I can’t deal with this anxiety.

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Led awake. Health anxiety in full motion. I keep waking up with an altered sensation in my left arm. Also like numbness but not numb as I can still feel it to touch.

it making me feel really sick with worry.

im on the waiting list for therapy but it’s a long wait and honestly I just don’t know if I can cope.

Thanks all for the replies.

DH left me in bed for a couple hours to catch up on sleep this morning and I do feel slightly better. The arm tingling/numbness has been happening for a week or so now (rationally thinking, I should have died by now if it was a stroke.. right?!)

I’m going to speak to my GP on Monday as I did have a car accident recently and was told to look out for pins and needles/numbness but I didn’t really know how long I’m meant to watch for symptoms.

It probably is just stress/anxiety causing it. I’ll give the meds a re-think, I really need to fight with my own thoughts to try and get me to try it out.

Sounds silly but do you think diazepam would help take the edge off? It’s the one drug I’m not absolutely terrified of so if that could help maybe I could start with that and see how it goes.

Agree this changed my Heath anxiety almost overnight. My only regret was letting the tablets sit on my dresser for months because I was too scared to take them.

i took mine before bed so noticed very few side effects

I could have written this myself. In fact, I was actually confused for a moment wondering if I did in a state of panic and forgot! I hugely relate to not feeling lucky enough to watch my children grow up, I actually wrote them another letter last night telling them how much I love them, just in case.

I'm currently worrying I have a blood clot or brain tumour after having an achy/heavy leg for few days (yes, logically I know it sounds stupid). I'm picking up on every little thing I feel in my body and it's exhausting.

Also have been prescribed sertraline but too terrified to take it as I've read the first few weeks can be bad. I've recently had a therapy assesment on the NHS and been offered a group CBT online thing which I'm absolutely not going to do, no chance of me talking to a group of people about my issues!

I really sympathise with you OP, you're not alone. It's hard.

100% get on those meds! This post could have been written by me last year. I had crippling anxiety - panic attack after panic attack to the point I was nearly admitted to a ward to be sedated etc.

The only person who can help you get out of this is YOU! YOU need to put in the hard work and source CBT, hypnotherapy, talking therapy etc. YOU need to take those tablets (I get the fear, I had it too!)

Whilst I completely sympathise, I'm also very aware of how we can get help and live our lives to our full potential and not be crippled by anxiety but we need to put the hard work in. Has my anxiety gone? No, and I'm aware it never will as it's an illness that I continue to manage. Am I currently googling risk of sedation death because I may need IVF, yes. But am I having a panic attack? No. Because I'm on my meds, I'm talking through it and I'm using all my positive techniques to prove to my brain that I AM OK!

Big hugs. You've got this. Be brave and take those meds. You won't regret it.

What she's describing is exactly what health anxiety is.
Anxiety can give you physical symptoms and can make you focus on them. She needs support yes but it's not delusional

So you don’t want to try first line, safe anti anxiety medication but want diazepam which has a high risk of addiction and misuse.

my experience with diazepam just means it’s a drug I can trust. It might sound silly to you, but that’s health anxiety for you.

When I weigh up the common side effects of SSRI’s vs Diazepam, the Diazepam is more ‘safe’ to me. Yes there’s a risk of addiction if used for over 4 concurrent weeks. My thinking would be to use it when I’m feeling my worst, like last night.. just to take the edge off.

I’ve had many years of CBT therapy. I can generally keep my anxiety under check but when I’m not actively in therapy it gets bad and harder to control.

I know all of that makes me sound naive. But it’s just how my thought process works to keep myself safe.

Have you tried any other forms of therapy?
And put the principles into practice? Are you doing that now with CBT? Or not using the tools?

ACT, EMDR, clinical hypnotherapy

I’ve been where you’ve been OP. It’s awful. I promise you, you can recover from this and lead a happy life where you don’t focus on your health.

Some things that helped me:

• google ban - genuinely mean this - no searching for anything health related at all! It’s a killer initially but helps a lot.
• Rules about body scanning - I used to prod, scan, repeatedly check my body. I found it helpful to put rules in place…”I will not check my breasts for the next hour” to “I will not check for the next 7 days”…again so do hard but also helps significantly.
• self care - whatever this may be for you, for me it was walking and taking baths.
• i started meds. I put it off for so so long and made such a big deal of it. Finally started a low dose of meds and haven’t looked back!!
• I love the anxiety guy pod casts - highly recommend! These REALLY helped me.

What I would say is that you need to force yourself to implement some of these - it’s not easy and will feel like torture not checking whatever it is you are obsessing about.

I’ve barely thought about health issues for the last 2 years - I will always be more likely than others to react to health issues with panic but on the whole it’s not a massive part of my daily life any longer.