Do you suffer form herniated disc anxiety? If you have experienced back or neck pain that has been linked to a bulging or ruptured disc, I bet that you do. Anxiety is a common consequence of the diagnosis and has powerful negative effects on health and sanity.
Are you anxious about re-injuring your herniated disc? Do you have symptomatic flare-ups that make you afraid to live your life normally? What effects will anxiety create long-term? These are all super crucial questions to answer since they affect millions of people each and every year.
This post explores the relationship between herniated discs and chronic anxiety.
Herniated Disc Anxiety Defined
What is anxiety? Feelings of being anxious describe extreme worry and fear, mostly rooted in future events which may or may not occur. The ability to anticipate creates fear and this fear causes a cascade of negative health issues, psychoemotional prohibitions and a general sense of dread.
Anxiety goes beyond momentary fear or trepidation. It becomes a chronic state that affects every waking and sleeping moment of life, both consciously and more importantly, subconsciously. Anxiety is the direct harbinger of major health problems, including depression, sedentary lifestyle, physicophobia, chronic high blood pressure and elevated risk for premature death. Anxiety is nothing to take lightly. Despite being an “invisible illness”, anxiety is a real killer.
Anxiety is a Mindbody Disorder
Anxiety affects mind and body alike:
The body suffers chronic tension. It feels tight and prone to injury. Chronic pain may be a direct result of ongoing anxiety and anxiety is almost always a consequence of chronic pain, making this a vicious cycle of suffering.
Cognitive consequences include the inability to focus one’s attention due to distraction and fear. People may develop selective memory patterns, with a focus on negative past events fueling anxiousness over possible future events.
The psychoemotional consequences might include depression, sadness, chronic fear and a general sense of dread. Anxiety destroys joy and prevents affected people from taking part in life. Most are confined to roles as pessimistic spectators who are waiting for the very worst to happen, rather than actually living to the fullest.
Herniated discs and anxiety go hand-in-hand. Once a person has their severe back or neck pain blamed on a herniated disc, they will do anything to prevent a recurrence. This type of intractable pain can be life-altering. We have witnessed many people’s life trajectory changed forever by a bad episode of dorsalgia. We have experienced this type of trauma ourselves when we too had chronic pain problems. We are both empathetic and sympathetic to anyone who is suffering from back pain anxiety.
Overcoming Herniated Disc Anxiety
Anxiety might require professional help. In our experience, the worst symptoms of herniated discs are not the pain and neurological consequences (if these even come from the scapegoat discs, which is actually rare…). Instead, the worst consequences are the anxiety, depression and fear that truly dismantle lives.
This is which it is crucial to get help for anxiety and make a concerted effort to understand and overcome it for yourself and for your loved ones. We have written much about the mindbody effects of chronic pain and highly recommend reading our related, in-depth essay on back pain anxiety on our original flagship website, cure-back-pain.org.
If you can beat the fear and anxiety, you can live well, even if you continue to have pain. Focus less on the physical and begin to understand the entirety of your health, encompassing mind, body and emotional state. The mind leads the body, so get it on the right path and the body will follow. However, if the mind is a slave to fear and anxiety, then the body can only deteriorate further into a state of dis-ease.
Herniated Disc > My Herniated Disc Story > Herniated Disc Anxiety
