Suffer with health anxiety

I suffer with health anxiety, I think I can pinpoint when it started too. I was in high school and lent a girl in my English class a drink from my water bottle. A few weeks after that she had to go to the hospital for STI tests and it freaked me out thinking I’d caught HIV from her. I then learnt however that you can’t catch it from sharing bottles.

Then over the years I have had health anxiety for different things. At one point I was convinced I had lung cancer because I had pain in my back and was finding it hard to breathe…turned out I had undiagnosed asthma.

My most recent bout of health anxiety is around MND. I have started to have a very slight pain in my hands, more so in my left than right. I know in the back of my mind it’s highly unlikely to be this and is more likely to be carpal tunnel or something else brought on by the fact that I swim 5 days a week. However I have always been a skinny guy and I keep looking at my wrists and hands thinking the muscles are wearing away and any dent in my hand is something bad.

Apart from when I was diagnosed with asthma I have never been to the doctors any other time I’ve had health anxiety. I did mention I think I have it when I was diagnosed with asthma but the doctor brushed it off.

Help me please.

Reply 1

Muttly

There is a medical term for continued worry that every small ailment you experience is magnified and might be a potentially fatal disease. It is called hypochondria, But what you are experiencing could just be a normal understandable thought process and an understandable thinking about the 'what if's' This is not a mental health issue at all.

This post is not a diagnosis, neither is it a diagnosis for anxiety. For every diagnosed mental health issue there is a continuum scale as to how badly you experience a diagnosable issue. Your worries cannot be diagnosed on this forum and I would urge you to go to a different GP and talk about how much this is affecting you (If indeed it is) You may well be signposted to psychotherapy services if you have a problem, but as with other referrals on the NHS right now there is a huge wait for these services. Sometimes cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT talking therapies) can help - CBT is a therapy that analyses your thought patterns and provides helpful ways to block the thoughts, change your way of thinking and to give you a way of deflecting pesky thoughts to a more positive way of thinking. your GP first and then work out your options. This might even include paying for help privately if that is an option.

Whether or not you decide to do something about this is probably dictated by how much it impacts on your day to day living. The fact you have lived with this so far is testament to you coping with these thoughts and ideas, but it cannot be helpful to have lived your life under such a cloud. Maybe there are entrenched ways of thinking about death and disease as you grew up? Perhaps you learned to be worrier by the behaviour of those closest to you growing up and copied their way of thinking? This can stem from an underlying fear of not being in control of death and dying. I am also convinced there is a 'gene' that controls anxiety although I cannot provide any references or evidence to support my opinion here. All you can do is become aware of your way of thinking, and know your own unique pattern. A lot of work can be done by you being determined to consider something, be realistic about it, and then finally boxing it off if you have dealt with it.

Never dismiss genuine health worries. Do something about them and seek early professional advice. Once you have done this ignore the worries and focus on what you can do - staying fit and healthy (hydrate, eat unprocessed whole foods, and exercise -which I know you do). Start to be aware of the triggers at the beginning of your negative thinking about illness. As soon as you know this is happening and you are dropping into the worry groove - consciously deflect your thoughts elsewhere and do something physical that demands focus and concentration. They start, you block and keep repeating. Keep a diary of the time, the place, the circumstances that you are in that starts the worry, and see if there is a pattern. Then become aware of how your internal dialogue starts. Once you know this you can stop 'the rot' so to speak. Try using the website 'Mind' as they have a lot of helpful and supportive advice.

Hope this helps?

(edited 7 months ago)