Teenager with bad health anxiety

[Bubblegum89]

My daughter is suffering really badly from health anxiety at the minute. She’s convinced she’s going to have a heart attack. The last two nights she’s had a panic attack and been in tears over it, telling me she’s scared to go to sleep in case she dies. She is starting to develop bad eating habits too in that she is terrified of eating too much “unhealthy” stuff in a day, for example last week we had a chippy for tea which we don’t normally have and then my sister bought her an ice cream and she wasn’t going to eat it because she’d already had some chips. She’s already so skinny, she shouldn’t be getting any skinnier.

I have health anxiety too (my trigger is cancer rather than heart attacks). It used to get so bad I couldn’t sleep but over the years I’ve found ways to cope with it. Breathing exercises, general logical thinking etc. I still have the anxiety but I’ve learnt to live with it and not let it dominate my life. I’ve tried talking to her about it. Saying she needs to learn some coping mechanisms and given her suggestions for things she can do like stop googling every single symptom she has. I’ve told her it’s highly unlikely for a healthy 13 year old to just have a heart attack and die in their sleep. There’s not really a lot I can really do or say to stop her anxiety, I remember it took a long time for me to be able to cope better with it. Anything I suggest or try to give her advice on, she just says it’s useless because it doesn’t stop her from worrying.

I don’t know if it’s worth seeing a doctor or if there’s anything more I can be doing to help? I don’t really know what’s brought it on and I’ve never been openly anxious in front of her for the exact reason that I didn’t want her to end up having health anxiety because it’s awful.

[malificent7]

My dd is the same...obsessed with her heart...she does suffer from palpitations and panic attacks. She starts cbt tonight....will let u know how it goes.

[Antares444]

If it helps, I went through a similar situation when I was 13. I ended up in hospital with tachycardia that turned out to be a panic attack. After that I was listening to my heart each and every second, it became an obsession. Later on I felt a bit of pain in my back and I thought I would need a kidney transplant. Every time I felt something, anywhere in my body I was sure I had cancer, or an ictus, or a chronic disease. My pediatrician told my parents to be patient and ignore me. A year later it all disappeared, just like that. I even laughed, remembering how crazy it was. Maybe it's just a phase. It's a complicated age.