Grief and Health Anxiety
[00:00:00] Krystle Hall: Hey there. Welcome to Grief Unfiltered Stories from Growth Your Grief. I'm your host, Krystle Hall, and this is a space for real honest conversations about grief. No sugarcoating and no filters. Grief is messy, unpredictable, and deeply personal, and we're here to talk about all of it. So whether you're in the thick of it, supporting someone who is, or just trying to understand grief a little bit better, you're in the right place.
[00:00:28] Krystle Hall: Let's dive in one story at a time.
[00:00:34] Krystle Hall: Today we're gonna dive into a combo that not enough people talk about grief and health anxiety, or as I like to call it, is my chest pain a broken heart, or is WebMD telling me that I have three days left to live? Seriously though, if you've ever Googled, can grief cause actual physical symptoms or found yourself spiraling over a random headache, that must be a brain tumor.
[00:00:57] Krystle Hall: This is the episode for you. Let's get into it. One of the wildest things about grief and honestly one of the most annoying is how physical it is. Like, yes, I expected the tears and the sadness and endlessly scrolling through old photos, but I was not ready for the full body exhaustion, the racing heart, the brain fog, the constant questioning of whether I'm having a panic attack or a heart attack.
[00:01:23] Krystle Hall: I remember this one time we were looking at some fish at PetSmart to buy. So I was there with my family and my dad was an avid fisherman, so Phish always remind me of him. Even just the little tiny ones in tanks. My mind started wandering and I started thinking of my dad in the store, and I immediately went into a panic attack.
[00:01:42] Krystle Hall: I got dizzy and I felt so sick, and I had to walk out and go sit in the car and I left my family. To go ahead and pick out the fish that we were gonna get. So the kicker here, it's not just in our heads, science actually backs us up. Grief affects your nervous system, your immune system, your sleep, your appetite, all of it.
[00:02:01] Krystle Hall: But of course, when your chest feels tight or your stomachs and knots, your brain doesn't go, oh, I'm grieving. It's like, hello, 9 1 1, I need an ambulance. And just thinking back to that moment when I was in PetSmart. You get so anxious and so fearful that something bad is gonna happen. For me, when I personally experience a panic attack, I start to go numb on my hands.
[00:02:24] Krystle Hall: So my fingers will start to go numb and it will like rise up through my arm really quick, and then I get like tingly up through my arms, up to my shoulders, and then I get really, really hot and I get lightheaded and I, I feel almost on the verge of passing out and it's just, it's really scary because.
[00:02:42] Krystle Hall: You know, just having that tingling and numbness and everything is, is enough to kind of give you that panic attack of like, oh my gosh, am I having a stroke? Am I, you know, is there something crazy happening right now? And I've gotten to the point where I just, I know when I'm having a panic attack, which I, thankfully I have them under control now.
[00:02:59] Krystle Hall: I. But back in the early days of my grief man, I would have them regularly all the time, daily, multiple times a day, and I constantly felt like crap. And it just made everything in life so, so, so hard. And you just are constantly in that fight or flight mode and it's, it's awful. So let's talk a little bit about health anxiety.
[00:03:20] Krystle Hall: It's kind of that fun little loop where your body reacts to stress and your brain tells you. Well, clearly I have a serious illness and it's probably a rare disease and it's probably terminal, and then grief is like, well, let me throw in some tight shoulders and stomach pain just to spice things up and make things a little more difficult for you.
[00:03:41] Krystle Hall: Health anxiety is so real and so scary, even though when you're not currently in this situation. It sounds so silly. So for me, what gets me is if I like swallow my sliver wrong and start coughing. I would always immediately check the time and
[00:04:00] Krystle Hall: then count on the hours until I was going to die because surely I was going to drown on my spit. So I read about it right where you inhale wrong and then you end up getting really sick or getting pneumonia or like dry drowning and. I panic anytime that I used to swallow my cyber on, I would like go into a full blown panic attack.
[00:04:22] Krystle Hall: It was to the point where I'd have to sit down on the couch with a pulse ox and test my heart rate and test my oxygen levels because I wanted to make sure my lungs were working and I would breathe in and I would hold my breath and make sure that I could keep a lung full of air. And it was just, it was awful.
[00:04:41] Krystle Hall: You know, something so simple, people we swallow or spit wrong sometimes, or, you know, it like almost goes to the back throat, kind of like, feels like you're about to swallow it incorrectly. And then you start coughing and feeling like you're, you know, can't clear your lungs. And, that's something that just happens to people, you know, regularly.
