If you are terrified of your own heartbeat and find yourself focused on it during every waking moment, I get you. I used to be that way too. I walked around all day long thinking about how my heart might be damaged if it was beating too quickly, and gripped with the idea that it might suddenly stop for no reason at all. That’s no way to live. I understand how torturous that can feel.
These days anyone with a few bucks can walk around with a reasonably accurate heart rate monitor strapped to their wrist all day long. This is - most often for anxious people - not a good thing.
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A smart watch or fitness watch is great when we’re trying to use the data it provides to track exercise goals, measure training progress, or get a *rough* idea of how we’re handling stress. Wrist based heart monitors are not perfect by any stretch, but they’re pretty good at doing these things.
You know what they’re NOT good at doing? They’re not good at protecting you against some cardiac disaster that does not and has never existed. If you are otherwise healthy, your fancy Apple Watch is not a protective device. If you’re afraid of your heartbeat and worried about heart problems that you don’t actually have, your Apple Watch is just a torture device.
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Why would I go so far as to call your smart watch a torture device? Because it’s literally doing nothing useful. It is only gluing you to the cycle of checking and scanning fueled by the irrational fear that is in some cases ruining your life. When your medical team has assured you that there is nothing wrong with your heart, there is zero point in using your watch to monitor it for any reason whatsoever. None. There is no reason.
How can you use your smart watch effectively? Right now, maybe you can’t. If you are obsessed with the data it produces and trapped in the compulsion to check it repeatedly to make sure that you are “OK”, then you can’t use it effectively. If this is your situation, it’s time to lock away your watch until you’re in a better place. This may be very difficult, and may feel VERY scary at first when your brain tells you that you’re now unprotected and might die as a result. But there is only one way to break that checking behavior that cements the fear of non-existent heart danger, and this is it.
One day when you’ve learned that monitoring your heart rate - even during a panic attack - is pointless, then you can take your watch out and use it effectively for what it was designed to do. Until then, steer clear if you have to. Lock it away or disable the heart monitor function. It’ll make you cringe at first, but in the long run it will help teach you one of the recovery lessons you need to learn.
Tomorrow we’re going to talk about the difference between having anxiety and experiencing anxiety.
I’m currently reading the second edition of Acceptance And Commitment Therapy, by Stephen Hayes, Kirk Strosahl, and Kelly Wilson. This is a textbook aimed at clinicians, so it’s not exactly a fun book. The more I learn about ACT, the more I really dig it. It will absolutely be part of my toolkit as I move through my grad program and set up shop. :-)
Every Tuesday I’ll let you know what I’m currently reading. I read quite a bit on psychology and philosophy, but really you never know what I’ll have in my Kindle or Audible libraries! If you’re on Goodreads and into books, you can follow/friend me over there. Here’s a link to my “currently reading” shelf. I’d love to see what you’re reading and what you recommend.
42. How To Use (Or Throw Away) Your Fitness Watch