I was thinking about reading and then writing what I thought like a few sentence reaction or thoughts. That way I could practice forming an opinion without editing my stuff a lot and also see what my average quality stuff I write is. I think I’ll post later today
Finished reading chapter two of:
The book said some things that I liked such as anxiety can be without substance like it can be undetectable and it could come on without realizing it. I find that interesting cuz I keep telling myself I don’t have anxiety about certain things cuz I dealt with it before. I’m literally look for the same feelings as before when I had anxiety and it just passes me by.
I started reading another anxiety self-help book called:
Freedom from Health Anxiety: Understand and Overcome Obsessive Worry about Your Health or Someone Else’s and Find Peace of Mind by Karen Lynn Cassiday PhD
I know I did start reading another book before called:
I liked how it talked about anxiety in general sense, but it was hard to sit through reading it cuz it was talking about addictions and anxiety loops. I think those are related, but it wasn’t until today that I thought about reading about something more specific and relatable like health anxiety.
I noticed that I do worry about my health everyday and over-conscious about symptoms I experience that I think it could be a serious health problem. I don’t want to come to the conclusion that I don’t have a serious illness or something bad, but I do want to learn more about worrying about health.
In chapter one, the author talked about various things about health anxiety, but one was about how it’s been affecting the person’s life. Like some categories were how the worry has affected the people around you and how the worrying has affected daily routine.
I liked that cuz it sounds relatable. Like my worrying has affected my sleep and I get people stressed out a bit when I bring up that I’m feeling certain symptoms(e.g. shortness of breath or headache).
Self-help book I read today:
I read a bit of chapter 2 and it talked about identifying negative reinforcers and past incidents that affect illness anxiety.
The negative reinforcers that make illness anxiety worse are something like checking in with the doctor’s multiple times for the same symptoms or looking up symptoms online. It was interesting to read cuz I do notice myself doing those kinds of behaviors like looking up online about medical conditions.
I think I wanted to talk about this topic cuz it seems easy to make errors while searching stuff online. Like it seems like a skill for sure. Also, there was some stuff in the book about how trauma could cause illness anxiety. It made me think about adlerian psychology about how emotions and trauma aren’t uncontrollable things that cause us to act. Like what happens is that we learn ideas about how to act and we use those for future scenarios
Self-help book I read today:
I read more of chapter 2 and it talked about avoidance behavior with anxiety. Like a person avoiding situations they believe they’re too anxious to go through. An example could be avoiding discussions about illnesses cuz they are afraid of getting sick and thinking too much about it.
The author talked about facing those uncomfortable situations cuz if the person avoids it they feed into their anxiety about it.
I like what the author said cuz at some point they mentioned to master your fears and that made me think you can learn to get over them. Like it’s not just forcing yourself in unpleasant or uncomfortable situations you can test to see how true fears about certain things are.
Self-help book I read today:
I read a little bit of chapter 3, and the author talked about two things. The first was how the brain creates neural pathways for new ideas and behaviors and how some of pathways are fear-inducing and cause anxiety. She said that when you learn new ways to do something that aren’t as anxious and are easier it can help with anxiety.
I find that interesting cuz it does sound like in a way a perspective problem. Like the way one sees something can affect how they feel about it and what they think about it.
The other thing that the author talked about was engaging in exposure therapy that way the patient can learn to deal with their anxiety in non-anxious ways. Like they can see that their fear about getting ill isn’t so bad after they hear about the 30th time(my example).
I do like the sound of learning through your fears like you can pick up a thing or two to manage anxiety in a way that’s calm and not stressing you out. The thing I’m having a hard time finding a difference in is how do I know if I’m forcing myself to face my fears against my wishes(and it going badly) vs. trying to pick up a new way to see how to view things in a calmer way.
I don’t think the book is suggesting to force yourself into something you don’t like. I’m just having a hard time seeing the difference between the two.
Self-help book I read today:
I read a section in chapter three that talked about what to do during the exposure therapy. Like, the author said to write down some negative thoughts that try to predict what happen before an activity, then write what you discovered actually happened after the activity.
