- Joined
- Feb 23, 2017
- Messages
- 6,013
@kingsgrlie just emailed me about a potentially distressing symptom.
Being anxious about symptoms, diagnoses and prognoses is 100% normal and an important evolutionary adaptation.
This anxiety of uncertainty is to be expected, and can be quite helpful.
It's so important that it is hard-wired into our brains.
Historically it helped keep us alive (is there danger around the corner?).
Nowadays not so much. We usually don't need the sympathetic stimulation of the fight-or-flight reflex to survive.
Sometimes the best we can do is to recognize that we have these feelings.
Once we recognize and even name them ("oh, here comes that annoying Ralph again...") we can try to reduce them.
Here is one very useful strategy direct from the lips of a well-known therapist:
Being anxious about symptoms, diagnoses and prognoses is 100% normal and an important evolutionary adaptation.
This anxiety of uncertainty is to be expected, and can be quite helpful.
It's so important that it is hard-wired into our brains.
Historically it helped keep us alive (is there danger around the corner?).
Nowadays not so much. We usually don't need the sympathetic stimulation of the fight-or-flight reflex to survive.
Sometimes the best we can do is to recognize that we have these feelings.
Once we recognize and even name them ("oh, here comes that annoying Ralph again...") we can try to reduce them.
Here is one very useful strategy direct from the lips of a well-known therapist:
