Health anxiety

[waterallday]

Does anyone else have this? Currently feeling really tired with headache, shivery/dizzy etc which is most likely down to exhaustion/virus but I'm convinced I have sepsis from a shaving cut on my leg or toxic shock syndrome from a tampon etc.

It's really stressful :(

Have you ever heard of mindfulness? I find it quite helpful at times. Health anxiety took over my life a few years ago - as in I would go and sit in the hospital during the day because I was convinced I was about to drop dead at any moment. Everything was a symptom.

I saw my GP who prescribed medication (anti depressants) they kind of helped, and I was on them for a lot of years. I came off them recently after a doctor gave me a talking to about getting outside more and eating proper food and getting myself out of the rut I was in (really upsetting at the time, but I took his advice and feel much better these days - bar the odd blip when I'm stressed). In hindsight counselling would likely have been far more useful for me.

I'm sorry you've been through this! Awful isn't it, I am actually receiving CBT for OCD atm and I've been on antidepressants for anxiety and ocd for 6 years now.

I might mention it to my GP as it's relatively new for me, everything is a symptom! 😫

I used to suffer this, it was truly debilitating. Nobody understood and my family tried to have me sectioned. It really is awful OP, the worst years of my life. You have my total sympathy.

I second going to the GP though and kick starting some treatment. Best of luck. Please feel free to message me anytime. I never thought I’d come out the other end of it.

@MegaBlocks Thank you, I'm so sorry to hear about your experience, it's so hard for other people to understand isn't it! My DP calls me an attention seeker or drama queen (jokingly!) but I'm truly scared!

Nobody can understand until they’ve been there. It absolutely crippled me and my every day life. I couldn’t leave the house. I didn’t sleep I used to check my pulse and temperature in intervals, spend most of my days googling symptoms panicking I was going to die amongst many other things . It sounds ridiculous writing it all down but at the time I was so convinced and so scared. The anxiety then gives physical symptoms which then makes you feel like there’s something wrong, it was a never ending circle of hell.

I had the drama queen/ attention seeking comments. Sometimes jokingly most of the time it wasn’t a joke. They were angry and frustrated at me and thought I was taking the piss. I really wasn’t though. They said some truly awful things to me and I never really had any proper support. Somehow I got there though but it’s definitely best to start getting help early before it eats away at your whole life. X

@MegaBlocks I'm so sorry mine isn't that bad thankfully (with the checking pulse etc!) but as you've said it's a slippery slope so best to nip it in the bud.

I feel like it's not very well understood/known? It's seriously debilitating!

I have this. I'm really struggling with it at tge mo. I've had anxiety for a while but the health anxiety is about 6 months old. It get worse randomly or seemingly so. I'm OK today but a few days ago I started to feel panicky when I had indigestion. I don't have any great advice but I wanted to let you know you're not alone!

@BuildBuildings Thank you! I'm sorry you're suffering maybe we could all come back to this thread for support when we need it? I've never met someone in real life with it!