Dodger....the bad heart days are what sets me back big time.  They are so hard to deal with.  Since I posted my post at 11:35pm 2 nights ago this post has received 140 views!!!  So we are not the only ones struggling with this.  I am working hard and reading this entire post again and again to attain my end goal and that is to move forward with life with no fear of my benign palpitations!

Below is a post by RLR and I truly believe we can all overcome this!!
"Now we're beginning to head in the right direction.

This thread doesn't require my guidance in any real sense because the revelations which you will discover through direct participation will be entirely derived by those who engage it on their own terms. In other words, how you react to this thread will speak volumes and you should pay very careful attention to this element. If you are one of the some 5400 or so persons who merely read the thread but cannot become involved, then you need to ask yourself why. If you participate but can't seem to pierce the veil which leads to an area being avoided, then you need to ask yourself why. If you don't know why, post the question and seek responses from those who have stepped across that barrier.

You must draw the collective issues out into the open within the safety of anonymity and become unafraid that doing so will cause some loss of control over the circumstances. Realize that this fear is what causes many persons to develop significant anxiety, for they exert avoidance of issues which generate a perceived threat to their well-being in some regard. The result for many is a form of indentured servitude where control over daily regimen is induced, often accompanied by rituals in many forms necessary to keep life in balance. An unidentifiable unrest seems to prevail and it is this lack of identity or definition which produces the overwhelming fear.

It becomes a life with near total energy divested in prevention of circumstances that are unreal and imaginary, leaving little to no energy devoted to one's aspirations, goals and sense of accomplishment. You have the same capacity as you've always held, but it is being depleted daily by attempting to exert control over factors that are irrational in form and only exist in the realm of unwarranted speculation.

You must expose the barriers which rob you of the energy necessary to take back your lives. You must challenge their existence and demand proof of any speculative consequence. You must come to realize that the origin of your entire difficulty is based in your patterns of life.

Fears must be fed to remain alive. It is this compelling drive which imprisons persons with anxiety. Remember that anxiety is not a disorder at all, but rather simply a state of mind. If it becomes habitual, it produces a constant state of unrest. People with anxiety find themselves consistently being drawn to elements which strengthen and intensify their fears. If they experience a palpitation event, they most often feel compelled to peer into the farthest range of tragic outcome, to read the ending of the book before understanding its content, to try their best to predict the outcome no matter how far-fetched, subsequently developing apprehension of such an outcome as though it were somehow magically made real by their unregulated thought process.

All of this and more is what you must question and seek to determine within yourselves. With the help of others experiencing similar difficulties, you must use this thread to draw forth and explore these expressions and put them to the challenge. You must avoid looking externally for guidance or reassurance and realize that it has been within you all along. You've simply lost faith in your abilities in this regard.

If you want to truly be free of difficulty, including that associated with benign palpitations, then you must step up to the plate among one another and take the journey together. I'll be around and I'll certainly be examining the passages generated on the thread, but I can't take you across the threshold. You must do this yourself.

I can tell you that what awaits you is what you've thought to be lost and irretrievable.

Best regards and Good Health"

That is exactly what I had to do. BigCountry. I literally started yelling at myself in my head. I would start to panic and I would just shout at myself to stop it and that I was being an ass. My doctor told me about the Vagal (sp) maneuvers to help stop the palpitations and lo and behold they work, at least for me. So now when they start instead of dwelling on them I try to do something as soon as I feel them start. I go for a walk,
read a book, just try to do some activity to take my mind off of them. For me anyway it really seems to help. Today was the first time since January that I have felt them at all.

Ok since my last post I have tried to really focus on my habits, thoughts, feelings etc and I noticed one main thing is that when I am at home and have my skipped beats they are bearable and I can cope with them, however when I am out and have them they feel much more in tense and I feel myself trying to listen in and make sure they dont get worse.  This is silly because I actually believe that if they do get worse there is something I could do about it???

Do I really think I can control my heart?  This is what I think its all about for me....I think I can control my heart and avert something horribly if I just maintain constant vigilance over it at all times.  This is where I have to come to an understanding with myself and my skips as this is absolutely impossible and not necessary because they are benign.....even if they werent benign my efforts would be fruitless.

So I will be working on this hard this week.

Thanks

hi Big Country

But in your case your fear has become reality. Your brother died of heart problems and in your close related family are heart problems known.
So I think in your case doctors should never underestimate your complaints. There is a real possibility you and your family have more heart problems in the line of the family (DNA / Gen?) than other families.

