UHNW and HNW WOMEN: MANAGING UNEXPLAINED SYMPTOMS WHEN MENTAL HEALTH BECOMES PHYSICAL PAIN

facets of you – UHNW WOMEN & MENTAL HEALTH 

MANAGING UNEXPLAINED SYMPTOMS WHEN MENTAL HEALTH BECOMES PHYSICAL PAIN

Join today’s conversation on why you as an UHNW or HNW Women are experiencing real physical pain as a symptom from your mental health illness. How you feel when your doctor and his staff are in disbelief of your symptom(s), culminating in making you question yourself, being scared and confused from the physical manifestation brought about from your mental health episode. Followed by HOW you can find solutions to manage and ease the physical pain that you are experiencing. When the diagnosis brings clarity and alignment in your life for a more happier lifestyle.

You are an affluent woman. You are shy or an introvert. Perhaps with low level autism. You live in an affluent home. You live an affluent lifestyle. You have weight fluctuations. You have dietary impulses. Yet with all the wealth that you have accumulated you are experiencing unexplained physical pain from a mental health illness. Warts and all.

CAN MENTAL HEALTH ALSO HAVE SYMPTOMS?

You feel it. You sense it. You experience it. From the top of your head to the bottom of your toes. From one side of your body to the other. Inside of your body and on your skin. Just how do you explain and manage the unexplained that is going on with your body because of your mental health condition. You as a HNW Woman having no control, or even where to start the management of unexplained symptoms to your body.

You are not alone. Mental health has symptoms also and when you do not know what is going on it can be really frightening. It is a very common occurrence. For instance one in five doctor appointments on the physical pain that mental health brings can show up in tests, scans and consultations as nothing significant. Indicating that there is; seemingly, nothing wrong with you. It is not uncommon for people to have something wrong and never be able to figure out what or why it is happening.

Client: Antonia

Antonia: With me, I had started to have some disturbing dreams as well as stomach ailments and heart palpitations. It felt as though my heart was going to explode because it was pounding so hard. In my mind I imagined a beating a drum. Not only was it visualised in my mind, but I felt the pounding and heard the pounding. So very loud and hard. This was making me breath increasingly quickly to try and get more oxygen into my lungs, but it was making me feel worse the more I tried to gasp air. I had to try and calm down in order to get the breathe to my lungs.

On terrible days it can feel as though the arms and legs are really heavy. A mist comes over my eyes and I feel a bout of dizziness followed by the sensation of feeling faint. It is incredibly scary. Just revisiting the thoughts and experiences makes my body quiver with fright and anxiety.

I am wealthy enough to have good medical care but if the doctors that I see do not have the answers, then I have to spend more money elsewhere to bring a new consultant to my medical team. I began this journey in my late 30’s and the symptoms came and went over the years. It has been frustrating and worrying. Especially when I had seen a doctor so many times over the years. I think it is so interesting that the diagnosis was not picked up then. As patients you expect doctors and other hospital medical staff to have all the answers at their fingertips.

Now I know that my diagnosis is linked to social anxiety. For many years I had not realised that that was behind a whole host of physical symptoms.

I felt as though I was on a perpetual conveyor belt to a doctor/therapist/counsellor/consultant. I had stomach ailments and was always at the doctors with this condition. I felt as though I was wasting their time, even though I was paying privately for their assistance. I am a shy person and I always felt guilty about being a burden to the medical and psychology teams of people that I saw. I was also growing frustrated and angry by not having concrete answers. They were the experts after all. I felt guilty about speaking up about my symptoms. I just did not want to keep telling them that I felt ill all the time. There was a lengthy period of time where I just kept spitting. My body just kept producing an abundance of saliva and mucous constantly and I always had to spit it out.

In public locations; such as a walk in a park or a trip to the zoo, I had a handbag filled with packets of tissues and kitchen towels. I was constantly spitting and manoeuvring the saliva and mucous into each paper tissue and kitchen towel. Then finding the nearest bin to dispose of it. Not a pretty look. Over time I got used to doing this in public places; like department stores, but I still had disapproving stares from people. So embarrassing.

At home I had to carry around a little basin with some disinfectant within it to spit into. The saliva and mucous smelled bad. The only time that I was not spitting out the saliva and mucous was when I was asleep, but once I awoke the build up wanted to come up and out. When it came out it was discoloured and thick. I noticed that some smells, foods and drinks made it worse. I rarely went out to public places to eat and drink because I would be forever between the Ladies Room and the dining table. Not good. So I always declined invitations with friends. Very soon the invitations stopped. That was not so bad. It was the fact that I could not have people around at my home, people that were close and important to me. All because I had this spitting thing to deal with. I have a housekeeper, a chauffeur, a cook and a maid and they are the ones that see my health deterioration. I try not to let them see how ill I am but it is impossible. They understand the situation and do their best to keep the house in good order so that I do not feel more poorly.

There was a diagnosis where a doctor said that it was down to a possible early onset of the menopause. Then there was the diagnosis of a stomach bacteria that was causing the build up of the saliva. Another diagnosis of an ulcer causing the saliva and mucous build up. Someone even suggested that I swallow the offending saliva and mucous back down into my gut as the acid would take care of it. That definitely did not work. In fact it made me extremely ill. What the fuck!

