headaches, or insomnia,” says Lynne Lillie, MD, a family physician in Rochester, Minnesota, who serves on the American Academy of Family Physicians board of directors, but they often won’t connect it to anxiety.
In my case, a racing heart and shortness of breath have propelled me to the emergency room several times, convinced I was having a heart attack. There have been other puzzling symptoms, too: dizziness, tingling feet, exhaustion. One year I saw more than a dozen doctors who tested me for, among other things, multiple sclerosis, brain cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and a heart ailment.
This story is from the August 2017 edition of The Oprah Magazine.
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This story is from the August 2017 edition of The Oprah Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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