Does anyone else get anxiety like this?

[AnxiousApple]

I'm feeling pretty desperate right now. I'm 32 and have had anxiety literally my entire life and it has always been around people close to me dying. When I was a child it was my parents and siblings and now I'm older that's expanded to include my DH and DC. I have pretty severe health anxiety which is part of this but I don't only worry about illness - if a loved one doesn't answer the phone or a text I've assumed they've been in a car accident, fallen down the stairs etc. When an episode comes on I go into complete meltdown and can't focus on anything else. It's really, really bad at the moment - every day there seems to be something new I obsess about. A few weeks ago one of my breasts hurt so obviously it was breast cancer (it went). Then my Dad had a weird spot on his leg which was new so obviously that was skin cancer (it went). Then this morning my DH informed me he'd lost 3lbs since he last weighed himself a couple of weeks ago so now I am convinced he has some sort of cancer and I've been googling obsessively all morning.

The thing is I just immediately catastrophise - to use the above example, DH tells me he's lost a small amount of weight without trying and I immediately jump not only to cancer but to terminal cancer, then death and then immediately panicking I wouldn't cope with the grief. I do this every time, with all my loved ones. It's so exhausting and I'm so sick of living like it. I've had years of therapy (including CBT) and I take propranalol but that no longer helps. I tried citalopram years ago but it made me feel worse - I feel I'm at the point now where I need to try medication again but I'm terrified the same will happen again.

I don't get at all anxious over small things I can control. But anything I can't control, forget it.

I feel so low and honestly at the point I think how long can I really be expected to live my life constantly in a state of anxiety about something terrible happening? I'm missing my DC's childhoods because of this.

How patronising. This can, and does, happen to many people without a trigger.

You are not alone OP. I've had health anxiety for all of my life and have little to no coping strategies to rely on due to PTSD-C. Today I attended my first therapy session and afterwards I felt like I could catch my breath for a second. I don't know what the future holds but with therapy you can take one day at a time rather than focusing on the what-ifs. You will also learn plenty of coping skills to help you if difficulties like cancer do arise. Please get a handle on this now and I'm sure we can both get better.

Yes. I do. I'm currently petrified I'm on the cusp of a heart attack. But simultaneously too busy and scared to speak to doctor.

DH got seriously ill and I had to work hard on myself to keep a grip.

I think it might stem from my dad being ill as a child.

Yes, I get this a lot - if my mum/dad (both retired) don't reply to a message within the hour, I get really anxious that Something Has Happened. I am on citalopram and CBT, as I can't go the rest of my life like this.

I had awful health anxiety after the birth of my second child. It was horrific. I read a book called 'Over coming health anxiety' which really helped me. I do agree with PP about stopping googling. This was the single most effective thing I did to help me feel better. It isn't easy but it honestly makes a huge difference.

I really feel for you, and I feel for you that sertraline/citalopram didn't help. There are other SSRIs out there though so it might be worth trying a different one, although I understand why your worried about doing this.

CBT is not the only therapy, and it might be you need a different type to help you. CBT focuses on changing your thought patterns but might not explore why you think/feel the way you do. It might be you need to do more of this to help you?

I shouldn't Google. I know that. Then I think well how will I know if something is serious enough to warrant a doctor's visit? An obsessive Google once told me you can get melanoma without pigment and they often don't get treated until advanced as people don't visit the doctor about them - never would have known that otherwise.

But sometimes I'd rather not know. All the public health campaigns are hell for me truth be told.

Oh OP, I can so relate to this. I'm very similar. Strangely I don't worry much about my loved ones, mostly myself. Which seems oddly selfish, but for some reason I'm able to reassure myself that my family will be fine but I won't be.

I have terrible health anxiety, which hasn't been helped by the fact I had a genuine health scare earlier this year and then needed surgery. I am getting counselling to help with mine. It does help some. But it's very hard. I know exactly how you feel, I can get myself into an absolute state and be convinced death is around the corner. I can't concentrate, I have panic attacks, I cry and scream and spend hours and hours desperately googling in the hope I'll find an answer (google never helps!). Then eventually I end up going to the doctor, being told I'm fine, but it doesn't help and a new symptom appears and it just carries on and on....

