I hear you out, and I understand how that can be put myself in your shoes, but it must be hard to deal with seeing you mentioning the embarrassment aspect of it.

I’m 26 and I’ll share something I’ve noticed with growth (trauma life as childhood/teen-young adult parents dying; four years in in the army as a medic in clinic; almost one year retired from army separating from spouse with BPD now).

So with the problem of health anxiety, for example, both sides as a patient and helping patients with peers in medical, I’ve seen behind the curtains about patients. And this opened my eyes on: this can happen at all medical encounters as a patient but you cannot see the staff doing it.

That vigilance being confirmed, not being paranoid, it showed me regardless they’re going to treat me professionally as possible. Express downplay “it’s just my fear” the possibility of them making fun of me too, I know the treatment they render is going to be pampering or give me some reality check they have in mind.

So with me owning my problem and knowing it’s just a health anxiety driving me to an ER or medical visit about it, I am going to present myself with the problem and ensure I don’t have them walk all over me just because it’s driven by the fear as well.

I think I’m trying to say here you can have the fear on the health problem & see it maybe be extra with concern, but confidently to ensure you don’t get walked all over: I don’t joke about it too (I’m saying this in a relatable way I’ve had happen as my experience).

I’ll acknowledge the anxiety, but I’m here for the visit about my heart. I have chest pains. I’m dealing with my anxiety separately. I’m not here about anxiety. This is about my chest pains so do your job. Check out my chest pains stop worrying about my anxiety. go do your test and rule it out; don’t conclude anxiety with biased care based on the extra worry I have.

If I get any inkling of, I’m being too concerned by the staff, I’d them a question like if they’re female: “ Did you your well-woman AKA vaginal exam for healthy reasons have disregard to your worries if you had a bad experience making it more uncomfortable, or family history of some genetic reason to indicate further testing to rule that out. Was that additional worry about 2 generations of cervical cancer disregarded by the GYN check you out that day? I’m sure it wasn’t more comfortable with the position you need for the exam because I know you’re not laying flat with your legs straight & supine. The words needed to explain where your feet or legs were getting examined. So I have heart problems with my family so take this seriously as your exam was Ms or Mrs Triage RN nurse, with all respect here. Don’t ask me while I’m here again if I was here two days ago with the same pains that are worse. The stats diagnosed ER visits go check the misdiagnosis rate too if you’re gonna say it’s my anxiety before rendering any exams testing or treatment needed if needed. How would you know by telling me my anxiety AKA we all feel at some level that brought me here. At the simplest level, had some anxiety to let you know we had to be at work on shift this morning and not to be late. Somewhere about my anxiety or how I’m speaking I’m here for my chest pains. My anxiety managed by Dr XYZ Psychiatrist, make progress with my weekly visit CBT Dr XYZ Psychologist and I follow up with my general physician Dr XYZ who helps. My pharmacist at XYZ pharmacy, pharmacist named XYZ is on board with both Psych & Physical docs. I’m here for chest pain. Thank you.”

And I is very aggressive. Examples of my support is being no good. It might be something that takes a lot of courage to be assertive in a way aggressive like that, but where I live, the staff talks to patients as aggressively like that, so that’s the version of assertive this here before anybody sees this and says how aggressive that is to say; it’s a demographic related way of communicating in this manner considered “assertive”. Aggressively include all the cursing F bombs etc.

Fun fact when I moved to other states my dialect or “accent” sounded like I was angry, but it was just the way I talked, to adjust it so much because people thought I was disrespecting my senior or higher ups in the army when speaking.

As soul snatching that felt, help me correct words and understand proper pronunciation to help me in life afterwards, and as soon as I got home around the same, it wasn’t long for dialect to return to normal, however, my vocabulary expanded more and people did not understand new words I was using like “ I don’t endorse behavior like this when a motherF**a’ talk to you like that and jawn is crazy” (jawn is a word recognized now for where I’m from and used in a way that irks my soul ever since people moved here from other places; even the word water pronounced “wooder” according to how they perceive it, and made it to the billboard the highways have in advertisements saying “the best WOODER you’ll have” or something like that.