How To Navigate Waiting For Results

In this episode, I'm talking about one of the biggest challenges I see in people with health anxiety....waiting for medical test results. If you've ever found yourself constantly checking your phone, refreshing your patient portal, Googling symptoms, or imagining the worst while you wait, this episode is for you.

I explain why our anxious brains struggle so much with uncertainty, how they automatically fill in the blanks with worst-case scenarios, and why it's not actually reassurance we're searching for....it's certainty, and that's something none of us can ever have.

I'll also share some practical tools that I use with my clients to help break the cycle, including how to separate facts from fear, stop mentally rehearsing bad news, reduce checking behaviours, keep living your life while you wait, and start rebuilding trust in yourself instead of relying on reassurance.

Recovery isn't about eliminating uncertainty....it's about teaching your nervous system that uncertainty doesn't automatically mean danger. If you're waiting for results right now, I hope this episode helps you feel a little calmer, a little more in control, and reminds you that you are far more capable of coping than your anxious mind would have you believe.

If you'd like some extra support, I've linked my Recovery Guides in the show notes below, and as always, you can get in touch with me if you'd like to find out more about working together.

Connect & Work With Me

If you’re ready to move beyond health anxiety and start truly healing, I’d love to support you.

Access Free Training Here:  www.healthanxietycoach.co.uk

Purchase my Health Anxiety Recovery Guides - To Start Your Recovery Journey Today:

https://stan.store/healinghealthanxiety

Hear what my clients are saying about me:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHi1_ddJnhlEaMvzVtuKQioyXv5N7WS8g&si=wzNsNXn7d32Hzy8o

Get in touch:

email me: amy@healthanxietycoach.co.uk

Work with me Via 1:1 Trust & Thrive Programme or Via My 16 Week Healing Hub Group Coaching Program 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Welcome to Healing Beyond Health Anxiety, the podcast for anyone who feels stuck in fear, disconnected from their body, or exhausted from constantly monitoring symptoms and sensations. My name is Amy. I'm an ex-health anxiety sufferer, turned health anxiety coach. After my own health diagnosis and years of living with health anxiety, I know what it's like to feel betrayed by your body, to live on high alert, and to struggle to trust yourself again. Each week we'll have honest conversations about health anxiety, fear, symptoms, and recovery with practical tools and gentle shifts that will help you move forward without pressure. So take a breath, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. I hope you are doing okay. So today's episode is without doubt one of the questions that I get asked the most often, whether that's inside my coaching program itself or in my DMs. And that is, Amy, I'm okay until I'm waiting for test results, and then I find myself completely spiralling. And it doesn't really matter what sort of test it is, what sort of result that you're waiting for, um blood tests or a scan or a biopsy or whatever it is, just the act of simply waiting for that answer feels like your whole world is completely on pause. And I could I so remember this because what happens is you can't actually concentrate properly. You find yourself checking your phone every few minutes, seeing if you've missed a call, uh, running to that post box, waiting to see if you that letters come through the door. Um, and and every every time I guess you know that my phone would ring, I think my my stomach would flip, my mind would start trying to fill in the gap with that worst case scenario. And that that waiting period is so exhausting. And I completely understand why, because waiting is hard for anyone, but when you're living with health anxiety, waiting can feel almost unbearable. It can feel like you're trapped in this sort of limbo state, unable to fully relax, unable to enjoy yourself, and constantly wondering whether your life is about to change and what that might mean. So the reason that I wanted to dedicate this entire episode to this is because I don't think we talk enough about what the waiting does to us uh psychologically. We spend so much time talking about the tests, the appointments, and the results, um, but not enough time talking about what happens in the days or weeks in between. So, I guess from my experience, it's often it isn't the result that's causing the most suffering, it's the story that your anxious brain creates whilst you're waiting. And so today I want to unpack exactly why waiting feels so difficult when you have health anxiety, what's happening inside your brain and your nervous system, and I guess most importantly, share some practical tools so that you can start using them straight away. My hope is that by the end of the episode, you'll feel better equipped to navigate that uncertainty without letting it completely take over your life, as I'm sure many of you can resonate with. The thing is we can't control when the results arrive, but we can absolutely change how we experience the waiting, and that can make a huge difference. So, not just whilst you're waiting for this set of results, but in every moment of uncertainty that you face within the future, because remember, our brains hate uncertainty. So we need to be able to practice this, and it applies to so many different aspects of the health anxiety journey. So let's dive in. I guess one of the biggest mistakes people make is believing that the waiting itself is the problem. So easy to think if only the hospital would hurry up, or if only the doctor would ring, and then everything would be okay. But really, what I want to get over is that's not actually what's happening. The real problem isn't with the waiting, it's what your brain is doing whilst you're waiting. And so health anxiety has a funny way of taking the lack of information and filling in all the blanks itself. So we don't know what the results are, and so our brain decides it probably does. And unsurprisingly, it almost always fills those blanks with worst-case scenarios, and that is because your subconscious brain isn't interested in being accurate. Its only focus is to keep you alive, its entire job is to scan for danger and uncertainty. And to your subconscious, anything that feels dangerous is obviously a threat. So think about it from your brain's perspective. If there might be a threat, wouldn't it rather overact than miss some information, something important? So thousands of years ago, that response kept us alive. And if our ancestors assumed that the rustling in the bushes was probably a tiger, even when it wasn't, they survived. Okay, so the cautious ones lived, and the relaxed ones sometimes didn't. So the problem is that your subconscious hasn't evolved enough to know the difference between a tiger in the bushes and waiting for your blood test results. So to your nervous system, they are both uncertainty, and uncertainty gets filed under the potential danger filing cabinet. Okay, so the brain hates unfinished stories, and one thing our brains really struggle with is unanswered questions. So imagine reading a novel and someone rips out the final chapter. It would absolutely drive you mad because you would desperately want to know how it ends. And health anxiety does exactly the same thing, except instead of waiting patiently, your brain is going to write that catastrophic ending itself. Usually it is the most catastrophic ending it can imagine. Um, you know, they haven't called because they're discussing my case, they've found something serious, the doctor sounded too calm, um, maybe they didn't want to worry me. You know, we've all had these sort of thoughts. Um, you're you're almost waiting for a disaster that you've imagined. And I remember doing this myself. I remember, I remember thinking about analysing the way that the doctor looked at me and trying to, when I got home, trying to think about did did he smile enough or did he not smile? And if he didn't smile, was that because he felt sorry for me? Or if he smiled enough, was it because he he had sympathy for me? And and to be honest, whatever his facial expression, I could have analysed it to a hundred times. It was just looking back, it was absolutely crazy because I was looking for anything, whatever I could clutch on to to make me try to try and have some sort of input into what that result, what that uncertainty, what that test was going to be. And