I tried it cuz I was gonna visit my friends anyways and I thought going out leads to anxiety and feeling random symptoms. When I came back I wrote that the bad predictions actually didn’t happen and my anxiety was manageable.
Self-help book I read today:
I started reading ch. 4, and it’s called Giving Up Reassurance-Seeking. One section called Reassurance-Seeking Behaviors talked about how health anxiety can affect your friends and family like the person with the anxiety keeps asking them for reassurance. It’s like talking to your friend for some advice about the same thing over and over again and it’s like the issue never gets resolved.
The author also talked about how reassurance seeking negatively reinforces the health anxiety. I was thinking about that and I think I see what the author means. Like, being worried about my health doesn’t just happen on its own like something gives me the idea to check for symptoms. In a way seeking reassurance says yes to that something and never really discusses it further. I think that something could be an idea that says, “I am not well.” or “I am going to do die from something.” Idk for sure tho
Self-help book I read today:
I read more of chapter 4. There was a mini-section called, “RAISE YOUR RESILIENCE for Medical Professionals with Illness Anxiety.” It was interesting cuz it talked about how health-care proffesionals and collegues who are non-anxious can be more accurate than you in looking at your condition. It makes sense cuz if you’re worrying about something a lot, it could get in the way of thinking normally about things like your condition or well-being.
Self-help book I read today:
I read a section in ch. 5 called, “Maximizers Versus Satisficers.” In the section, the author talked about how there are people that want to satisfy that is find something that is “good enough” for them. And there are people who want to maximize that is try to find the best possible outcome from the things they do. The author says that maximizing can make people think that everything they do needs to be the best it can be and that could give them very high expectations.
That’s interesting cuz I think trying to find the best anything sounds hard to do. Like how do you know if something is as good as it seems and like weigh benefits and drawbacks.
I think I notice when I try to maximize irl and it feels unsatisfying in a way getting what I want cuz it doesn’t really feel earned idk. Like I don’t even know if I wanted the best possible thing in the first place.
This is related to CF: satisfying goal criteria vs. maximizing a score.
The (ideal) attitude of many people to evidence involves maximization: figuring out the best idea given the evidence; taking into account all evidence.
Oh that sounds cool to read about
Dang this sentence is hard to read for me. I tried for a few mins but I dont get it yet
Self-help book I read today:
I read a section in ch. 5 called, “Your Wise Inner Voice Is Not Anxious.” The section is about how maximizing can ignore your inner voice who knows about stuff and is reasonable. I do sometimes think there is an inner voice that takes care of a lot of stuff and thinks reasonably about it.
Self-help book I read today:
I read a few paragraphs in ch. 3. The topic is addictions. The author talked about how big companies get people addicted to stuff to fill an emotional want/need. Like, advertising shoes to a person and making them think they want it or need it.
That makes sense cuz obviously people feel emotions but how they deal with them is separate. Like they could buy stuff to feel better or eat to not be so sad.
Self-help book I read today:
I finished reading chapter 8 with a section called, “What You Have Learned.” The author made an overview about the chapter and the last eight chapters of the book. They said ch. 1-8 were about learning to face your fears, but the rest of the chapters are going to be about learning about positive psychology.
I liked chapters 1-8 cuz it let me know how to be aware when I’m anxious and not feed too much into it. Before I didn’t even think i had anxiety, but now I like notice when I’m searching through something really scary( e.g. a serious disease) and I get cautious while doing it.
Self-help book I read today:
I read a few more paragraphs of ch. 3 that talked about the cycle of worry. It starts with worrying about a problem and then getting into problem solving mode to fix it. The author says that even though the person is in problem solving mode when they worry they might not even end up finding a solution and they end up worrying again anyways.
That’s interesting cuz it’s hard to know if I even found a solution and I just pushed the problem back to think about it later.
Self-book I read today:
I read more of a section in ch.9 that talked about how going through struggles teaches a person a lot. Like it can be really troublesome and hard, but when the person goes through it they learn a lot.