[00:05:00] Krystle Hall: It's not like it's. You know, anything super crazy, your once in a lifetime thing, like it happens enough to where you know you should be, you know, not, not go into that immediate spiral because it, the odds of something happening are very, very rare. Although one time I did read about a little kid who.
[00:05:19] Krystle Hall: Swallowed his popcorn. Wrong down the wrong tube. So kind of like, you know how sometimes when you're swallowing food it goes down the wrong tube or kind of gets into the back of your throat and you kind of, you really have to like force cough it up. But within a couple of hours, he was in the hospital in life support.
[00:05:33] Krystle Hall: And so that's where my mind would make me go is, oh my gosh, it went down the wrong tube. Like whether it was saliva or water or. Food. And I immediately went to, oh my gosh, I'm probably gonna be in the ER in a couple of hours. And that's just how I lived my life for many years after my grief kicked in.
[00:05:51] Krystle Hall: And it was, it was awful. It was like just, life was just so freaking hard for me for years until I really got my grief under control. And I just wanna say this very clearly. You're not crazy for having these thoughts. You're grieving and grief is gonna show up in all kinds of sneaky, weird, and uncomfortable ways.
[00:06:11] Krystle Hall: But let's also acknowledge this. When someone close to you dies, especially if it's a sudden death or tragically, you just become hyper aware of how fragile life is. Or same on the other token, if someone you love is diagnosed with a terminal illness and you sit there and you have to watch them spiral and lose their health and just die a slow, painful death.
[00:06:33] Krystle Hall: That can absolutely turn into health anxiety. Suddenly, every ache is a warning sign. Every headache is a worst case scenario because now we know what can happen. We've lived it and let's going to the doctor or the dentist. So for me, I hated going to the dentist because they do this like scan on your mouth to test for oral cancer.
[00:06:53] Krystle Hall: So for me, cancer is a huge trigger for me. At this point in my life, I lost my dad to cancer. My mom has had breast cancer and thankfully is in remission now. My mother-in-law has passed away from breast cancer, and then my step mother-in-law is in remission from cancer as well. And so for me, cancer is like the biggest, you know, trigger for me.
[00:07:19] Krystle Hall: And so just knowing that I'm getting like a cancer screening at the dentist really freaked me out. And I'm like, I just, I don't wanna know. And same with the doctor. For me, I avoided the doctor for as long as possible for several years because I was so afraid to go get blood work done and have it come back that I had a disease or had a terminal illness or something.
[00:07:39] Krystle Hall: And you know, even if, let's say I have to go in for something and I would ha, I ha I get such. My, my blood pressure gets high. I get such bad anxiety, like my blood pressure readings are high, when they initially take my blood pressure at the beginning of the appointment, and they always ask me, you know, if I'm having issues and I'm always like, no, my blood pressure's really good.
[00:08:02] Krystle Hall: I just have a health anxiety. And then they'll retest it at the end and it's always fine, but it's just that initial getting in there and talking to the doctor. And it's, it's awful. And my heart rate is always really high. They always ask me. I've, I've been in a couple times with different people checking in, and they always ask me like, do you have chest pain?
[00:08:20] Krystle Hall: And I'm like, no. I just have health anxiety. Like my heart rate is great. Uh, my heart resting heart rate is fantastic when I'm not at the doctor. But when I'm here, like I am on high alert and I am. I just have such a fear that something is wrong. And you know, for me this really stems because when my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer, his initial symptom was that he had a side ache.
[00:08:42] Krystle Hall: So he. That was really his first initial symptom when he first started gonna, the doctor and they began running tests and initially they diagnosed him with a, like a pulled muscle and had him just take a little bit of time off of work and then it was still hurting. So he went back and then they thought that he had walking pneumonia, so they gave him antibiotics that didn't work.
[00:09:03] Krystle Hall: And then from there. By this point after he'd waited, 'cause he had to wait for his antibiotics to run through, he had to wait for kind of rest, the resting period to go through. At this point it had been, you know, a month, month and a half. And then he started getting other symptoms as well and he started kind of developing a little bit of a cough and more pain in different areas of his body because the cancer at that point had already spread into his bones and it was a fast moving cancer.
[00:09:27] Krystle Hall: And so it was already, you know, causing other side effects. And for me it's. It's fearful that if something is wrong, it's gonna take forever to find out and then it's gonna be too late and it's gonna be terminal because that's what happened to my dad. And then also my mom's old fiance, or her fiance, I shouldn't say old fiance.
[00:09:47] Krystle Hall: Um, he was her fiance and he passed away from cancer as well. He kind of had the same issue. He. Had a really bad cough and they thought it was bronchitis. And then, um, they would treat it and then he would drink a certain kind of apple cider and his cough would go away. And it was weird and it took a little while for them to diagnose him with cancer, but it just, it just took too long.
