Why You Can't Google Your Worry Away

I've been sharing a lot lately about the "inside out" way that everything in life -- including gastroparesis -- looks to me these days. The idea that we don't feel our circumstances, we feel our thinking.

When our thinking revs up, we feel anxious, overwhelmed, worried, or any number of other uncomfortable feelings. And we then jump into action in order to make those feelings go away. We think the discomfort means that something is wrong with the situation, the circumstances, or us and we need to do something about it.

But what if those feelings are actually pointing us in a completely different direction? It seems to me that feeling bad is simply a sign that we're up in our heads. That we're wrapped up in a lot of thinking that looks really important and personal and real. That we're getting ahead of the current moment.

Today was a really great example of how this simple shift in perspective can totally change our experience.

Back in December, I landed in the ER due to a heart arrhythmia. It was a short-lived episode, but it left the doctors scratching their heads and left me with a lot of anxious thinking. I spent the next several weeks googling, researching, and constantly monitoring my heartrate. I was pretty sure the doctors were missing something, and I was going to drop dead at any moment. It was a difficult time, to say the least.

Two months later, I was back in the ER with another episode. Despite a bit more testing and a new prescription, the diagnosis remained a mystery. Cue the anxious thinking!

My brain, in an effort to be helpful, made up all kinds of scenarios for what was wrong and what would happen. I took the anxious feeling accompanying all of that thinking to mean that it was true, and I needed to do something about it, be that turn to Dr. Google or simply eat another bowl of Blueberry Chex that I wasn't hungry for. (Brains don't always make sense...)

Fortunately, I realized a little more quickly that time that all of the anxiety wasn't pointing me toward an actual problem in need of a solution... it was simply showing me that I was really caught up in thought that looked real. At that point, I naturally did less googling and ate fewer bowls of cereal and yet, my feelings still shifted, as feelings always do.

(Try it, you'll see. Pay attention to how many times your feelings change during the course of one day, even when it feels like you're "always" anxious, depressed, angry, etc.)

And then today, it all happened again. Thanks to the medication, I didn't have to go to the hospital, but I continued to have heart palpitations all afternoon. Just like clockwork, the anxious thinking came. "They're missing something." "You need a new cardiologist." "You're going to have to figure this out yourself." yadda yadda yadda.

But this time as I opened Google, it almost felt comical. Not just because googling symptoms has never made anyone feel better about anything ever but because I know that's not even what the anxious feelings are about.

Uncomfortable feelings, anxious or otherwise, are a gift in this way. When we catch on to what they're pointing us toward, we do less of these things that we know aren't healthy or helpful but previously looked like the only "fix" for the feelings we don't want to feel.

That doesn't mean you don't do anything in response to what's actually happening. Of course, you do. You do what makes sense. Today I called my primary care doctor and my cardiologist, and I followed medical advice. I just didn't terrorize myself by jumping down a Google rabbit hole in an effort to relieve my anxiety. If tomorrow or in the future, it occurs to me from a quieter mind to get a second opinion, ask for additional testing, etc., I'll do that, too.

This applies to everything, of course. You can switch out "arrhythmia" for "gastroparesis" and it's every bit as true. When I was really struggling with gastroparesis, I spent hours and hours searching online because I misunderstood my anxious, worried, desperate feelings around the condition and its symptoms. The more I searched, the worse I felt (of course! hello, thought storms!) but I kept doing it because it seemed that discovering a cure was the only way I'd ever be okay.

I can only imagine how different my experience with gastroparesis would've been if I'd known this then. That's why it's so important for me to share it now. There is nothing in my life that has been as impactful as seeing all of this more clearly. I still lose sight of it frequently, as I did earlier today, but every time I wake up to it again, I'm reminded just how much peace is available to us regardless of what circumstances show up. (No googling required!)