Now that I wrote that out I get more about what the author is saying. Like anxiety is a hard cuz it has a lot of little things for the person to go through and learn about, but in the end it’s worth it.
Self-book I read today:
I read a section in ch. 10 called, “Medication.” The author talked about one of the ways to treat anxiety and that’s medication. She says that medication lowers anxiety by 30-40%.
That makes me wonder if medication does really lower anxiety. I definitely feel different after not taking it(antidepressants) for a whole year. I really don’t know how to go about this.
There’s another section in the chapter called, “Functional Medicine.” The author goes over using a field of medicine called functional medicine that uses traditional medicine with alternative medicines as well.
I don’t know the correctness of these other fields, but I do like that there are other options for treating health anxiety.
Another section called, “Confidence in Your Recovery,” talks about how even though the health care professional has good rapport with their patient that doesn’t mean that the treatment for the patient is going well. Like the patient may be unwilling to bring up something they don’t agree about or a criticism, cuz they don’t want to have an awkward conversation about it.
I could see what the author is saying cuz it is unpleasant to bring up something i didn’t like or have a disagreement with.
I read a section called, “Tracking Your Symptoms,” and the author talked about how the reader should use the worksheets they provided to keep track of their symptoms and how their anxiety is doing to see how their treatment is going.
I’m gonna try doing the worksheets to have something to practice and see how well my anxiety is doing.
I just finished reading Freedom from Health Anxiety: Understand and Overcome Obsessive Worry about Your Health or Someone Else’s and Find Peace of Mind by Karen Lynn Cassiday PhD
I’m starting to like reading self-help books cuz I feel like I’m reading them with a purpose. Like, first I try to read something I liked and then I go write about it.
Synthetic drugs, designed by humans in a lab, tend to be powerful. They tend to be designed to have some sort of major effect. They’re often trying to cure something.
Being a cure (or at least a big help) for a specific disease helps with both getting approval from government (it gives you a specific thing to do clinical trials about and more chance of seeing clear results) and with marketing (it’s easier to understand for both patients and doctors if a drug targets a specific disease than if it has more subtle, broad effects). A lot of synthetic drugs target severe illnesses with clear symptoms where patients are highly motivated to pay for a solution.
Human biology is extremely complicated, and we don’t understand enough about it to design drugs that just do what we want and nothing else. So synthetic drugs commonly have warnings with lists of 20+ side effects.
Some synthetic drugs are reasonably safe even if they have a big side effect list. Others, with a similar looking list, are pretty dangerous. It can be hard to tell which is which.
Medicine isn’t super advanced. There’s so much more to learn. This comes up with many drugs including antidepressants. Often doctors can’t reliably predict the effect a drug will have, and may just try several until one seems to work without having a major negative side effect. Effects can vary significantly from patient to patient even if we categorize two patients as having the same disease (e.g. “covid”) or problem (e.g. “depression”).
Functional or traditional medicine uses more herbs – natural drugs instead of synthetic drugs. These grow in nature instead of being manufactured. We don’t design them.
Herbs tend to have milder effects because they aren’t designed to have a big effect on humans. Herbs tend to have milder side effects because of thousands of years of trial and error – we don’t use the ones that cause a lot of trouble. (Similarly, everything we regard as edible food tends to be fairly safe for most people because humanity learned over time what not to eat.) It’s common to take multiple herbs at once. People often expect the herbs to help some rather than provide a cure, which is a reason it makes sense to take several (to get more help).
Another big category worth mentioning is vitamins, minerals and diet. Many people are deficient in e.g. vitamin D or magnesium, or have too much omega 6 fat in their diet. Supplements and diet changes can help with lots of medical issues, often subtly, and sometimes with big, clear effects. For an American eating a typical diet with a large amount of processed food, it’s reasonably likely that eating more whole foods and taking a multivitamin would provide some worthwhile benefit.
Avoiding harmful substances, like alcohol, lead, mercury and glyphosate, is another way to improve health.