Yes my experience was much the same. Dreadful anxiety that made my stomach churn for hours. And I’ve had one panic attack. This thing is so testing psychologically.
I’m not certain what worked but I agree with Vignesh that as you get used to the condition the anxiety slowly decreases. Once you’ve experienced nearly every symptom this thing can throw at you several times you start to roll your eyes with boredom :). It really helps to get through a few relapses and you realise you can get back to your best (post big bang) condition yet again and sometimes improve on it. That stops you fearing relapses.
It also helps that once you find a good medication to control symptoms a big step improvement will take place and anxiety will calm a lot.
Finally there will definitely be improvement in the underlying condition but that can take months/years. Nevertheless when you look back at yourself 6 or 12 months prior you will see obvious steps forward. Again this helps you realise things just get generally better albeit very slowly. Unfortunately you will probably hit relapse after relapse which test your resilience but inevitably you should improve as you will find the relapses last less and less time and are less severe.
I’m always very keen to understand the medical journals and occasionally still it can pique my anxiety but rarely. In any case if you are having a bad phase of anxiety I would stay away from Dr. Google for a while. Only look when you are on top of it.
And you always have us to moan to and together we can laugh about the stupidity of it all and how we humans are amazing but not perfect and sometimes we get ill; that’s just being alive for you.
One ENT once said to me “ears aren’t perfect, I’m afraid”. That helped me get things a little in perspective.
One GP nurse told me “ears take a long time to heal”. That was helpful too.
My neurologist said to me once “Don’t give up”. The implication being that things eventually get much better. And so far she’s right
And as many on this forum have said “This too shall pass”
You can use this experience in the future to build much better empathy for others and their suffering. It seems a surprising number of people suffer. You will be a wiser person. You will also understand yourself much better. The other huge positive for me is I’ve found I take more pleasure in the simpler things nowadays. It’s wonderful to sometimes go for a walk and look at nature and simply marvel at it!
Your current relapse will be gone in a few days max. Get out there for a walk as soon as you feel able. Being upright is actually really important as it reduces head pressure and helps healing. It may be uncomfortable to begin with but I always find I feel much better after half an hour of walking. So make it a long one
I will add my hug to those from others.
James