Anxiety and Stress Forum - Worried...left Arm Pain!

Hi, I have the same symptoms. I am only 24 and i am pretty sure I dont have heart disease, but just because of the chest pain i get from anxiety, I recently started panicking that I may be having a heart attack or some problem with my heart. Originally it was just chest pain. Then I looked up heart attack on the web, and I think that the knowledge of left arm pain psychologically brought it on as a symptom. If you look into panic attacks/disorders, one of the major symptoms is thinking one is having a heart attack, to the point of the person going to the er. It is quite common. So far i have had and EKG which came out normal. I think if you have had all the necessary tests done to rule out any real heart disease, even if it means having second or third opinions so you can really sleep at night, you need to seek new anxiety/panic treatments until you find something that works for you. You might want to look into interoceptive desensitization. It does not sound like a fun treatment, but to me it sounds like the most effective treatment out there, because your psychiatric professional basically induces a series of attacks on you, thus teaching you that the symptoms you frequently feel are nothing serious, and you survive, etc. I have read that this is very effective, and often cures the patient. The problem is that people who suffer from this, myself included, think that the anxiety always comes from some specific source, like remembering a traumatic event, or feeling a physical symptom like chest pain and thinking they will die, or whatever. But I have recently discovered that a lot of those symptoms eventually start to just come on their own, even if I am out at a party with friends, feel perfectly fine, have not been thinking about the stress in my life, or my anxiety, have no symptoms of anything, and out of nowhere, boom, a symptom for no reason. I think that when the disorder is in developing stages, you are more likely to have what seems like a clear reason to have an attack. But over time of not having it treated properly, I think symptoms like left arm pain, along with any number of other possible symptoms, just recurr on their own because of the subconscious fear that you have developed and that has been associated with your fear in general. I myself know at this point that I need professional help. I was just on the wikipedia.org site titled panic attack (please read it) and between physical, mental, and emotional symptoms listed, I had about 21 symptoms that I experience in any given week. I think there are tons of people out there with this problem, who are constantly trying to diagnose problems, and they (actually we) need to focus on being treated for anxiety/panic disorders. Hope this is helpful. http://en.wikipedia.or g/wiki/Panic_attack