to be constantly worried about my health?

[YoungMouse]

I rarely go to the doctors so at least my health anxiety isn't affecting me in the sense that I go to the GP all the time for reassurance, but in my head I fall asleep at night worrying I have cancer or MND. In my family we have had lots of breast cancer (7 women and 1 male), some motor neurone disease (3 male), leukaemia (this has killed 6 family members, but they were all aged 40-70 and all male), schizophrenia (3 family members, 2 male 1 female) and a multitude of other things. I have a huge family (my gran is one of 14, my mum is one of 6, dad is one of 4, I'm also 1 of 4) so of course lots of people are going to get ill and it will seem like there's someone very unwell a lot of the time, but I worry so so much to the point I drive myself insane. It only started when I had my son. Does anyone else feel like this? How do you stop yourself worrying?

I think it is time to go to your GP to discuss this.

I feel like there are two categories of people who have health anxiety. Those who go to the GP every other week, and those who avoid the GP like the plague. I fall into the latter and think you might be right, but in all honestly I'm not sure what they'll be able to do.

Yes a bit. It started when my dad died from bowel cancer when I was 28. I’m 34 now and have lost two other young (my age) friends to cancer which hasn’t helped. The thing that I come back to is them actually - I think to myself that they’d do anything to have life like i do so I try to make the most of it and not waste it worrying about something that may never happen. I make sure I’m aware of the different signs of cancer and try to leave it at that. I hope you find a way to cope too!