 Hey there, I'm Drew and you are listening to or watching The Anxious Truth. The Anxious Truth is the podcast that covers all things anxiety, anxiety disorders, and anxiety recovery. So if you're struggling with things like panic attacks, agoraphobia, OCD, or health anxiety, this is the place for you. You know, anxious people often get really wrapped up in what's going on in their own bodies, and they spend a lot of time interacting with doctors, being checked, examined, and tested to try to be 100% sure that they're really okay and that they're safe. So one of the common confusing issues and common questions that comes up as part of anxiety recovery is, Drew, are you telling me that I'm never supposed to call a doctor ever again? I'm never allowed to be checked out? Well, I understand the confusion and that's really a good question that deserves to be answered. So let's do that today. Hello everybody, welcome back to The Anxious Truth. This is episode 240 of the podcast, 240. We are recording in early January of 2023. So this is, in fact, the first podcast of 2023. If you're listening in the present, happy new year. If you're listening in the future, hello, future, how are the flying cars? Anyway, I am Drew Lincellata, creator and host of The Anxious Truth, and I'm happy that you are here. We are going to get into a very common question today, which is, does a recovered person never am I never supposed to get checked out when I feel something? And the answer to that is, of course, you're allowed to get checked out. But before we get into the details, I just want to remind you that The Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode. There's 239 podcast episodes before this, all free. There's a ton of free social media content. And there are three books that I've written on anxiety and anxiety recovery that are helping tens of thousands of people around the world. I'm super proud of that. There's a monthly webinar I do on distress tolerance with my friend, anxiety specialist Joanna Hardis, Cleveland, Ohio. All of those resources can be found on my website at TheAnxiousTruth.com. Go check it out, scroll through the site, see what's out there, avail yourself of all the resources. There's good stuff there, so take advantage of all of it. Most of it is free. The books cost some money. The webinar costs some money, but it's all good stuff. And if you are enjoying my work and I'm helping you in some way, all the ways to support this work, both financially and otherwise, are on my website at TheAnxiousTruth.com slash support. So go check that out if you're so inclined. Financial support always appreciated, never required. However way you support this work, whether it's just listening, being part of the community, liking your video here and there. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. So let's get into today's topic. So for people who have anxiety that is laser focused on their health, and that takes two forms. Either immediate health threat in the face of high anxiety or panic. Your panic symptoms must be dangerous. Or longer term health threat, people that have more health focused OCD or health anxiety, where they are concerned about developing some sort of disease or problem that may be a problem down the road. Regardless, for people who are fixated on their health, who are in the habit of accessing medical care and medical services far more frequently and repetitively than the average person, this can become a problem because it becomes very restrictive and impactful on lifestyle. So they wind up in this really crazy push pull thing where their fear tells them to continually go to the doctor. Whether it's urgent and you wind up in an ambulance or an emergency room, or what you might call it urgent care or A&E in the UK, you know you say A&E. Or you're just constantly calling your general practitioner and you're constantly bringing new symptoms and you're constantly bringing new worries. You know my ear hurt yesterday. Does that mean that I have brain cancer? I need to be tested. I want an MRI. So the way you access medical care may be different depending on your particular type of health anxiety focus, whether it's more in the moment or longer term, but it becomes repetitive. It becomes compulsive. It becomes a cycle that you're struggling to stop. It becomes really impactful in a negative way on your lifestyle. It may be impactful in a negative way in your relationships with your friends and your families, your romantic partners. So then it becomes a problem because the push pull is my fear is telling me that I'm supposed to do this to keep myself safe. Your health anxiety, your fear will argue that no, no, no, this is completely justified because it's health. It's the most important thing in the world. I can't take a risk. But on the flip side, the cycle that you get caught in starts to ruin your life to a certain degree. So you want to defend your actions, but you have a hard time defending them. So the recovery process is really the process of moving from that very extreme relationship with medical care and medical services where it is repetitive. It's frantic. It's urgent. It's compulsive. It's cyclical. You can't break the cycle to a more normal accessing and a more normal and mainstream. And we say normal. We're just going to use numbers. The majority of people access medical services and medical care a certain way, right? We all live under the same health uncertainties every single day. Every human being has uncertainty about their health every single day. That is true. And if you haven't listened to podcast episodes number 149 and 104, you should go back and listen to those because they talk about this. But all of us live with some measure of