[00:10:10] Krystle Hall: And that's a fear of mine is that if something is wrong, that it's gonna take them forever to figure it out. And, uh, thankfully. I have a really great doctor, that will test for all the things, which is very nerve wracking in and of itself. It, it's a good thing that they will test extra, but it's also extremely terrifying waiting on test results while you're waiting to see, you know, if things are okay or not.
[00:10:35] Krystle Hall: And so it's just, it's a very vulnerable position to be in and to have that health anxiety. It's, it's just, it's not a, a good situation either way. So what do we do about this? How do we cope with grief and health anxiety without crawling into a web MD hole or calling our primary care doctor all the time?
[00:10:57] Krystle Hall: So first, I know it sounds so simple, but just name it. Sometimes just saying, oh, my grief is just talking. Or I think that I'm just having some health anxiety is sometimes enough just to pause the spiral and kind of get past it. Second, kind of get out of your head and get into your body. So. Sit down and stretch, go for a walk, take a warm shower, just kind of feel your feet on the ground and kind of just be present and just remind yourself that you're safe right now.
[00:11:23] Krystle Hall: So what works for me is I bring myself to the present and I take deep breaths and just really grounding myself and like thinking about the moment, like, looking around and naming five things that I can see and. Five things that I can smell and five things that I can touch and things like that is, is really helpful.
[00:11:44] Krystle Hall: Helpful for me to bring me back into exactly where I am and kind of keep your mind from wandering. Because for me it's the mind wandering is what really gets things going, and that's what causes things is my mind starts to wander and then the spiral comes. I also had a therapist who told me that my anxiety can visit and tell me what it needs to tell me because your anxiety's there to tell you something because your body, you feel like you're in danger for some reason.
[00:12:10] Krystle Hall: And it may be false. It more than likely it is false, but like a false danger. But it's, they're telling you something for a reason and something that you need to work through. So one thing that she told me that really helped me was. You can let your anxiety visit and tell you what it needs to tell you, but then you need to kick him out and tell him that he's not welcome anymore right now.
[00:12:32] Krystle Hall: So for me, I named my anxiety Frankie. So anytime I would get anxiety, I would tell my husband like, Hey, Frankie's here right now. So I didn't have to say, Hey, I'm feeling anxious, or, Hey, this is bothering me. I could literally say, Hey, Frankie's visiting, and he knew what it meant and he knew how to jump in and support me because we talked about like things that he can do to help me when I was having some panic.
[00:12:54] Krystle Hall: So I would start talking to Frankie, um, Frankie Monster, and I would say, Frankie, come on. We can chat for a few, but I'm actually headed out and I need to go do X, Y, Z, so I'm gonna need you to leave. So it sounds really silly and I thought it was totally crazy when I first heard about it, but it, it truly works because you're putting a name to it and you're.
[00:13:15] Krystle Hall: Describing the feeling and you're kind of taking away its power. And then the third thing, this is huge. This is the biggest thing. Get support. Whether it's therapy, finding a grief group or just a friend who's not gonna make you feel ridiculous for saying, Hey, I'm pretty sure I have cancer. But I also know it's probably just anxiety.
[00:13:33] Krystle Hall: Just find someone who gets it. Sometimes just hearing me too can break. Break that anxiety. Spell so. Therapy. Therapy. Therapy. I'm just gonna do a quick plug for therapy because I am such a big advocate for it. I, it is so hard and so raw to get in and face somebody every day. You know, especially a stranger going in at first and having to pour out your heart and cry and to just feel the most vulnerable that you'll ever feel.
[00:14:01] Krystle Hall: Opening up to some stranger and telling them all the deepest parts of yourself and sharing your feelings with them. It is very, very tough. But if you can get through that discomfort, that initial discomfort is so worth it. If you find the right therapist, I will say that because there are some therapists out there that just are not a good fit for you.
[00:14:21] Krystle Hall: And so I just wanna, I like to encourage people. I just wanna say, if you've tried therapy and you realize like, Hey, this isn't for me. Try somebody else, because there's lots of therapists out there that have different personalities, they have different styles, they have different, you know, schooling, different education, different experiences, and just their different ages too.
[00:14:43] Krystle Hall: So maybe you need somebody that's older, or somebody that's younger, somebody that's closer to your age. Or maybe you need somebody that's, you know, 20 years older than you because. They have more life experience. I mean, who knows, but just find somebody that's a good fit for you and keep going until you find the right person.