If you can afford private counselling, I'd recommend giving it a go. As far as medication goes, I take citalopram. I've been on it 8 years and at this point I'm not sure it helps much, but it did at the start. I tried switching to sertraline last year and it made me suicidal, so I switched back. Might be worth asking your GP to try another different one, but I understand your reluctance. I'm reluctant to try another one in case it makes me feel worse like sertraline did!

I have OCD and my related anxiety presents like yours does. It’s completely exhausting and I sympathise. After years of mostly ineffective medication and therapy I’ve accepted that this is how my brain works and am trying to accept it but that might not be the path you want you take.

• want to take

Not patronising at all. Often the first question a therapist will ask. For any people, seemingly unrelated (or sometimes huge trauma) will be unrealated in their mind - they wont see the significance or commection. Very common. I have experienced this myself.

I’m sorry for you and the others on the thread who are suffering. I know this probably will feel like a suggestion that won’t have even touch the sides, and that it sounds like you have tried everything, but what about meditation? Like not just an app but going to a meditation centre where you get guided and taught how to do it. As it is all about learning how to observe your mind’s activity and train in not following unhelpful thoughts. If you are interested I could recommend a centre in your nearest city.

I understand exactly . You will know because the symptom is consistent, long duration and getting worse. Thats unbearable for most people with health anxiety. A lot of the health campaigns use alarmist language 'early detection is vital' 'catch signs early' which is dynamite for someone with low tolerance for ambiguity.

I know a few, too many, but a few women who have buried their children, from still born to adult children. We have buried more than average. But nothing comes close to burying a child. So what do you do?

You come up with a plan.

All the what ifs, you come up with a workable plan that if the very very very worse happens, which it could, you have a plan.

That is all you, anyone can do.

I really sympathise OP. It is miserable, exhausting and boring to have your brain go round and round on well worn grooves without seeming to be able to do anything about it. I also found CBT pretty useless, and also citalopram and sertraline. What did help - I should say, does help, as it’s something I need to return to now and again - was reading Mark Freeman’s book The Mind Workout. He essentially cured himself of obsessive compulsive disorder by really understanding how it worked. He explains how your brain becomes conditioned to “help” you by noticing the things it thinks you want to pay attention to, and so why compulsive checking/googling/thinking reinforces the pattern and leads to more of the same. I really recommend it - he also has helpful YouTube tutorials on it.

Everyone's recommending CBT but I see in your post you've tried it. CBT isn't appropriate for many disorders and issues. You might be better with another trauma based practice, OP, or indeed psychotherapy/talking therapy.

You have my sympathy, OP. It is horrendous living like this.

Fluoxetine helped enormously for me. Almost overnight. To the point that even though my DH did die suddenly, I'm still less anxious than I was.

Can I suggest an alternative perspective?

Acceptance that people you love will get ill one day, even die (everyone does eventually after all) and logically you know that no amount of you worrying will change that fact. You cannot ever control everything in the universe in order to prevent something bad happenin.

What you CAN control is your faith in yourself to be able to cope when something does happen. If your father’s mole was skin cancer, he’d get treatment and likely be ok in the end. It would be scary and stressful but you would
cope. (My mum had it in two separate sits over a period of 14 months, had it removed with skin grafts and lymph nodes biopsies etc, now she’s fit as a fiddle and has 6 monthly skin checks and that’s it - we coped, all is well).

There’s a cheesy quote that I remind myself: a bird doesn’t worry about the branch breaking, because it knows it can fly.

I think a realistic acceptance that something difficult will happen to you or someone you love at some point in your lives, and that you will all cope together when it happens, is a more healthy way to live than obsessively trying to prevent any risk of anything ever happening (which is pointless and futile as sadly you aren’t that powerful in the universe). You cannot keep everyone healthy and alive for ever. Accept that you will never mitigate all risk - and it’s not your job to do so!

Instead use that energy to try to build your faith in your ability to cope when things inevitably come up. Remember all the times you’ve been great in a crisis, supported someone through a different time, and got yourself through hardship. You can and will cope!

*difficult time

The thing with health anxiety though is it makes you worry that you will not catch something early enough, and then it'll be too late and you'll reel guilt, regret, shame that you didn't get it checked sooner. So it's this constant "should I go to the doctors with this? If I leave it, will it be too late? Is cancer spreading through me right now? How do I know?" And it drives you mad.