health uncertainty and risk every single day of our lives every day, just that we take that risk and interact with their medical systems and medical care in a different way than you do. So when we are in the recovery process and you're trying to break the cycle of that extreme repetitive cyclical compulsive urgent frantic accessing of medical care, you're just, you're not trying to eliminate ever interacting with the medical system ever. You're just trying to get back into the way sort of people without these problems access medical care, right? So we all accept a certain amount of risk. We're just going to have to live with it. We cannot bring it down to zero. There's no amount of medical care in the world that can bring our risk to zero. We understand that and we have to live with that risk. You are learning to get there. Whereas now you're attempting to go to zero percent risk and that's where episode 149 of the podcast goes into this in much more detail. So it's not that you're never allowed to access medical care again. So when people say, am I, is it wrong? Am I doing recovery wrong if I call the doctor? No, you're not doing recovery wrong if you call the doctor. If you are legitimately ill, if you are legitimately injured, you have a new thing that's popped up that is causing some sort of impairment. You don't feel well. Yeah, it's you're allowed to call the doctor. That's okay. Nobody's ever going to tell you that you should never call the doctor. That would be ridiculous, irresponsible advice. I am not telling you to never get checked out. That would that would not be cool. Who would tell you that? Certainly not me. I mean, I can only speak for me, but I'm not telling you that what we are working on is how am I calling to get checked out? Why am I calling to get checked out? How often am I calling to get checked out? And when I do get checked out, how willing am I to be okay with the results of that checking? Or do we cope back and do it again and again and again? That's where things go off the rails. So if you have a new symptom, people ask this all the time, well, a new symptom popped up. Okay, well, how do you make your decisions on what you do? So if you're really driven by your anxiety symptoms and you think that they are immediately dangerous to you, people ask, well, how am I supposed to deal with that? A new symptom? Okay, well, you can. This is what you can do. You can say, all right, well, you are allowed. You can call a doctor. You can go to the ER. You can go to the A&E. You're allowed to make that choice. That will that's impactful. So there is some consequence for doing that, but you're allowed to make that choice. So you have to look at your pattern. How often have I done this before? Okay, this is a thing I've never felt before, but I also see a ton of other people talk about this particular symptom. So am I, is it really impairing me right now? Or am I worried that it might impair me in an hour? So can I wait 10 minutes before I call for help? That's one way to approach this, right? Can I wait 10 minutes? If I'm still standing in 10 minutes, you know, then then I'm less likely that I probably need to be rescued medically right now. And if things change in that 10 minute time, then I can reach out for help. So that would be one way to say, yes, you're still allowed to access medical care, but you want to start to modify the way you do it. How does somebody else do it? And if my pattern is that I immediately go to that as my first thing right away, and I look back and say, you know, I was really afraid. And that's why I called an ambulance. I was really afraid. And that's why I sat down and Google the symptom. I didn't Google the symptom because I was passed out. I wouldn't have been able to Google the symptom. I was Googling the symptom because I was afraid that I was going to pass out. So I Googled or I called an ambulance. See the difference? So you can look at your patterns and try to make your decisions based on those patterns as best you can. Like I keep doing this and it keeps turning out to be nothing. Or you can say, yeah, but I can't take that chance. I better do it again. And you have a right to do that. But it puts you in a know when situation where it's really hard to say, well, I want to recover from this. This is really negatively impacting my life, my relationships, my job, my everything. But I also want to recover at the same time that I will continue to be able to argue that I must do these things. You can't have both. So it's important to recognize that. Now, if your health anxiety is a little bit more longer term in focus, like I don't know, I'm really fixated that I might have cancer. I'm really fixated that I'm developing this disease or that there's some disease they haven't noticed before. Or it's something that's hard to diagnose. And you keep going back again and again and again to look for symptoms and research and call a doctor and ask again and go get another checkup and see a specialist and get a chance. And you're doing that sort of access. Again, you can start to change that and move it a little bit more toward the center, if you will. You're on an extreme end of the spectrum now. So how would my friends in my family do this? Like, what would you guys do? Well, you know, is there a problem right now? No, but I'm really, well, I can't stop thinking about, okay, well, there's your clue. I can't stop thinking about, do you want to call the doctor again based on what you're thinking or do you want to call the doctor based on what's going on in reality? And in that case, your plan can be, can I wait three days in this discomfort, in this fear, in this uncertainty, in this feeling of recklessness and irresponsibility? I'm