I really struggled with these symptoms and living an ‘ordinary’ life. I still had to deal with my business and my family. Plus, all the other bits that come with wealth. Then there was the panic attack. I think over 30 years of ignoring something is eventually going to get out. A definite pressure cooker of the mind and body. Culminating in a physical explosion from my consciousness. I managed to get an appointment with a consultant and just broke down. I poured out everything that I was feeling and experiencing. Then the diagnosis came back as social anxiety, through the aspect of a panic attack.

The mere acknowledgement that someone was able to quantify and qualify my condition made me burst into tears. It was a highly emotional impact on me having an answer that covered what I was going through. It was relief in all honesty. Relief from confusion and all manner of things. I believe that much of it all had been suppressed for such a long time. My journey with my self made wealth, the parallel with physical ailments, the changes impacting upon me psychologically. The mindset shifts. Everything impacting upon each other. How can someone feel so incredibly sick and the answer be so simple. The diagnosis had a name. Bringing it to the fore and making it real in real time. Not all in my head.

WHAT HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED?

This is how some other UHNW Women have found out their links to mental illness through the physical pains and symptoms in their body.

Client: Lydia

Lydia: I suffer from painful bowel problems and much stomach cramps. The muscle aches and pains are bad. I was prescribed powerful painkillers and told that the symptoms would get better.

Client: Xioasong

Xioasong: Periodically I was experiencing an incredibly tight chest and shortness of breath. Upon leaving a hospital I discovered that a doctor had written a letter of discharge about me citing that it was only a panic attack.

Client: Lily

Lily: I had an inability to have a full sleep at night. I experienced profuse sweating. I had a loss of appetite. My hair was also thinning and falling out.

The Mind Body Approach

One of the new techniques that I have read about as a solution to your mental health physical pain is a session called The Body Mind Approach. Professor Helen Payne at Hertfordshire University manages the project that supports people with unexplained symptoms and helps them with the management of it.

To understand the solution you have to understand the symptoms and the experiences of the person. It is usual that people with the physical pain take some form of pain relief, usually a drug with which to ease an affliction of the symptom fairly regularly. When the drug ceases to be useful people are then making several journeys to a hospital and appointments with various consultants. Then there are the tests. The scans. No concrete answers to the cause. Yet with each uncertainty that the hospital consultant and his team delivers, your mental health gravitates towards a vortex of confusion. So out of every FIVE appointments with a doctor, ONE of them relates to a mental health physical symptom.

It is common for anyone who suffers from these symptoms to then start doubting it themselves. So, are you going crazy? You feel incensed by this downward spiral journey and not being taken seriously for it, because the medical people that you see keep getting negative results, “No there is nothing wrong with you” is the usual response. Yet the physical experience is still there. Not imagined. Real.

Innovative projects like The Body Mind Approach understand that people with mental health illnesses who suffer from a physical symptom have the propensity to escalate into depression. That they feel incredibly alarmed that there is something severely unpleasant with them, that they have yet to discover. It is this unknown in their life that makes living challenging.

At the heart of The Body Mind Approach is the understanding, diagnosis and solutions to the unexplained mental health physical symptoms. One of the core elements to the project is to ask questions such as:

1. What is the sensory experience in the body?

2. Where is the distress in your body?

3. What does it feel like in your body?

The first phase: releasing tension. Using a body tension release technique that works from the focal point of the body to the mind. People with mental health physical pains are taught bespoke strategies that are specific to them and are helped to learn them easily, so that they can do the technique in the privacy of their home. This is a real-time method to manage the distressful symptoms, so that they are no longer distressing from day to day. The pathway/direction/signposting to the diagnosis and solution works from the body to the mind, instead of from a mental and cognitive approach.

The technique releases tension and works from the point of the head down through the various parts of the body to the toes. What this does is allow the person to feel peaceful and open as they progress along their body. Instead of closed and tense. Unlocking areas of tension within their body as they journey along the length of their body; from head to toes. At the end of the procedure the person feels considerably tension free.

The second phase: using art. Allowing the person to draw how they feel. The art allows the person freedom to create a dimension of their feelings. Then there is an analysis dialogue of the drawing. It is a two way dialogue.

The third phase: using potter’s clay or plasticine. Allowing the person to create a model of whatever s/he is feeling. The clay allows the person to get to grips with their inner feelings and this is to be expressed by whatever is created. It is highly therapeutic. Then there is an analysis communication of the sculpture. It is a two-way dialogue.

STIGMA WITH MENTAL HEALTH

It is essential to say that not all unexplained symptoms are linked to mental health. There are many reasons why people have unexplained symptoms. The problem with saying that it is linked with mental health is that people do not want to be aligned with a mental health label. In today’s society whether you are residing in the Northern Hemisphere or Southern Hemisphere, or of a Westernised culture or an Eastern culture, there continues to be a stigma with mental health. The stigma of mental health in some parts of the world is getting better, but it still prevails for many people, communities and cultures. It is still talked about derogatively and still joked about callously.