[00:15:02] Krystle Hall: Because I'm telling you, between therapy and medication, that is how I was able to dig out of my whole, but also doing the work too, because therapy allowed me to open up and to get to a place where I could do the work because. Grief ISS not just gonna go away, it's gonna be here forever. But you have to actually work through it.
[00:15:24] Krystle Hall: You have to do exercises, you have to do activities to help you face it. You have to work through it. You can't just let it sit there because otherwise it will fester and it won't go away and it won't get better. You gotta work through it. So therapy is what truly got me to a point to where I could start working through it and face things and confront things.
[00:15:45] Krystle Hall: And. Get to a place where I'm truly living and and happy because life's too short. We deserve to be happy. So that's my, please go to therapy if you are not already plug, because it's life changing. Alright, next, let's talk about humor. So I'm not saying griefs funny because it's not the grieving people. We can be pretty hilarious sometimes.
[00:16:11] Krystle Hall: So. We can make dark jokes, we can cry in the grocery store and then 10 seconds later we're laughing. It's all just kind of part of it. So little story about this. I know when my dad was first sick, one of my coworkers at the time, Amanda, her dad, had passed a few years prior to my dad and she was telling me, she's like, oh yeah, I refer to my dad's death anniversary is Dead Dad day.
[00:16:33] Krystle Hall: And I remember thinking in the moment. Oh my gosh. How could you ever talk about your dad like that? Like why would you disrespect him and how could you talk about him? So like nonchalantly, like, oh yeah, it's dead dad day. And I just, I didn't get it at the time, but after a couple of years of my dad being gone, I totally understood it.
[00:16:50] Krystle Hall: And humor just makes things easier. So for me, one thing that I always laugh about is because. It's so awkward when talking to random people like that you've just met and you know, they're asking you like, oh, where are you from and where do your parents live? And stuff like that. And so I always tell them like, oh, my mom lives here.
[00:17:09] Krystle Hall: And I'll say, oh, my dad's dead, but this is where he did live. And people will be so awkward and so uncomfortable and sometimes I forget. 'cause I, to me it's just like, it's natural I guess to just be like, oh yeah, my dad's dead. And it sounds so like horrific and harsh, but. I mean, that's the truth. Like he's dead.
[00:17:30] Krystle Hall: And it's just, I don't know. It's, it's interesting, but people get so awkward about it. If, if they don't, if they've never been through it, they, they will be awkward. And I always have to just be like, oh, it's okay. Like, let's, so anyways, where are you from? And just kind of keep the conversation going. And it was so weird at first, like the first time, the first couple times I was just like, oh yeah, my dad's dead.
[00:17:51] Krystle Hall: Like it was. Very weird, to say out loud, and I think it made it sound more final, but I mean, it's the truth. I, I think people are so sensitive to it and try to say like, oh, well my dad passed away, or My dad is no longer with us, and I'm just like, yeah, my dad's dead. And then, I don't know, it's just, I guess, a little bit of dark humor, I guess, if you could call it that.
[00:18:16] Krystle Hall: But I don't know. It just, it just kind of comes out sometimes. I guess I, I just relate to Amanda a lot more now. So I just wanna remind you that if you find yourself laying in bed at night thinking this is it, I am, I'm dying because my heart, I'm having a heart attack. 'cause my heart is racing so much, and then five minutes later you're fine, you're not alone.
[00:18:41] Krystle Hall: So grief and health anxiety might be frenemies, but they don't get to run the whole show. We're all still here, we're still showing up, we're still finding ways to laugh, even if, if it's through the tears.
[00:18:53] Krystle Hall: Alright everybody. That's it for today's episode. If you've related to any of this or if you've ever diagnosed yourself with 14 different diseases in one afternoon, please know you're not alone. Grief is hard. Anxiety is hard doing both. That's some real tough stuff.
[00:19:08] Krystle Hall: If you're looking for more support, come hang out with me on Instagram at Growth Your Grief, or check out the resources in the show notes. Don't forget, drink some water. Unclench your jaw, and stop Googling your symptoms. I'm serious. Stop. Close the tab. It's not gonna do you any good. I'll see you next time.
[00:19:26] Krystle Hall: Thanks for hanging out with us today on Grief Unfiltered Stories from Growth Your Grief. I hope these stories bring you comfort, connection, or even just a little reassurance that you're not alone in this. If you're looking for more support, be sure to check out our website or our online course. Befriend Your Grief.
[00:19:42] Krystle Hall: All the details are in the show notes. Take care of yourself and remember, healing isn't a straight path, but we're walking it together. See you next time.
