Cardiophobia and WPW Pattern

Hello all,

I’ve been a member for a while now but haven’t really interacted much recently. I was sitting on my couch today and just got thinking about it all, so I ended up here.

I’ve known about my WPW pattern since I was around 16-17. It’s always shown up on an ekg but I’ve never had any real symptoms. I played high level youth soccer, college soccer, strength trained for 13 years and have ran all kinds of races. I have an active job and overall am a generally healthy guy. The only thing I’d attribute to my condition are two things:

1. I sometimes feel like my heart stops when I’m playing soccer, coaching or really working out and suddenly bend over too fast or squat out of no where. I take some deep breaths and feel fine shortly after, I also never notice huge heart rate spikes during this.

2. If I have a heavy meal of salty food or a little too much alcohol, my heart rate will go into the low 100’s. My friends sit around 80-90, I might sit around 90-120.

Despite all of this, I live in relative constant fear of my symptoms just kicking off one day and taking me out.

For those of you that are and aren’t symptomatic, how do you deal with the mental side of things?