Thought I'd start out new thread here, since we're a bit behind. But, that's okay.
Yesterday, I found an "empowering thought replacement" that has worked wonders for me. In fact, today was the calmest day I've had in a while. My most troubling and frightening symptoms have also been my heart palpitations (benign PVCs related to the mitral valve prolapse). Despite knowing that they are harmless, I always had very negative thought about them: "Yes, maybe a few are okay, but I'm having TOO MANY" or "No, these feel different" or "But this just CAN'T be okay." The underlying message I was giving myself was always "There is something wrong with my body."
However, after reading up on the issue, I figured out what was going on. Stress causes heart palpitations. Once I start getting heart palpitations, after a stressful time, I become frightened and begin to do less and less. The decrease in activity and the resulting deconditioning causes even more palpitations, which leads to more stress, and so on.
I figured out how to stop it. Now, rather than saying "There is something wrong with my body", when I feel a heart palpitation, I remind myself that they are harmless. And then, I turn my FEAR into ACTION. I remind myself that the way to get rid of the annoying but harmless PVCs is to eat right and exercise and practice relaxation, and I realize that the heart palpitations are signals that my body wants me to do that. In that way, I kind of look at them as a message from my body, and not as a sign of harm, and I know that there is something constructive I can do to control them.
Anyway, that really helped me a lot.
Stress Center Community 
