Anxiety

"What Is Wrong With Me?" 3 Steps to Address 2 Major Symptom Types

Table of Contents

I'm going to let you in on a secret.

If you were to have the magical ability to listen to other people's thoughts, you would hear one question over and over.

One. Ridiculous. Question.

What is wrong with me?

The way humans talk to themselves makes me question how evolved we really are.

I'm no exception.

I've asked the same question many times in my life: What IS wrong with me??

Now, after many years of asking that question and reflecting on it, I finally have the answers. And they are much better than I ever could have expected.

Is There Something Wrong With Me? Answering the Troubling Question, "What Is Wrong With Me?"

I have anxiety.

One of the really cool things (sarcasm alert) about anxiety is that it makes you question yourself all of the time. 

So, when I didn't yet know how to deal with my mental illness, I would make a mistake doing something, and then I would immediately fall into thought spirals of doom.

What's wrong with me?

Why am I so stupid?

I can't believe I did that!

I have to be the dumbest person alive!

Of course, none of these words were helpful. They all made the situation worse.

But I didn't know that at the time.

Because mental health issues like anxiety and depression chip away at your sense of self. They make you believe that you are small and unworthy.

It doesn't matter if none of that is true.

Anxiety has a way of making it so.

These thought patterns continued throughout my teens and twenties.

Eventually, I learned coping skills by reading books, talking with mental health professionals, and just plain collecting life experiences over the years.

In the end, I learned, without a doubt, that there was not actually anything wrong with me.

It's all about how I was approaching the situation--and how I was trained by society to think of myself.

Thinking About Your Life (The Symptom of Feeling Overwhelmed or Zoned Out): "What's wrong with me mentally?"

Let's start with the mind. Your mind.

I'm going to guess that you've doubted yourself at least once in your life. I'm going to assume that you don't always have perfectly angelic thoughts about yourself.

That's OK. It's incredibly common.

Most people talk to themselves in the third person.

"What's wrong with you!?" or "Why are you such an idiot??"are questions we rarely say to others, but we frequently say these hurtful things to ourselves.

"I don't know what is wrong with me?" is something we worry ourselves sick over, but we're likely to give others the benefit of the doubt.

It's maddening.

But let's both take a deep breath for a second.

What you need to know is this: your brain is designed to protect you. It doesn't want you to go into dangerous situations.

So, when you make a mistake, or when you say something stupid to a friend, your brain makes note of that.

It says, "Uh oh. That wasn't good. Better not do that again."

The thing is, our modern existence is incredibly small compared to the tens of thousands of years our ancestors lived out in the open plains and rugged mountains.

When they made a mistake, the consequences could be deadly. Stumbling into a lion's den could be fatal.

That's not true anymore.

These days, saying the wrong thing in a meeting doesn't have the same kind of devastating consequences that your ancestors might have experienced.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't feel like it does.

That's the key here.

Our brains weren't built for this fast-paced, always-on existence. It's too much stimulation.

So when you think there's something wrong with you, what actually happened to you is comparatively not very bad at all.

It's your brain playing tricks on you.

It's the perception of life that matters in the end.

From a psychological standpoint, daily life is enough to mentally overwhelm anyone and create a delightful case of brain fog.

Know that you're not alone in feeling that way.

But what if there's something else going on?

Dealing With Disease (The Symptom of Health Anxiety): "What's wrong with me physically?"

Ok, but let's consider this from another angle.

What if there is something wrong with you physically?

Physical symptoms are always bad, right?

Not always.

I'm going to use myself as an example again.

I used to think there was something wrong with me physically all of the time.

I used to think a new freckle on my arm was turning into a cancerous spot or that a pain in my back meant that my spine was curving in the wrong direction.

Totally irrational thoughts, I know...

But that's how anxiety works.

It's symptom recognition gone overboard.

And it turns out there's also a name for the type of anxiety that specifically deals with irrational, overstated worries about the body.

It's called health anxiety.

Health anxiety is when you misinterpret normal bodily sensations as dangerous symptoms.

These are normal sensations, but when someone believes they are symptoms of an awful disease, it causes anxiety and worry.

They're real feelings, but the beliefs aren't.

They're common symptoms with reactions that don't fit the situation.

Before you beat yourself up, consider this.

It's so important to understand that the mind and body are linked. There are nerves that connect your brain to your stomach and heart, among other important organs.

My first mental health site was actually called Nerve 10 because cranial nerve 10 is one of the most important nerves in the body for the way it links everything together.

And because the mind and body are linked in this way, it's easy to have one thought about your mind, such as self-doubt, cascade and transform into a thought about your body.

I can hear the naysayers mumbling.

"What if there actually is something wrong with my body? What if I have a deadly illness?"

I've been there.

I actually had something seriously wrong with my body back in 2012, and I had a sudden open-heart surgery to fix it.

I learned a very important lesson from that.

There are times when you must trust yourself and what's going on in your body.

But how do you distinguish between something that might be a sign of hypochondria and symptoms that are actually serious?

This is what I suggest if you are seriously concerned about a symptom you have:

1. You know your body, and you know when something is drastically different.

If the pain you are feeling is not one or two times worse than what you've ever experienced, but a hundred, then you must take action and seek help.

You're not a doctor, and it's easy to play Dr. Google and search for answers to every disease you think you have.

But you do need to take extreme bodily responses seriously, especially if you have already been diagnosed with a chronic illness.

Many people have told me that they felt silly after going to the emergency room when they thought they were dying and it turned out to be panic disorder or another anxiety-related condition.

I actually went to the emergency room for anxiety one time as well--to address heart palpitations I was having.

Ok, you went to the emergency room.

So what? It doesn't make you a bad person.

Now you know what you're dealing with and you can start to address it.

2. Surround yourself with people who care about you.

It was my girlfriend-now-wife who told me I needed to go to the ER when I was experiencing strange symptoms related to my failing heart. The ones who know you best will be able to be more objective if they think something is actually wrong with you.

3. Create a mini-plan for yourself.

Something I've found to be helpful to keep the worries at bay is this. If I'm ruminating about something, I will say, "OK, if such and such happens, then I will do this..." I make a very clear rule about what my plan will be if and only if a certain line has been crossed. It helps to put my mind at ease because I know what I'm going to do if the bad thing actually happens to me, which it usually doesn't

In Conclusion: Almost Always, There's Nothing Wrong With You (But DO Trust and Care For Yourself)

Congratulations.

You're a human.

You have a weird brain just like I do.

And because you're a human, you're prone to all kinds of strange thoughts.

Thoughts about your mind and self-image. Thoughts about your body and physical health.

It's enough to make anyone lose their mind.

But you know what?

The very fact that you're having these thoughts means that you're alive.

And it means that you have the power to change your thought patterns.

If you remember anything from all of this, I want you to remember that bad thoughts are common, but they do not define you.

What defines you is how you respond to those thoughts.

Asking yourself, "What is wrong with me?" does not make you a bad person.

It makes you human.

99% of the time there is nothing wrong with you.

Just realizing that puts you ahead of so many people.

Your brain is not built for this time, but it doesn't mean you can't learn about how it works so that you can live a happier, more productive life.

The next time you think that there's something wrong with you, I want you to zoom out of your brain and body and take a look from 100 feet in the air.

Is there actually something wrong with that person you see from above?

Or is it all going to be just fine?

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