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Mental health

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Original poster

Health anxiety

67 replies

Sunshinebay · 16/10/2011 21:54

I feel like this has been going on for far too long but can't help myself. I panic at the slightest thing and end up a bag of nerves. I am paranoid about my breasts and am always checking them, I had a cyst 13 years ago and have never been the same since even though it was not serious. I am also having throat problems, a tight feeling that comes and go's depending on how I feel, also I am a singer and had a vocal haemorrhage and so had blood after singing, I am waiting to see a specialist and although it has probably healed now as it has been about 6 weeks since I last sang but I sometimes think I can taste blood especially in the night if I get up to use the bathroom and it really scares me. How can I help stop these feelings I have?

OP posts:

Toobusyforthis · 17/10/2011 19:29

I wish I knew how I could stop this! I was just about to write a very similar post.

I saw a swelling in my armpit (noone else cam see it!) I get breast pain so I am also constantly checking my breasts (like every night) I had abnormal smear once so now I'm obsessed over cervical cancer symptoms. It's becoming unbearable. My period is late and I'm not pregnant so now I'm googling it and worrying I have some sort of brain tumour.

The constant fear is ruining my life. You are not alone in feeling this way and I will be hoping you get a useful response.

Xxx

Drumlin · 17/10/2011 20:42

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

neverever · 17/10/2011 20:53

I suffer from health anxiety, it's not too bad just now but currently have a chest infection but because we stayed at a hotel last week am worried I have legionnaires :(, I feel better if I am busy not too much time to think about things and don't google as much now, I find when I am tired/ Ill I start obsessing about things more. Have had a course of CBT and exposure therapy in the past which did help, and also had the throat thing, which rears it's head on occasion especially when am stressed. I found the website "no more panic" helped me alot too knowing that my symptoms were common for anxiety sufferers. I totally sympathise, it's horrible and takes up so much of your life worrying about things.

Original poster

Sunshinebay · 18/10/2011 21:46

I feel like I am an epert on health anxiety LOL. I have started with sessions today in pschological wellbeing and have six of those then go on to CBT which I understand is a great help. I find keeping busy is a real help, it is very easy to think you have everything going and it becomes all consuming. I found going to my Doctor every three months for a breast check up really helps, and trying not to check myself. With any health issues, I find it helpful to just go to see the doc and talk over my fears, he knows me well now and is very understanding, a good Doctor is worth is weight in gold. I used to go from one Doc to another just to try and find comfort which is apparantly common. I am also taking st johns wort now.

OP posts:

LizaTarbucksNonSmokingAuntie · 25/10/2011 08:59

Hello, can I join this

I'm currently driving myself mad.

FIL was diagnosed with Cancer this time last year and I think a combination of that plus some other stressed have just tipped me over the edge of rational about my health.

I'm pretty sure all that is wrong with me is that I'm getting myself into a state about what might be wrong with me - given I'm crying because people are describing how I feel above.

I don't know why I can't just relax and get on with my life and I'm getting so bound up with it I'm paralysed for anything else.

Can I just sit here quietly on this thread with you for a while and know I'm not on my own please?

NanaNina · 25/10/2011 12:08

So so sorry for all you people - I have also worried about my health from time to time and have paid for private consultations. However (and I don't mean this to sound in the least bit unsympatheric) I think what we are sffering from is anxiety which happens to be focussed on health. Some people's anxiety manifests itself in different ways but is just as horrible. I think the remedy has to be treatment for anxiety. There are some ADs that are very helpful with anxiety, or CBT as someone else has suggested, or yoga or meditation (sorry I know this is sounding a bit airy fairy) I am just trying to point out that we need to deal with the anxiety and if we can keep that in check then the health scares should go away.

Having said all that I know I am still very susceptible to "health" anxiety.

NanaNina · 25/10/2011 12:11

Me again - and we must stop consulting Dr. Google, which can only make us feel worse. The thing is with the Family Dr type books of yesteryear, they only gave you a brief paragraph about something, whereas google will take you through from start to finish and I used to do it a lot, hoping to be helped but it always made me feel worse. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and so is Googling health stuff.

recall · 25/10/2011 12:16

I have suffered with health anxiety for years. Now I've got children, I become anxious about their's too. I am mostly on top of it now, I saw a psychiatrist when I was pregnant last and she prescribed me Sertraline. I feel so much better. Mine was awful during pregnancy because I had to stop and start medications - nightmare.

When I am suffering it takes over my life, it is a bully.

LizaTarbucksNonSmokingAuntie · 25/10/2011 13:58

Funnily enough I went off and remembered to use Mood Gym after I'd posted which has really helped me today.

Recall Bully is a good word for it.

neverever · 27/10/2011 17:38

dr Google is bad, I have had everything going according to him lol. I am feeling better now just had a chest and sinus infection so 2 lots of anti biotics later (and no wine for 3 weeks) am starting to feel better.

What do you all do to try and relax? I love reading and having a bath too!

MissBetsyTrotwood · 27/10/2011 21:58

I'm approaching the end of my CBT and despite a major blip on Sunday night (during which the old crap just picked me up and wiped the floor with me) have found it amazingly helpful. It's not a cure but it gives you a whole load of tools to tinker around with and use to dismantle the beast.

BupcakesandHaunting · 29/10/2011 11:13

Hello, I was wondering if there was a thread for us HA sufferers and here it is...

