This symptom is the most common symptom caused by anxiety. This specific symptom was the cause of my very first panic attack. It was the beginning of 10 long years of hell.
My heart at times would beat so fast I felt like it was going to explode. I remember laying down looking at my chest and I could see my shirt bouncing up and down with the heart rhythm. I had more tests and exams done to my heart than I could remember. I had wires attached to me for 14 days so the cardiologists could monitor the activities of my heart. 14 days and a bunch of medical bills later, my heart was found to be healthy. Did I stop struggling and trust the diagnosis? Absolutely not. I bounced back and forth between the ER and doctor offices because I believed that something must have been wrong with my heart. How can anyone explain the sudden and intense palpitation like that?
Now, recovered fully from anxiety, I understand that when stress hormone (adrenaline) reaches the heart, it will trigger our heart to beat faster as our body then tries to prepare itself for danger. And trust me, anxiety is the mega factory of adrenaline. When our mind falsely perceives a something as a threat, it would trigger the flight or fight response. Our heart will beat harder and faster to ensure sufficient blood and oxygen being delivered to our vital organs, major muscle groups so we can either run away or stay and fight.
A healthy heart can handle much more than we think. For example, when we exercise, play sports, even during sexual intimacy, our heart rate and blood pressure can be significantly higher than normal. But then we know why they are high, that’s why fear isn’t involved.
With anxiety sufferers, panic attacks can strike while we’re doing absolutely nothing. My panic attacks hit me while I was watching Netflix. They came out of the blue. Because of its unpredictable nature, accepting it seems almost impossible. We, as human, will always search for answer. We dig out any and every information available hoping to find that one explanation that can put us at peace and eliminate our problem forever. But the more we look, the deeper we drown in more and more symptoms. Meanwhile, the answer is right in front of us. It’s anxiety.
Heart palpitation, besides being a very intense symptom of its own, can come as a secondary wave following other symptoms. Let’s say you suddenly get a dizzy spell. You’re startled and thinking that something must be wrong with your brain or your blood pressure. Such thought sends you into panic and triggers your heart rate to rise. Now you’re thinking since your heart is beating so hard you can feel it in your throat, maybe you’re having a heart attack. Fear mounts on top of fears. You’re start to breathe a lot quicker which worsen your dizziness. And because you’re feeling like your balance is getting out of control, your heart now is racing and beating like a drum, and down the hole you go.
There were times I felt as my heart would skip a beat. My cardiologist assured me that it’s perfectly normal for that to happen. The reason why it affected me so much because my anxiety develops something common into something so catastrophic.
Once you have your anxiety under control, heart palpitation will happen less frequent and at a much lower intensity. When I was recovering from anxiety, even if I did everything correctly, I still had episodes of palpitations. They just didn’t bother me much and diminish very quickly.
If you have already gotten checked out by your doctors, next time when palpitation happens, just smile at it and let it be. I used to communicate with my palpitation like: “ah, here we go, do what you do, I don’t care”. I used “challenge” in the A.C.E.R. Method the most for this particular symptom. I challenge it to get worse. I would say: “come on heart, beat faster! is that all you’ve got?”. Within about 10-15 minutes of not adding any more fuel into the fire, my heart would settle down and return to a calm state.
I know it’s very difficult to not react and even challenge your palpitation. But it worked for me and for many other people. It takes will. I know you have will. It takes courage. I know you are courageous. It requires persistence and I know you got that too. If I can go from going to the ER multiple times a week to living a life free of palpitations, you can too.