going to let it go. I'm going to roll the dice for three days. Can I do that? Maybe. And that would be a way to move toward a more mainstream accessing of medical care and medical services, right? So again, you are allowed to call the doctor. Just how are you doing it? Are you doing it the way you've always done it? That has put you in a bit of a bad place to the point where you're listening to this podcast, or do you want to change the way you do that and make it a little bit more in line with what a non-anxious person would do? So I have to address the elephant in the room here, which would be, is it possible that you are taking on additional risk when you do it that way? So if you decide, I can't stop thinking about stomach cancer, I better call the doctor today and you decide, okay, you know what, I got to change this. So I'm going to wait a week. Is there some possibility, which might be 0.0001% that you do actually have stomach cancer and you will have lost a week in diagnosis? Yeah, yeah, that's a possibility. If you are certain that your dizziness, your anxious dizziness or disequilibrium is something really wrong, even though you've been told 15 times by four different doctors that nothing is wrong and it is an anxiety symptom, is there a risk if you say, I'm not going to go to the ER this time, I'm not going to go to the A&E this time, I'm not going to call the doctor this time? Are you increasing your risk? Yeah, truly you are, that's true. You are increasing it by such a tiny amount that a non-anxious person would be okay with that role of the dice. To me, that feels like an inconsequential role of the dice. I'll take those odds. For you, it seems like that is unacceptable. So please remember that you will feel that way. You will feel that this is a completely irresponsible decision. Well, wait a minute, if I don't, so you're telling me, I'm allowed to call the doctor. Yep, you're allowed to call the doctor, but you're telling me that I might have to wait while that might be one way to do that. But if I wait, then I might be missing something, correct. I don't have any more for you on that, right? So if I'm dizzy and I don't call, I don't go to the ER, what if they missed something that can happen? Like what if I'm wrong this time? That is possible. But again, a non-anxious person would say, I can take that risk because the risk is really so small, you just think it's huge. So again, I keep telling you, go back to episode 149. Please go back and listen to that because what I might consider a .0001% chance of disaster because I feel dizzy on an anxious day, you think is a 60% chance of disaster. So that's what you're trying to, that's what you have to move through that. That podcast episode talks more about that. But the answer here, the short answer, I want to wrap it up in a couple of minutes here. I don't want to go too long today is that, yes, you are in fact allowed to call the doctor. People will often say very specific things like, well, I had this new thing popped up for the last two weeks. I have this pain in my stomach and whatever. I'm having a hard time eating or whatever. Yeah, by all means, call the doctor. That's okay. You're allowed to do that. They worry that like they're breaking their recovery, they're breaking rules, they're going back to square one. No, you're not. It's okay. If something new pops up, go ahead and get it checked out. If you want to do that, you are allowed to do that. You have every right to do that. And that is not breaking any rules. Just look at the way you used to do it and then say, well, I'm going to go checked out, but I'm going to do it in a little bit of a different way than I used to do it. I'm going to do it in a less frantic, less urgent, less compulsive kind of way. And when I get an answer, I'm going to, here's one way you could do this. I'm going to make my appointment tomorrow. I cannot make an appointment until tomorrow anyway, cause it's 10 o'clock at night and there's nothing I can do. So I'm going to be uncomfortable tonight until I make the appointment. Then that appointment is going to be some weight, two days a day, two weeks, whatever it is. I'm going to be uncomfortable while I wait, expect that to happen. That's okay. I can, I do not have to frantically try to eliminate my discomfort while I wait for my appointment, except the discomfort. That's your practice. I'm going to go and my plan when I go to the doctor is I'm going to ask this, this and this. I'm going to ask if I should see a specialist. I'm going to ask about this concern, this concern and this concern. I'm going to put it all on the table. And when the conversation is over, I'm going to decide to accept it or not accept it. If I don't accept it, what will I do next? I will call another doctor that day. What is my plan for second, third, fourth and fifth opinions? Do not wing this based on your fear in the moment, because that is what's got you into the cycle that you're trying to break now. So you can still access medical care responsibly. You can do that. But have a little bit of a plan and draw your parameters. I'm going to be okay. I trust this doctor. He's okay. She's okay. They're okay. So whatever they say today, I'm going to go with that for two weeks. And even though I might get really scared in those two weeks, I'm going to go with it and see what happens. If anything actually changes on a material level, I can always adjust. But I'm not going to change my plan just because I'm afraid. That's, that's how you do it differently. It means that you are choosing to be afraid and not do anything about it, but that's recovery in general. If you listen to the podcast, you know that that's kind of, we always do. So that is how you can