How to approach GP without being brushed off as anxious?

[TeaAndSymumthy]

I’ve just finished my therapy for some quite severe health anxiety. I do feel much better worry-wise and I don’t feel like I’m constantly going to die or be diagnosed with something terminal.

However.. I’m still having symptoms of something. I dont feel immediately threatened by it and I don’t really feel ‘anxious’ about my symptoms, just that they happen and I don’t know why.

I've been googling why I might have random pins and needles in my feet/hands/legs recently and have come across MS, just looking at the symptoms on the NHS and almost every single symptom is what im experiencing as flare ups, ill have weeks of feeling normal, and then go through a patch of having symptoms come up all at once for weeks.

My fear is, I’ve been to the GP/A&E/Out of Hours so much with my health anxiety that I must have some sort of label on my record and now I’m sent off everytime told it’s nothing and wait it out.

I want to be taken seriously this time and actually investigate, but I’m worried they’re going to think I’m just anxious and barking orders to investigate because of that.

I feel like the girl who cried wolf 😭

Might keeping a symptom diary (Bearable app for instance) for a couple of months help? Being able to show that you've been trying to find a pattern yourself before going to the GP with something more like actual data might help. Also, a diary might help you to pay less attention to symptoms once they're written down so if there is a bit of hyperfocusing on sensations going on it could rein that in a bit.

I find a diary good because it lets me ignore my symptoms once I've noticed them enough to write them down, rather than my brain trying to resolve the question of whether or not they are significant there and then. Essentially I park the decision about whether the sensation matters until I've got more info. Then, after a little while, if a symptom is still clearly there despite me mostly not paying attention to it, I feel more confident about going to the GP because I can show I haven't rushed there. Also, sometimes I do discover another cause by spotting a pattern related to factors like sleep.

I don't want to sound like I think your symptoms are anxiety but the way. Just that I think some of us who have been anxious have to show how we've considered and tried to rule out anxiety as a cause for any symptoms ourselves, because of other people's assumptions. We have to show our working, if you like.

This is a really good idea thank you! I find writing down what makes me anxious helps a lot in stopping the over thinking so I can see how writing down symptoms can help too! I’ll start making a log of when/what I’m experiencing 😊