When Your Loved Ones Ask You To Turn Off The News, Honor Their Wishes…

For anyone reading this article in the future, this was written during the age of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of us were told to remain in our homes for an undetermined time to help stop the spread. Some were asked to continue working but on a remote platform as to stay out of their offices and practice social distancing. Many were forced to go on unemployment. Unfortunately those who’s occupations that were considered essential were still reporting to work. Nurses and doctors were on the front lines treating COVID-19 positive patients and selflessly risked their own health (bless them).

For those who are reading this article in the present time, we are currently in the thick of it. Unfortunately so for someone like myself, and a majority of my friends and family. Most of whom live on Long Island, or worse in the five boroughs which are considered to be the epicenter of the disease.

As we sit idly in our homes, waiting for the pandemic storm to pass, a great many of us are living each passing day in fear. Fear of getting sick. Fear of our loved ones falling ill as well. Not knowing when or IF we may see some of our friends and family again. But mainly there is a great fear of the unknown.

We’ve adapted to some new forms of communication via platforms such as Zoom or TeamViewer in order to stay connected to the outside world. And of course, many of us are glued to our televisions or our smartphones watching the news. Watching the cases of the corona virus rise every day. Watching the death toll rise. Hearing updates regarding medical supplies such as medical masks and ventilators running low. Listening to expert doctors speak out the most severe cases and painful deaths of those who’ve succumbed to the virus.

If you’re anything like me, hearing all of these things can send you into panic mode.

Which is why I have made it a point to dramatically limit my exposure to the News. I don’t do this to be ignorant or because I don’t care about what is going on in the world. I do this because as a recovering hypochondriac and as someone who has suffered from severe anxiety for the better part of my adult life, I know exactly where my mind will go.

Hello, my name is Caitlin and I am a recovering hypochondriac.

There, I said it. Not to be confused with a germaphobe. Ironically enough I’ve never really been afraid of germs up until this pandemic. I used to touch the subway poles with my bare hands and thought nothing of it (ew).

Hypochondria, or Illness Anxiety Disorder, is a mental illness condition where a person worries excessively that they are sick, to the point where the anxiety itself is debilitating. Worrying about health becomes an illness and becomes a chronic condition. How severe it is can depend on a number of factors such as age, a person’s tendency to worry, and how much stress they are facing.

My condition is something that I’ve dealt with on and off since I was a freshman in high school and usually always surrounds a major stress event that I am experiencing at the time. I walked around my entire freshman year believing I had Hodgkin’s Disease and spent a fair amount of my sophomore year thinking I had walking pneumonia. I would take handfuls of Advil a day to keep my nonexistent fever down. Logic being if I didn’t have a fever I wasn’t sick. I would constantly check my lymph nodes in my throat thinking there was something wrong because I could “feel them”. I remember one day after gym class a very unusual rash broke out all over my stomach, then traveled up my neck and down my arms. Of course I thought I was dying. Years later, looking back, I know that may have been hives from the severe anxiety I was suffering from.

I wasn’t like most hypochondriacs I’ve read about. I never went to the doctor with my concerns. If I had to ever go to the doctor for any other reason I would arrive at my appointments being beyond terrified. I’ve even broken down in tears over my ridiculous health fears that I had been living with for those extended periods of time. Thankfully the doctors would talk me down, do a full examination and my fears would be set aside. For a while, at least.

But it was during the years between 2016 and early 2018 in which hypochondria had me in a headlock.

This time I had myself convinced that I had lymphoma. I had discovered a weird lump in my groin (which has since been ruled out as something completely benign) and of course took to WebMD to figure out what was wrong with me. We’ve all done this before. You tell it you have a head ache and what does it tell you? You have a brain tumor. So when I plugged in my symptoms one of the extreme conditions to which my lump could be attributed to was lymphoma.

I told almost no one about what was going on in my brain. Instead I walked around for years checking ALL of my lymph nodes multiple times a day, so the point where I was making those areas swollen. Of course after they swelled I assumed my lymph nodes were inflamed. I also took my temperature multiple times a day. Anything registering over 98.6 would have my mind spiraling out of control with fear. I spent hours and hours on WebMD until my eyes nearly burned out of my skull. I felt completely isolated and alone in my feelings.