Some things are completely outside your control, but health campaigns keep telling you that cancer IS in your control if you catch it early enough. So for me, the anxiety is constantly about making sure I don't miss something and come to regret it. How do you accept that? You can't get every little symptom checked at the doctors, or get a scan for everything. If I go to the doctor and they say nah it's fine, I think maybe they've missed something. Maybe I'll be that person in the newspaper who was dismissed by doctors and now it's too late and I'm dying and it's all my fault because I didn't push hard enough for answers.

What you say makes a lot of sense, but anxiety disorders are so irrational that they find a way around it.

The trouble with CBT is it’s all about quick fixes and rational thinking, which is fine and dandy for short term, easily identifiable stresses. But your problem, OP, sounds more like a hyper-reactive limbic system and is probably best understood as a form of neurodiversity.

If you are ND (this isn’t necessarily just autism and ADHD, but can include bipolar, epilepsy and specific learning needs like dyslexia in this umbrella) the best approach is to understand what environments and social supports help you function best. Modern life is stuffed with random nonsense and irrelevant stimuli that most of us have a job trying to navigate, and there are concepts our brains are poorly equipped to understand and can get easily overwhelmed by: for instance, stuff that ‘might’ happen in the abstract, the movement and thinking of crowds and any gathering larger than an extended family group. Which is why social media can be so toxic.

I would suggest working out your best sources of support, then making your life as simple and stripped down of stressors as you can. Then you can work towards calming your mind down as far as possible and learning bit by bit how to handle yourself. It’s no magic answer. It’s a life’s work and you need the right people around you.

It has been said that 95% of our thinking mind is unconscious . So that means there is alot alot we can not control. Think about that. Anxiety is one of those things. Have you heard of acceptance and commitment therapy ? What about EMDR? Or hypnosis? They might be something you should try. You never know what could work for you....

It may sound glib but personally I accept that if that’s what I die of, so be it. If it’s not that, then it’ll be something else eventually. We all are going to die of something. If we avoid the first thing (eg by catching a cancer early enough), then it’ll be something else later on instead. Or I could get hit by a bus.

I’m also not scared of death / being dead, so maybe that helps me accept it and not panic.

Also, most cancers do have warning symptoms and treatments are cutting edge these days so long as you’re aware of what to look for and listen to your body you'll likely catch it in time.

I don’t have health anxiety (clearly!) but I do have a long history of GAD etc and acceptance is the key, I’ve found.

Thats a great and really interesting post. I too feel the same way about death/ dying but only now after years of GAD, Anxiety, health anxiety. I do not know when the 'fuck it, it will be fine' switch happened or why, but it did. Do you know why it happened for you? It might be interesting for the OP to think about this too?

I would try and flip it the other way, as in being grateful and thankful for your own and your loved ones good health. Gratitude is the antidote to anxiety, you just have to practice it. I practice sincere gratitude every day and it does make a huge difference to how you feel and think. Even when I'm doing a menial job such as cleaning l am grateful for my lovely safe peaceful home. You have to really dig deep and be genuine and sincere, not just reel off loads of things in seconds off the top of your head which is what l used to do. My advice would be to read up all you can on gratitude and maybe mindfulness as well, because a lot of your anxiety comes from future thinking.

It wasn’t a “switch” that happened for me as such. I think it comes from my Nan and Grandad. He died of thyroid cancer aged just 64 (I was only 6 at the time but do remember his illness and the day he died). They’d had a beautiful happy marriage and lovely life together and they were just planning their retirement adventures (it was 65 back then) and it was a tragedy that she lost him just before they could do it all. BUT she grieved, and survived, and life went on for her for another 30 years until she died recently at 95.

She filled her life with pleasures (sherry with lunch, champagne if she fancied on a sunny afternoon in the garden, Chanel No 5 every day not just “for best”, a glorious garden, a friendship and close family network, grandkids, great grandkids, a zest for life, and a thousand lovely stories about him and their life together.

I suppose it showed me that even after tragedy and heartbreak, life goes on and it’s better to live it each day as it comes because you never know what’s round the corner, rather than spend it drowning in regret or wracked with anxiety that something might happen. It’s no way to be alive.