I'm going through a period of high anxiety right now (nausea, difficulty eating, heart palpitations, dizziness) and it's compounding my fear of fainting. I passed out last year in public, which was embarrassing and kind of traumatizing, and have been having really bad anxiety about my body since. The cause for the fainting was never definitively identified, which freaked me out, and I have an autoimmune disease that makes my body pretty unreliable. During covid, the mask slightly restricting my breathing makes it worse, as panic attacks feel almost identical to how I did before I fainted. So I've started avoiding going outside entirely, but it's really limiting my life.

Does anyone have any tips for how to deal with this who's been through something similar? I know it's irrational but I still get so freaked out.