Although I know RLR is right, and that in most cases palpitations probably mean nothing. you never can discount symptoms. espescially when this is known in your family. I think its normal you get an examination every once or twice a year just to check you.
in my opinion that would be normal. Its my believe that we pay health insurance.. and where I live in Europe we pay for health care. read the word. HEALTH CARE. the problem is, there is no focus on keeping people healthy, so prevention checks, but only when people become real ill or having problems ..care kicks in.. (at least in the Netherlands this is, and we have a good health care ).

people do die , also after just being examined. People who are clean of cancer 2 months ago, are full of it two month later and with no chance of recovery.
I start to accept that these things happen and medicine and doctors only can do what they can do. but there arent miracle workers either. they make mistakes, they cant see and know everything and in the end they are sometimes just as powerless in situations.
thats life i quess.

I totally agree with you that it is a fear of dying, being mortal, that your best time is already gone/up.

I really dont know if my symptoms in the end arent a real problem or not. probably not, but it is a real symptom which occurs cause something in my BODY is not balanced. or deficit or not working as it used to do. In my believe that should be addressed too.

best of health to you my friend

My Plan of Attack--

RLR said " Once you've experienced benign palpitations and they are unwittingly perceived to be a threat, any subsequent incidence will continue to produce similar reaction until such time that you transform your perception from irrational to logical. That is in part, the goal of this forum, to provide you with facts that can gradually restore the proper perspective and logical resolution to the circumstances. You are repeatedly frightened and your confidence challenged because of what you believe benign palpitations to represent."

So I will be working hard to change the thought process not only on my skipped beats as they happen but on the rest of the somatic systems that the skipped beats have caused due to the stress involved.  

It will not be easy and I will update you every step of the way.  I will be challenging my self talk with logic provided by RLR and truly believe this is the way out and back to the life I once had.

Example--skipped beat....Thought--these are not dangerous, they are caused by the over stimulation of the vagus nerve, they have never harmed you in the 7 years you have had them because they do not affect the hearts performance. You exercise daily and other than the anxiety they cause you due to your thought process, they are of no consequence.

Repeat  : )

Richie...just from experience you should never look on Google.  You are not a doctor and do not have the training to understand what is being said and what context it is said in.  RLR mentions this a lot in most of his post.  I am a medical device salesmen and have been for 10 years.  I have been in 1000's of surgical cases and even with every thing I know I know absolutely nothing when it comes to diagnosing patients.

Please believe me when I say that anxiety can absolutely cause these symptoms and does to millions of people!  I have studied for years on anxiety and it makes absolute sense.  You are having a thought, a scary thought, over and over and over again and your body is just reacting appropriately.  Lets say you are watching a scary movie, you know its a movie yet your heart races, your hands clam up etc.  When the movie is over you go on with your life!  Unfortunately we never let our movie be over....we constantly believe that these are going to harm us and as long as we believe that our body will react!

trust me...I know its much harder than that....but its the truth.

That is why I am here.  I want to get past this and get my life back and I will not give up until that happens.

Thanks for being involved.  Hopefully we both can overcome this and help each other along the way!

Just came to think while reading your lasts post that maybe it's someway healing to look at the whole thing as a vicious circle. From all I've read here, by RLR and others, it's a fact that several factors contribute to "benign palpitations".

1. It's a fact that the heart now and then, maybe often for some people, make an extra beat (which might feel like it skips a beat). It's also a fact that the heart sometimes beat harder. And it's a fact that some people do FEEL this. And do I have to mention that many people experience these "out-of-rythm-beats" as a very unpleasant phenomenon?

2. It's a fact that anxiety in some way - in cooperation with the autonomous nervous system/the vagus nerve - can contribute to palpitations, and probably often does. It seems that a period of your life with many stress elements originating from job, love scene, economy - you name it - creates more impulses in your autonomous nervous system. Maybe (my interpretation) makes it more "sensible".

3. It's a fact that physical impact (sleeping on the left side, eating too much, bending over, maybe lying down with an all too full stomach also - just like stress - can generate "false signals" that reach the heart.

4. And as for the physical contributors the chemical ones: Alcohol, cafein, maybe nicotine and probably many drugs.

5. Finally it's unfortunately very difficult to diagnose which one (or two, or three) of these factors is the culprit. And therefore the way forward is:
a. Get your heart checked.
b. If okay, try to work on the other possible palp-generators, knowing that it might take quite som time, accept the fact that they are unpleasant - AND that the palps (so says RLR) never turn into anything worse or are dangerous or signs of beginning heartdiseases.

Okay - it turned long ... But this is what I think about this now.
Best of luck to all.
Martin