Uncontrollable anxiety around questions, how to stop?

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I find that my heart starts racing when I'm asked any sort of question that has "you" in it. Somehow, they feel invasive and threatening.

I know I don't have to answer these questions and can just ignore it and it's not going to be the end of the world, but somehow I can't stop how my body reacts to it.

This usually isn't much of a problem, but it becomes an issue when I try to donate blood. The nurses always start asking me these types of questions and then my heart rate goes up and they can't let me in to give blood anymore.

Once, I tried to disclose right away and told the nurse to only ask me concrete questions related to the procedure at hand, but she still asked me these stupid vague and/or non-related questions, such as what I'm studying. I was thinking of writing something on a card that will explain it well enough that they'll get it, but I'm not sure how to phrase this clearly enough while being succinct.

Any ideas?

Answer the first one with such a long winded response where you shoe-horn in your special interests that they simply won't ask anymore questions, or will start having more concrete questions. Use your traits to your advantage

I don't think you will like what I'm going to say, but... Usually the best "cure" for both OCD anxiety and social anxiety is exposure (when applicable). The more you avoid answering questions about yourself, the harder it will be in the future. And as you have noted, there are times when you need to answer those questions - such as in a doctors office for instance, or, umm... A police interrogation (having trouble thinking of a second example)?

You could try to find ways to avoid these questions, or if you really want to improve your anxiety in these situations, put yourself in these situations more often. Maybe answer a very long, personal phone survey. Or something less threatening, one small step at a time.

I know anxiety is hard to deal with, I've had it since I was little. My anxiety always finds a way to latch onto new things as soon as I stop worrying about one, haha. My current obsession is death though, so that one may be a bit harder to treat through exposure. :p

I like this suggestion and I think I'll try this next time.

Desensitization would probably be ideal, but it takes a lot of time. I have an extremely hectic lifestyle and there's no way I can fit in any sort of treatment right now. Besides, this doesn't impair me extremely, just sometimes whenever I have to see a doctor-type person and only when heart rate is important, so I just have to come up with some quick fix for it instead of spending hours and hours of time trying to change my natural reaction.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions.

Have you tried meds?

I looked into short-term meds and nothing I found was suitable. I'm not organized enough to take short-term medications and really don't want some side effects, especilly weight gain, as I'm already putting a lot of effort into making my body look and feel the way it does.

Not sure what you mean by short term meds. Maybe certain specific phobias might be treated/cured. But most people with anxiety issues seem to me to have a more generalized malfunctioning of the system. Generally you take anti-anxiety medications as long as you experience unreasonable anxiety which for many is a long term if not permanent condition. There's lots of stuff to read on it of course, but I just think of it as a persons anxiety response is broken and it takes certain meds to restore the chemical balance or whatever to bring the response system back into a normal range. I struggled with anxiety on my own for a long time, but didn't really understand the problem. Once I went on meds it really changed things for the better. Its extremely common btw and accepted on a professional level. I was on meds for it for most of my military career and it wasn't a limiting factor for me. I mean they would not likely have let me control nukes or something like that. But I didn't want to control nukes! Likely give me a heart attack.

Side effects are lesser in each generation of meds for this. But important I know. You have to really look at the stats for any drug your doctor suggests... and do a google search looking for commentary from patients who have taken it. You can find many medical sites where lots of people discuss what their response was to X or Y etc. Also after an initial adaptation, the body often returns to business as normal and you can't even notice any side effect... except that you aren't feeling so anxious for some reason.