Warning: do yourself a favour and don’t read this thread if you have health anxiety as it will obviously be triggering. I accept that I have abnormal anxiety and need help. Most people are not worried about this
I don’t know if anyone can really help me with this. Just wondering if anyone might be able to offer some perspective. As a kid we sometimes visited the northeast of the US and would be warned to look out for ticks on woodland walks etc, I hated it and was so glad it wasn’t something we needed to worry about in the UK (actually I was probably wrong about that, but certainly numbers were much lower here). I can’t remember when I first read in the news that Lyme Disease was becoming an increasing issue in the UK, but I think it was probably around 2017. Since then I have grown increasingly worried about it to the extent that it is really affecting my life. Hiking used to make me happier than anything else in the world, I don’t really like doing it any more because the whole thing of having to check my entire body for a tick so tiny that I might easily miss it anyway spoils the pleasure for me. Friends who live in rural areas in Sussex and West Wales have invited me repeatedly to visit them, I want so much to go and see them (and they can’t understand why I’m not coming, I don’t want to tell them the real reason because I don’t want to be a drag) but I just feel too nervous as I’m sure they will want to go for walks through grass and I don’t want to explain why that makes me nervous. Even stuff like going for picnics in the park is making me anxious as there have been cases of people getting bitten and infected in London parks. Even going for walks on paved ground I worry about brushing against some greenery accidentally. I feel like it’s not long since all the limitations caused by Covid, and now this anxiety is making my life feel limited in a different way. Can anyone relate?
I realise this is excessive health anxiety and I probably need a therapist, but it feels hard to work out where the sensible medium is. Ticks are so tiny, there seem to be a lot of stories of people not realising they’ve been bitten and not recognising they’ve been infected until the disease is already doing a lot of damage to their system. There are also the stories about doctors not recognising that Lyme Disease is a problem, refusing to treat without a bullseye rash (which not all infected people get) etc. It just feels like a bit of a nightmare.
Can anyone help to give me some perspective? I know plenty of people go out and enjoy the outdoors every day without getting bitten or infected. I know even if people do get infected, sometimes they catch it early and get it treated with antibiotics. I try to remind myself of those things, but this fear is really limiting my life and I hate it. I feel like I would be too scared to get a dog or a cat, or to visit friends with pets, in case they have ticks and transmit them. It’s awful.