How To Calm Thyroid Anxiety

How to calm thyroid anxiety? That question usually comes up with clients having thyroid issues, but what is it all about?

Medically, the anxiety could be due to an overactive thyroid itself. Excessive thyroid hormone tends to speed up everything. The heart races, hands tremble, sleep is disturbed and the person stays restless and on edge. If these are new, or getting worse, see your doctor and get your levels checked. If you are already on treatment, ask whether the dose needs a look. No amount of reflection settles a body that has too much hormone in it.

But this is one part. What about the part where it is low levels of the hormone or when the levels are, medically speaking, within range?

This one is about that part. Showing a glimpse of what is actually there, because till you don't know what is it actually, you cannot deal with it.

The Checking

There are two kinds of people with thyroid issues. 

One who get their TSH levels checked regularly, much more than the doctor asks. 

The second who don't get them checked unless the clinic asks for it. 

In both cases, the underlying emotion is the same - fear, usually called anxiety, because fear sounds like blame. Remember high school, when children would dare others to do something else they are chicken? Same blame - that you are afraid!

So you check it or delay it, in first case, the person is usually the one who takes action (hyper most likely), just to know “is the treatment working? How soon can I get to what I want?” The second is about the one who doesn't want to know (hypo mostly)- “what is the point? I have to do even more if it gets better”. Both may seem different fears but it is the same, oscillating between disease and life.

And in both cases then, when a good report comes, and everyone says “See, nothing to worry, now you are getting better”, the old fears crop up. A racing heart, bad sleep or a tremor sends you running to the phone. You may not tell anyone, because the evidence says you are fine, but the real questions go to Google, usually after everyone has slept.

How To Calm Thyroid Anxiety

Having seen what is behind thyroid anxiety, now let's see how can we calm it? 

1. Call it by its name

You may call it anxiety but honestly, it is fear. Fear of something that has not happened yet, which means it is always about the future.

So the first step is to stop saying “I am anxious about… ” while blaming it on your thyroid and finish a different sentence: “I am afraid that…”

• That the report will be bad? 
• That it will be good, and then there is no reason left for not living the way you want? 
• That the tablet is forever? 

Write it down. The vague word cannot be worked with, but specific fear can.

2. See which way your fear runs

If you are the one who checks, ask yourself what you are hoping the report will let you do. Is there a life waiting on the other side of 'normal'? Why can't it start before?

If you are the one who avoids, ask yourself what a good report would demand of you. More work, more responsibility, no more reason to rest? What would you have to pick up again?

The checker is running towards a future that is taking too long. The avoider is not sure the future is worth arriving at. Different directions, but the same question underneath: is my own future safe to move towards?

3. Go back to where it started

The fear did not begin with the diagnosis. The diagnosis only gave it something to hold on to.

When did the future first become something to rush, or something to dread? Was there a time when waiting meant losing out? Or when wanting something only brought more burden, more disappointment? That is usually where the thread begins, and it is often much before the thyroid.

4. Give the body a different experience

Understanding alone won't calm the body. The body learns by experience, small and repeated.

For the checker: sit for five minutes with a timer. Ask, 'Is the thing I am waiting for going to happen in these five minutes?' It almost never is. So let the body be where it is till the timer goes.

For the avoider: imagine the next report is perfectly normal. Stay with that for a minute and notice what the body does. Does it relax, or tighten? If it tightens, you have found the fear.

Five minutes, once a day. Not more. Stopping before it becomes another task is part of the practice.

5. Support the state you are in

This is where Bach Flower Remedies come in. Not for the thyroid, but for the emotional state the fear lives in. And the state differs from person to person, even with the same report.

• The one who cannot wait: Impatiens.
• The fear of a known thing, the report or the disease: Mimulus.
• The fear with no name, the dread at night: Aspen.
• The fear for the family, what happens to them if I fall ill: Red Chestnut.
• The 'what is the point?' of the one who stopped checking: Gorse.

These are indications, not a prescription. In practice the remedy is chosen after understanding the person, and it is often a combination.

So Where Does The Doctor Stop?

Your doctor measures the hormone and corrects it. That is essential, and nothing here replaces it.

What the doctor doesn't have the time for is the fear underneath. What it is about, when it began, and what it has been protecting you from. That is the part I work with: naming it, finding where it started, giving the body a different experience, and supporting the state with the right remedy.

So which one are you, the one who checks, or the one who doesn't want to know?