Whilst having a medical diagnosis that offers the answer that you are not suffering from an ailment, it still does not offer what is still wrong with you when you continue to have the experiences as before. You still do not know what is wrong with you and you can feel increasingly out of control and bewildered by it all. Even feeling completely alone and that no-one understands what you are going through. Especially when family and friends desert their support. You have had the symptom for so long that family and friends become immune to whatever you are going through. Your need to talk about it annoys them and they turn deaf to your discussion about how you feel. They avoid being with you for too long. They become involved and busy with their life, hoping that you realise that this action from them is them showing you ‘tough love’ to cope with yours. In the grand scheme of things they feel that you are strong enough to deal with whatever you are going through and ‘get back to normal’.

If you have been living with the unknown for a very long time and you keep going to a medical doctor, with the scans and tests and experiencing each time that every thing has a result as negative; you are in the all clear, you can begin to feel low. The result tells you what you do not have, but you continue to have the symptoms and the results have no answer to that.

More often, you cannot differentiate where the anxiety or depression started first. Or the symptom commencement. When did that start. Did that start in tandem with the anxiety or depression. Or did it start later. Was it an accumulation of factors that brought on the symptom(s)? You can become confused and not know which came first if you have suffered for a prolonged length of time. It is this prolonged length of time that can trigger some people into suicidal thoughts and tendencies. They feel as though they are on the edge. That this need to go into that direction will offer relief mentally and physically.

SIX SIMPLE WAYS HOW YOU CAN HELP MANAGE UNEXPLAINED SYMPTOMS IN YOUR BODY

A solution is self management. Self management bridges the gap between hospital and medical provision and your high need.

Self management can arrive in various ways. Many of them easy. There are various methods. There are various techniques. Such as:

1. Self Hand Massaging: Massage the soft part of the hand (the palm) with your other hand.

2. Flopping Over: In a seated position; position yourself towards the edge of the seat to allow you to flop between your knees, or standing position. Bending forwards and let the upper body weight fall towards your feet; the floor. Arms and head hanging loose pointing towards the floor so that the blood rushes to your head. This is a way of centering yourself. Allowing your energy to travel down through your fingers to the fingertips.

3. Breathe: Sitting in an upright position. A Left hand finger on Right hand nostril. Breathe IN through open nostril. Expand your stomach with the maximum amount of air. Hold for five seconds. Change to Right hand finger on Left hand nostril. Breathe OUT through open nostril. Expel the air as fully as possible from the stomach. Repeat 5x.

4. Sing: Sing any song that makes you laugh, or feel happy, or feel childish, or positively silly. For example, The Hokey Cokey. You know the song that you learned in school. “You put your left hand in, your left hand out. In. Out. In. Out. You shake it all about, etc.,”

5. Dance: DANCE to music that makes you move your body. Feel the music.

6. Chanting: Chant a note. Make any chant that comes from within. For example: OM, or, HEE, or any other chant that you feel like. At whichever pitch. Try chanting at various pitches. Low to High. High to Low. Expand with it.

OTHER HIGHLY USEFUL METHODS TO AID YOU WHEN YOUR MENTAL HEALTH ILLNESS MANIFESTS INTO A PHYSICAL SYMPTOM

1. Healing (Alignment).

2. Neck, Shoulders, Back, Arms, Legs and Feet Massage. Or FULL Body Massage with oils. Speak to the masseuse on the selection of oils that you would like. A top masseuse should know the oils well and how they are used for aiding mental health conditions, such as depression.

3. Aura Communicators / Readers.

4. Intuitive Art Academy. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/intuitiveartacademy/)

5. Music Therapy.

FINALLY

Whilst it is important that you believe something is contributing to your mental health or stress, you must not go through this alone. Speak to a mental health therapist, a specialist in a particular field if needs be. Failing that speak to a doctor, s/he should be able to provide a solution to help you on your journey. Whilst I cannot be on the team of every one who is reading this, I hope that what has been provided for you today can help to signpost you to a solution to help soothe or take the pain away for you. Finally, here are a few tips from my clients that I hope can make you feel a little less alone.

Client: Samantha

Samantha: Talking Therapy was an initial offering to me which was very helpful. In addition to the Talking Therapy I was offered beta blockers plus, anti-depressants. Now that I have a final diagnosis I know what it is that I am feeling and how it relates to what is going on in my head.

Client: Caroline

Caroline: It is very important to realise that everyone is an individual. No two people will experience anxiety in exactly the same way, so it is important that consultants, doctors and other medical staff listen and understand what that patient needs.

Client: Ella

Ella: In many ways the diagnosis I received liberated me. It allowed me to go out and inform the people that needed to know. For them to know what was occurring with me. What had been occurring with me.

If what you have read so far resonates with you, how does it resonate with you? What are the symptoms that you are experiencing? For instance, have you ever felt any of these on more than one occasion when going through your mental health illness? Profuse sweating. Muscle aches and pains. Sleeplessness. Loss of appetite. Heart palpitations. Stomach cramps. Breathlessness. Painful headaches. Acute dizziness. Blackouts.