Eventually I went to the doctor over this lump and the doctor told me that it was some sort of ligament, not a tumor. By that point my body weight was down to about 98 pounds from all of the stress I had put myself under and he explained that the lump I was feeling could be easily felt by someone as under-weight as I was. He told me to gain some weight and to start a healthy exercise routing or that thing could potentially become a hernia.

So yeah, wow... was I wrong. How did I let my mind become so consumed by fear? How did my brain start to believe all of these fake things and come to these horribly wrong conclusions about what was going on inside my body?

How did I become so out of touch with reality?

Well, I am no psychiatrist. I can only speak to my own experiences and why this all happened to me. But perhaps my diagnosis which was discussed between my therapist and I may resonate with you.

I‘ve learned that part of the reason why I fell victim to this disorder initially is due to experiencing a lot of sudden death and loss as a young child. I lost all of my grandparents by the time I was 13. I had been to many funerals as a young child for lots of older relatives of mine. Even a few funerals for the young that left us too soon. My parents did not shelter me from the reality of death and I was very aware of what it meant very early in my life. So much so that I held a funeral for my toy cat in the adjacent viewing room at the funeral home where my great-grandmother (I think) was being waked when I was 4 years old. Guests from that funeral actually came in to pay their respects to my “Pound Kitty”!

A combination of other factors like generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and some past traumas have also contributed to my illness. Maybe one day I will get into more detail on that in future articles. But for now I can happily say that I have learned lots of effective coping mechanisms over the last two years to help me to overcome my demons. The most effective mechanism for me was yoga.

It was through my yoga practice that I learned how to tune into my body and feel what was actually going on inside of me. Learning to recognize what was real and what was not. Being in the present moment and learning to use my breath to calm myself down when I started to notice that my brain was starting to spiral out of control. Through yoga it became a lot easier to keep myself grounded than ever before. I also became a certified yoga teacher where I am honored to be able to help those who are battling anxiety and stress.

Which brings me back to what is happening right now in relation to the virus. There’s an actual illness going around making everyone extremely ill. So far I have done a great job at not letting my mind take control of me and start believing that I might be sick when I’m not. Lots of people right now are constantly taking their temperatures to make sure that they’re not sick and I don’t even know where my thermometer is!

However, as I mentioned this earlier in the article, I’ve made the effort to limit my exposure to the TV news channels and have been avoiding reading articles about the virus online. I did allow myself to take a few minutes this week to tune in just to get an idea of when we might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Within a few moments into the new special I started to feel within myself something very familiar. Shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, sweating and clammy hands, face feeling flush, and for a split second I started to wonder if perhaps I was feeling the symptoms as described on TV.

I very quickly removed myself from my TV room to try to catch my breath. Thankfully my husband was in the next room and I went straight to him and told him that I felt like I was about to have a full blown panic attack. Since he is way more logical than I am while I am panicking he told me stop watching it and change the channel. And I did just that.

The next day I was back in my TV room but with my mother this time. She already had the news on as I walked in. I picked up the remote and changed the channel immediately. I could tell she was annoyed that I abruptly interrupted her program but before she could say anything I quickly explained to her that I just could not handle sitting through another news broadcast at that time. Thankfully she didn’t argue with me. My mother and I have a past history of not agreeing on WHICH news channel to watch due to political differences but I know that she understood that I was coming from a place of wanting to take care of my mental health and not due to a network disagreement.

My mother lives with my husband and I. For the last month since this pandemic became headline news and a world crisis she’s had her TV locked on the news channels, watching as many hours and she can. I understand her need to be as updated and as informed as possible. I did the same thing during 9/11. But I know for myself that during this time of uncertainty, my mental health is being tested. So far I am winning. But I know I could potentially be one frightening news story away from beginning to take a turn back toward anxiety and hypochondria.

So as the title of this article says. When your loved ones ask you to turn off the news, honor their wishes…

Try not to battle them as to why they make this request. After you change the channel I invite you to gently start an open conversation with them. Asking them if they’re feeling OK. If there is anything on the news that is causing them anxiety or overwhelming them. They will benefit more from a conversation with their loved one right now more than ever.

If my article resonated with you I invite you to join my community where I am providing support to office employees who are struggling with the new reality of working remotely from home or have been unemployed as a result of this global crisis. Please visit Yoga Wellness for Overwork and Overstressed Corporate Employees to join!

Thank you and be well!