I'd analyse it to the cows came home, but it really didn't serve me in any way. And I think when health anxiety was at its worst, waiting for results completely consumed me. So I would wake up in the morning thinking about them. I would go to sleep still thinking about them. And every time my phone buzzed or rang, my heart would jump. Um, and if it didn't ring, I've convinced myself that that was suspicious, that there was something wrong, there was a delay, you know, surely they should have got back to me by now. And there's obviously a problem. Um, you know, last time it was much quicker than this, and and and therefore, you know, there must be something now. Um, the other end, and we can absolutely convince ourselves of this, is you know, if it rings too quickly, um, you'd convince yourself that that's that's suspicious too. So whatever happens, you know, you'll always look for that worst case. You'll always be trying to find um some sort of explanation within that. And honestly, my brain could make absolutely anything fit the story it had already decided to believe. And that's the really important thing because health anxiety doesn't collect evidence objectively, it's going to start with fear and then it's going to search for evidence to support that fear. So it's a bit like putting on a pair of glasses that only let you see danger, and you stop noticing everything that's reassuring because your brain has decided that that's not relevant. This is what we call the reassurance trap. And people often tell me, you know, I feel better. Once I got those results, I felt better. And absolutely, sometimes you do, you know, sometimes you do feel that immediate relief and everything feels much better. But then for a little while, the relief doesn't last. So for a little while it stays, and then something else will happen. So maybe you'll have another symptom, or another letter will come through about another checkup, or maybe you'll get a headache and whatever. And then suddenly you're back to the same place, exactly where you were before. Why does this happen? It happens because reassurance was never the thing that your brain was looking for in the first place. Your brain was looking for certainty. Your subconscious brain was looking for certainty, and certainty simply just doesn't exist. Okay, so if reassurance cured health anxiety, you'd only ever need reassuring once. But that's not what happens, is it? Because your subconscious isn't asking, Am I okay today? It's asking, can you guarantee that I will never ever become seriously ill? And that is a question that nobody can answer. Not your GP, not Google, not Chat GPT, um, nobody. So I guess the question really is, what actually can help them? And this is where, you know, I think it's really important to get practical here because I know so many of you are listening are probably waiting for something. Okay, Amy, tell me what I can do instead. So I want to give you a few tips that are going to help you deal with this. Uh, number one is to catch the story. So the next time your brain starts saying this delay must mean X, Y, Z, I want you to pause and I want you to ask yourself, what do I actually know and what am I adding? So, for example, you know that you are waiting for results, but you don't know what those results are. Everything else, okay, that's the story. And the more that you can separate facts from fear, the calmer your nervous system becomes. Okay, that's number one. Number two is to stop rehearsing bad news. So, one of the biggest things that people do is mentally practice receiving terrible news. How many of us have done this? And it's exhausting and horrific to put yourself in that place. We we always play conversations over and over in our heads. We imagine that phone ringing and what that person might say. We picture the doctor telling us that worst case scenario. It feels like we're preparing, but actually, this repeated exposure to fear is not going to help you because your brain doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. So it's going to assume this is happening. Every time you do this, it's going to assume, oh my goodness, this is actually happening to me. And then your nervous system is going to ramp up in return. So every time you rehearse that catastrophe, your nervous system asks, Oh my goodness, you know, how can I prepare you for this? How can I help you get through this? Because it thinks this is actually happening. So one of the best things to do is to ask yourself, has mentally preparing ever changed the outcome? And the answer is probably not. It's probably just made it much, much harder. Okay, so mentally preparing yourself is absolute torture and does not help you in any way. Tip three, I want you to notice how often you are checking. So checking becomes a hundred percent sneaky, it sneaks right in there. So, you know, you might check your phone or you're gonna check that NHS app. Maybe you're one of those analysers that tears it all apart and looks at looks for clues within, you know, starts Googling what the technical terms are. Maybe you're you're looking on Reddit or forums or anything like that, or just even checking your body. What we have to recognize is every single check is gonna tell your subconscious, good idea, keep sounding that alarm, keep going with that. Um, you're doing the right thing. So instead of aiming to stop overnight, I want you to think about reducing it gradually. So if you normally are checking every 10 minutes, I want you to delay that. And I want you to sit on your hands for a little bit until it starts to feel uncomfortable. If you normally Google every symptom, I want you to delay doing that. Okay, just be aware that that is something that is not helping you. Sit on your hands again. We're just delaying it, not for long, but just a little bit enough to not have that knee-jerk response to fear. So we know that our recovery is not about perfection, it's about sending your brain slightly different messages, okay? And that's the most important thing. We are rewiring our fear response. Uh, and that's the most important thing here. Number four is to keep your life moving. Okay, so half anxiety wants life to stop and until certainty arrives. But you know, we're all very good at putting things off. Uh, you know, I'll do that next week, I'll I'll book that holiday afterwards, or I'll do that thing later on. But the problem is life doesn't stop whilst you're waiting. So, you know, we all know the sun still comes up, that our children still want to go out and play, you know, our friends and family still want to spend time with us. Um, so don't give uncertainty permission to steal moments that you're never going to get back. The real