make a different plan. If you're in a, if you're concerned is more of a day to day moment to moment basis. Well, your waiting time period is first of all, you're going to see your patterns anyway. Like every time I have a panic attack, I immediately run to be saved. And I never need to be saved. Do I want to do it again? Do I want to do that again? Or can I wait 10 minutes before I do that? Can I, can I do 10 minutes before I do that? That's one way you could change that. And then if I do wind up going to the emergency room or calling an ambulance or calling a doctor, sitting on down and googling my symptoms again while I'm in a panic, what will I learn from this? And when it's over, what parameters will I change for the next time? So it's always about adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, adjusting. Like I can't say that word enough, six times in a row pretty much says it. Like a little adjustment and then another one and another one and another one. And every time you make an adjustment in the way you do this, you're going to be uncomfortable and afraid, but you're allowed to be uncomfortable and afraid. You can do that. So can I call a doctor? Am I allowed to call a doctor? Hell yeah, you're allowed to call a doctor. Call a doctor when you want to call a doctor. It's okay. Like ask other people, ask your friends and family what they do. What would you do in this situation? And when they're, when you get told, well, I, you know, what's wrong? Well, I keep thinking, keep thinking. I wouldn't call the doctor just because I was thinking, okay, that's not the answer you want. But that might be the answer you get and you can use that to inform your actions. So it's about changing the way you access medical care. It's about changing the way you interface with the medical system. It's about moving it away from that frantic, urgent, fear driven, I think stuff and more toward, yeah, I'm really, this is a problem. I'm actually having a problem. My shoulder is on fire. I know it needs to be looked at. I'm going to go in like, okay, fair enough. So that is the answer. Hopefully I understand it doesn't give you 100% correctness at all times. As you go through this, you're, you don't know sometimes. I really feel like I want to call a doctor here. Okay, sometimes you will call the doctor or whoever you've been calling and you may be living this already where the doctor won't take your call or won't call you back. That happens. And then that can be part of the adjustment. Like nobody else is treating this like an emergency only me. So I'm going to have to change right now for the next 10 minutes or the next two days, whatever it is, like everybody else does not see this as an emergency. I'm the only one. So I'll have to take that cue. That's another good thing that you can try to do. But if you need a doctor, go see a doctor. That's okay. Nobody's telling you not to do that. Do it. Just try to do it the way other people do it as opposed to the way that you've been doing it, which is probably not working for you. And that's why you're listening to me today. So I know, again, I didn't give you an exact black and white answer. There's no algorithm here. There's no flow chart. You're making it up as you go along in certain instances. You can use some of the guiding principles I've given you today. And sometimes you're not going to get it right. You might make a choice that you discovered. Boy, I could have done that different. Okay. What can I learn from that? I will do it different next time. Fair enough. You're allowed to learn from mistakes. Our experiences, we bring them with us and we learn from them. We don't try to, we can't make the perfect decision in life every time. We can't even about health. And that's reality. But in the end, and I will leave you with this before we wrap it up today, even decisions that we make about health, when we get paralyzed, because we must always make the perfect decision, zero risk, total guaranteed decisions about our health, we are protecting one part of our lives with such ferocity that we are burning down the entire rest of our lives. Think about that. Like I will, I will leave that thought in your head. Are you protecting your health with such zeal that you are literally tearing the rest of your life to shreds? And in that case, what are you protecting? Think about that. Anyway, that is episode two four zero of the anxious truth wrapping up in the books. You know, it's over because there's the music that is as always at the end of every podcast episode and the beginning of most for the past few years. That's after glow by my friend Ben Drake. He wrote that song a few years ago, inspired at least in part by this podcast. And he's letting me use it ever since. I appreciate that. You can find more about Ben and his music at bendrakemusic.com. You know it. And if you are listening to this podcast on Apple podcast or Spotify or some platform that lets you rate or review the podcast, leave a five star rating if it's helpful and maybe take a few minutes and write a review because it helps more people find the podcast, which means more people get help. If you're watching on YouTube, subscribe to my channel, hit the notification bell so you know when new things get uploaded. Leave a comment. I promise I will get back to your comment, even though it takes me a little longer on YouTube, but I appreciate you all over there. And that's it. Hopefully this has helped you in some way shape or form. There's my computer telling me it's time for an appointment that's coming up. So I will wrap it up. Thanks for listening. I appreciate it. I do not know what I'll be back with next week, but I will be here and remember as always, this is the way.