I really need people to talk to, basically. I have worked myself up into such a state this week over ovarian cancer that I have barely left my bed. My doctor gave me beta-blockers yesterday after I had an epic wobble in the morning and forced myself to go to the surgery. DH is wonderful but doesn't really understand what it feels like to have these anxiety attacks. I feel like I'm going mad. :(

madmouse · 29/10/2011 13:14

Here's another one - only I don't worry about my own health, but incessantly about ds. He has a cough just after he had a willy infection and not long before that a cold. I did well with the cold and the infection but this cough, and the temp he had with it one evening, sent me into a stupid spin. Panic, worst case scenarios, not sleeping, incessant checking.

I must say I don't google, but I do look on the NHS website, which basically gives such a dry list of symptoms that it helps me tick off anything serious.

I'm on the waiting list for CBT but I've decided I rather pay than wait. I've emailed a therapist last night, she is phoning me later...

Something in me just doesn't believe that ds is for keeps - I've had a very difficult childhood and I 'learned' that good things are not for me, plus we nearly lost him at birth and he is disabled.

MissBetsyTrotwood · 29/10/2011 19:38

madmouse I'm crying as I read your last post, seeing myself in it especially the first and final paragraph. DS1 has a temperature tonight and I can't stop thinking that this is the start of something awful. CBT is great but when you have thought a certain way for so long it takes a long time to start to believe the alternatives. Good luck.

Bupcakes I convinced myself I had ovarian cancer last spring. I knew it. I felt mad too, like I was right and everyone else (including the GP) was wrong. But it did pass. I don't know how, but it did.

You're not mad. You probably don't have ovarian cancer either, but you're not mad.

madmouse · 29/10/2011 19:42

The therapist rang this afternoon - we had a chat and she thinks I may benefit from EMDR regarding ds's birth and a very retraumatising one night! hospital stay last year. She may be right. She also agrees about CBT. We are meeting a week on Monday. I think proper professional CBT will help as self help CBT has already made some difference. I know I need to learn to live with uncertainty and stop trying to control everything...

madmouse · 29/10/2011 19:43

MissBetsy I know what you mean - 60% of me believes that ds has turned the corner - no temp for two days now, he's eaten his dinner again, has been chirpy and bouncy, he just coughs - but the other 40% won't let me believe it in case it is not true...

MissBetsyTrotwood · 29/10/2011 19:52

I feel really embarrassed to admit this problem to my friends.

Some of them know I have been seeing a therapist and all of them know about what has happened to me in life but they don't know the way I'm struggling, iykwim. I didn't even know health anxiety was a thing until I was diagnosed.

See, I read about your son and my reaction is 'He is fine - please don't worry.' But then I think about my DS and I start to feel absolutely terrified, like stomach churningly awful.

MissBetsyTrotwood · 29/10/2011 20:06

Oh, and I am good at hiding it too. Not from my family but I have a really good 'alright' mask. And when it feels a bit transparent, I just don't go out. Or I avoid social situations as much as possible. Luckily, we have a big house and the kids are homebodies.

I just hope I don't pass this shit on to them.

neverever · 29/10/2011 20:42

I believe that I have what I wanted as a little girl, lovely dh, 2 beautiful dd's a job I love that, I sometimes think, right something has to go wrong now and it's going to be taken away from me or me away from it. I have never written that before it looks so bad written down!

I am much better than I was in that my ha does not affect me on a daily basis but if I am Ill or anyone else, that's it I feel myself slipping back again.

Dh understands to a degree but he admits when I was bad it was tough going, I was not like this before children. I admit I try and hide it now from those that are close as I don't want them to worry anymore.

Take last week I have had this horrendous cough/chest infection/sinus thing that's going about but because we were away for a night in a hotel I believed I had some obscure illness, I asked 2 doctors about it petrified that they had misdiagnosed me. I really feel like giving myself a kick at times.

MissBetsyTrotwood · 29/10/2011 21:09

I know what you mean neverever . I believe that I'm going to die young. I love my kids, my DH, my home, my family but I find myself imagining how they'll live after I've gone. DH will move on, find another wife, mum for the kids... And so it goes on.

It's hard for our OHs to understand, isn't it? Did you feel the pressure was on because you were going away?

neverever · 29/10/2011 21:23

No, was desperate to go away, I don't know, I think I have been doing too much lately. I don't think I will die young just have this fear of something happening I don't know what.

BupcakesandHaunting · 29/10/2011 23:59

I have a ridiculous fear of dying young. I think of DH marrying someone vile and DS having an evil stepmother. I think what will happen if DS is bullied at school and I am not here to help him? It eats me up.

neverever · 30/10/2011 08:58

bupcakes I know you have just realised you have HA, have you spoken to your DH? I suppose it's early days.

Betsy my DH was very understanding in the beginning but I can see he gets frustrated with me at times, he doesn't say but I know he does.

How is everyone today anyway it's lovely and sunny here, if a little cold.

MissBetsyTrotwood · 30/10/2011 10:50

We're all OK. Dreary drippy autumn here but I do like it!

DH away working so just me and kids and a halloween party later. Held by a couple who are a psychologist and ex psychiatrist . The temperature never came to anything; he slept off whatever was bubbling away and this morning I feel silly.

I think it's hard for OHs to understand something so alien to most people. I wonder what's making him more frustrated now than at the start? Is it that he thinks you should be getting 'better'? I think my DH is more tolerant now he knows more about the condition but he still doesn't really get it. I find him reading the hand out things I get from the therapist about anxiety and HA in particular and I think that helps a lot.

HA isn't us, is it? It's just something we do...

MissBetsyTrotwood · 30/10/2011 11:00

Thinking of you all today .

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