key here is to continue with your life whilst you have uncertainty. And I know that's super hard because I know that your brain is going to be pulling you back into the what if. But that's why it's important to recognize what do you actually know in this moment? And all you know is that you're waiting for test results. That's the only solid thing that you can grab hold on. Okay, so it's important to recognize that. Look for the solid evidence, always looking to question the evidence. Okay, so what do you have? What evidence do you have? That's that you're waiting for a test result. Um, my fifth tip is to build evidence instead of fear. So, you know, how did I cope today? Okay, we're looking for the positive. We're not looking to say how anxious was I was, but how did I cope today? Or perhaps you could ask yourself, where did I show courage courage today? Maybe you didn't Google, maybe you did go for that walk, maybe you watched a film, maybe you delayed checking, maybe you sat with uncertainty for five minutes longer than it felt comfortable. Those are the things that your brain needs reminding of. Okay, so we're not looking, we're not honing in on the fear, we're looking at the resilience and we're building on that. Okay, so all of these things are going to give you back a little bit more of control. And ultimately, in a situation where there is uncertainty, we want control. So that's why we take back control in terms of trying to find the answer, of checking and going over things and analysing the look on our doctors' faces. It's because in that moment of uncertainty, we look to try and take back control. And actually, that applies to health anxiety itself. You know, we try and take back control over our bodies because, you know, in that moment we we don't have anything else to hang on to. So that's really a little bit about what you can do. Um, and I just want you to recognize that it is all about the uncertainty. It's never about the test, it's about what is not familiar and what you don't have mapped out because we all want to have that concrete finish. We want to know where things are going. Um, it's just how we are wired. So we are not going to want to be able to sit with this place that we don't have anything, we don't have all the information. So your brain absolutely needs reminding of the resilience. Um, I often tell my clients that health anxiety isn't really a confidence problem, it's a trust problem. And somewhere along the line, we've outsourced safety to other things. So we've discovered that, you know, checking that thing makes us feel safe if we outsource it, you know. But actually, what we need to do is to bring the safety back into us because you are the only person that can signal that you are safe. You're the only person that communicates that you are okay. Even in that moment of uncertainty, you know, you are still okay in that moment. Right now, in this moment, despite the fact that you have that question mark hanging over you, you are okay, regardless of what your subconscious says. So, somewhere along the line, your brain has has stopped trusting your body and it's stopped trusting uncertainty. Um, it's also stopped trusting that you could cope. Okay, we very much don't have a lot of um faith in our ability and our capability to handle this, but you know yourself you've handled adversity before. You know yourself that you've been through tough times. So now what we have to recognize is every period of waiting feels like you're, you know, you're balancing on the edge of a cliff. But from what I've learned, recovery isn't about making the cliff disappear. It's about realizing that you were never standing on the edge in the first place. Your anxious brain, your your subconscious brain convinced you that you were. And every time you respond differently, every time you don't Google or every time you don't check, every time you carry on with your life, despite uncertainty coming with you, you're rebuilding, you're rebuilding that trust. Okay, slowly, one decision at a time. Um, there is no one big breakthrough here. Um, it's not about finally getting that thing, it's about hundreds of tiny moments where you teach your subconscious, I know that you're trying to protect me, but I've got this. I've got this, and I'm okay in the now, in the moment. So if you're waiting for results and you're listening to this, I want you to remember the uncertainty that you're feeling today isn't the enemy. It isn't even the battle with the results, it's the battle with the story that your brain is creating in the absence of certainty. And absolutely, stories can change. So every time you choose not to fuel the fear, every time you choose to come back to the facts, the evidence in hand, every time you choose to carry on living instead of waiting for permission to live, what you're doing is you're teaching your nervous system something so, so incredibly important. You're teaching it that uncertainty doesn't automatically mean danger. And that's the work. That is how trust is rebuilt, that is how your recovery is going to happen. So I hope that this helps. I know how how hard and difficult this place can be. Um, but I want you to know that this is possible and it all comes with swapping out the narrative and looking at things from a different perspective. So if today's episode resonated with you and you're looking for more practical tools like the ones we talked about today, um I've created a collection of recovery guides that walks you through some of the biggest challenges that people with health anxiety are facing, um, from waiting for results, uh, stopping scanning, calming your nervous system, and breaking free from that reassurance cycle. So I have popped the details in the show notes. Um, and hopefully, you know, you can start if if you're unable to invest in one-to-one or group coaching, this is a really good place for you to make a start on your recovery. So I will link those in the in the notes. Um, as always, please feel free to reach out. Please feel free to drop me a DM. I love hearing from you, and wherever you are in the world, it's so lovely to know that these podcasts reach you. So I do hope that this is helping you. Um, and I'm always here. My DM box is always open, my email uh box is always open. So please just feel free to reach out should you ever feel the need. So thank you so much for listening. Um, if this episode did help you, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a review or maybe even share it with someone else who might need to hear it too. Until next time, take care of yourself and remember your recovery isn't about becoming certain, it's about learning to trust yourself even when life feels uncertain.