I today decided to look up ectopic heartbeats on Teh Interwebz.  This is what the doctor told me I have when they did a 24 hour tape of my heart.  A palpitation thingy showed up, and apparently is perfectly normal and caused by an extra heart beat and nothing to worry about.  Also the very slight irregular heartbeat I have (it speeds up when I breathe in and slows again when I breathe out) is normal too.  I had other tests proving I do not have heart disease or cardiomyopathy (which my nan had).  Of course I can never take the word of a professional and thus seek reassurance from anonymous writers on Teh Interwebz.

Anyway, again they say ecoptic heartbeats are normal, nothing to worry about, and only get treated if they cause severe symptoms (which I had that friday I was taken to hospital... although saying that, I did not actually get any treatment, just standard tests, and was told I wasn't having a heart attack so I'm fine.  Of course, for an anxiety sufferer, convinced I'm about to die, just being in a hospital surrounded by life-saving equipment (ignoring the bearded female nurse) is quite a nice treatment).

This is the article I was reading: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001100.htm

This is somewhat more reassuring than the article I read last week, which went something like "Betty was 45 years old.  She was leaving the store, turned around to where her husband should have been, he wasn't there.  She tapped her foot once, her heart skipped a beat, then she dropped down dead.  She had a history of palpitations."   Now, I feel sorry for Betty, I really do, but I think this site (promoting natural remedies) perhaps should have focussed more on the fact that Betty's case was unusual.  Yes it's important to get palpitations checked out if they happen a lot, but Betty probably had some underlying cause of her heart problem.

So, then I thought I would see what that site had to say about anxiety.  And I found an extremely useful article here http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/common/mentalhealth/anxiety/013.printerview.html

Now, most of the actions they suggest, I've heard of but not got round to trying yet, but this one intrigued me

Control your worry. Pick a place and time to do your worrying. Make it the same place and time every day. Spend 30 minutes thinking about your concerns and what you can do about them. Try not to dwell on what "might" happen. Focus more on what's really happening. Then let go of the worry and go on with your day.

 I'm not sure if that will help or not.  If I spend 30 minutes thinking about my worries, might that not just bring on a panic attack?  Still, if I spend 24 hours of intermittent worry, maybe condensing it into 30 minutes, and actually thinking what I can do about it, might stop me thinking about it the rest of the time.  Maybe.  Worth a try though.  And I definitely need to relax more, and sleep more.  I think I get about 4 hours a night at the moment. 

Anyway enough of this rant.  Hopefully I can look back on this post next time I get a bit worried about things, and remind myself of what actually is/isn't wrong with me.

In other news, it is TOO HOT!!  And the sun is too bright and makes me squint because I don't like to wear sunglasses for the same reason I don't like to use umbrellas when it rains.  But rain doesn't give me a headache.  The sun (and squinting like a mole rat) does.  Bring back the clouds.