Worrying about health

[Whydoidothis]

I'm not sure if I'm depressed or not at the moment but I think something's up because I'm constantly worrying about my health which is usually a signal that I'm beeling a bit low.

Over the pat few weeks I have had fears that I've got MS, a brain tumour, leukemia and at the moment I'm freaking ut because I've convinced myself that a pain in my lower abdomen is ovarian cancer.

I really get myself wound up about any symptoms I feel (be they real or imagined) and my poor DH has to talk me down from the ceiling! The moment I get a twinge of anything I assume it's something really bad.

The thing is being like this did save my life last year because I was going bonkers about a thing on my chest that was odd and it turned out to be skin cancer. So in my mind it totally justifies this response but even I can see that thinking everything is cancer is not logical.

I know that if I go to the GP I will not want to talk about depression (and really don't want AD's) but will want my health fears investigated and once I get the all clear then I'll be ok again and back to my normal self.

Why do I do this to myself - it does my head in.

poor you - surely it's understandable to be this worried when you've had such a devastating diagnosis so recently? Perhaps you should go to the GP and say just what you've said here: that your recent skin cancer has made you very stressed about your general health, and that you would welcome a general health check of some sort? This is not trivial at all - my mum had a melanoma 22 years ago and has checks regularly - they're always taken seriously, you won't be imposing on anyone's time.

Thanks for the reply Toadstool, but I went to the doc and did just that but she said tho that these things often bring up more probs than they solve e.g. they see your BP is a bit high or something which could result in me looking up reasons for that on the net (i know, not the best idea!!) and then "diagnosing" something fatal from that.

Sorry re poor typing - holding a v. wriggly DS.

Hi, I just wanted to say hello and tell you that I am going through exactly the same thing as you at the moment. I didn't have a great birth with my ds last year but seemed fine with it all until I fell ill when he was 3 months old and managed to convince myself that I had polio! turned out to be food poisening! Anyway once again i was fine until my mum said "ooh i looked up that type of food poisening you had on the internet did you know that it could cause a second infection weeks later that can leave you totally paralysed" Cue major health anxiety Cheers mum! I convinced myself that every twinge all tingling sensation was the start of this infection and that I would become paralysed. I was going through some other stressfull things at the time that were also making me feel very low and obviously stress and depression can bring about all sorts of horrible physical symptoms and i've managed to interpret every symptom to mean a really serious illness, i'm not sure how i got to this stage but cancer is a big obsession for me too (brain tumor, liver cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer)My dr knows i'm depressed but doesn't know about the health anxiety. I too am not keen on taking medication so i'm starting counselling next week. Sorry this is long but Iwanted to let you know that someone else is going through the same thing as you. I use to google my symptoms all the time but went cold turkey on that about a month ago and that's helped to reduce my anxiety alot. All symptoms lead to cancer when you look on google! If you do nothing else promise me that you won't google any more symptoms it really won't help you and you'll probably start to develop other symptoms that you've read about like I have done.

tubismybub - cool name BTW - thank you so much for posting. I'm sorry to hear that you're also suffering from health anxiety. It's a nightmare isn't it. It sounds like we're so similar in our perspective and like you the real freak out is cancer but occasionally I branch out into more adventorous diseases with very little provocation (e.g. Mike Baldwins demise frm Alzheimer's on Coronation St was enough to convince me that I was showing early signs of that). I try, try, try not to google the symptoms because I know that they all lead to cancer / certain death but on the very rare occasions that they haven't it's cleared up the anxiety (and, not surprisingly, the "symptoms" disappear miraculously when google doesn't lead to cancer), so I'm often tempted to take the risk IYSWIM.

I'm very interested to learn about your counselling - is that via your GP? Is it CBT or normal counselling? Is it for your health anxiety or for general depression? Would you say that your health anxiety is symptomatic of your depression or vice versa? sorry to bombard you with questions - its not often I talk about this to anyone except poor DH.

To be honest it's taken me months to accept that I have depression because I always said that the only reson i feel depressed is because i feel ill ALL the the time, honestly i can't remember the last time i felt well. But i'm beginning to see that it is probably my health anxiety that has brought about this constant fatigue and feeling unwell (coupled with another stress factor at the time) and that in turn has brought about the depression if you see what i mean? I honestly feel that if i could wake up one day with no physical symptoms then the depression would disapear and for months i've been trying to tackle the physical side but that's not working so it's time to tackle the emotional side i guess. I have such a ridiculous reaction to any physical symptom. last night my neck was suddenly really prickly and itchy and you know what it's like when you focus on itching! So by bedtime i was scratching all over and lay awake worrying that my liver was failing. I've been back and forth to the Dr's so many times with the physical stuff and it was only last time when i broke down that they suggested prozac which i turned down so they offered to refer me for counselling. ( I haven't confessed to the Dr about the Health anxiety they just think it's PND) Not sure what type of counselling it is I've got my first session next week.
Not quite sure how I turned into such a fruit loop although i've always been a silent worrier, when i first heard about bird flu I contemplated filling my under stairs cupboard with tins of food in case of a pandemic . Do you find that since this all started that every TV program or magazine has stuff about cancer on it? I'm sure I wasn't worried about my mole until Flynn on Home and Away was given three months to live!! Although in fairness to myself the mole in question is odd. I've even contemplated paying for a private health check to reassure me of all my health fears but am not sure if this would only provide temporary relief. I've lurked on a anxiety forum where people with health anxiety have paid thousands of pounds for MRI's and still remain convinced they have a brain tumor. Sorry this is long (again but like you i've nevr spoken about my health fears.

We are two peas in a pod - and I think you're spot on about depression being the root of the problem. My mother suffers from depression tho and it's awful what it's done to her life and I'm so so so scared of admitting the possibility that I'm like that too.

This morning I had a bit of a tearful session with my mum and told her how I feel. Interestingly she told me that she has also always worried about her health - she says she's done her nut over skin cancer, alhzeimer's and a total fear that her appendix is going to burst. She also said that her grandmother worried terribly about her health as well so it looks like it's a family trait. What she did do that was useful was to take me thru the family medical history and it turns out that I'm from a pretty healthy family with general longevity (esp for the women) so odds on I'm unlikely to carp it in the immediate future. However my matrnal grandma did have ovarian cancer (and survived - in fact they never told her it was cancer because they thought she couldn't take the worry so she always thought it was a cyst) and my mum is currently getting herself on the programme to see if she carries the gene for that, but as no-one else in the family had before my grandma it it is unlikely.

I've never been on a health anxiety forum to post - I did lurk once and was amazed at what some people were putting themselves thru. I couldn't really recognise myself in them much altho I could see that perhaps these people are where I could get myself if I don't try adn reign this in.

My mum's advice to me (and she is a doc - she said she became a doc because of her health anxiety!) was to talk to the GP and just be honest about what the root of all this is because then they can help you more effectively - as you're going for counselling do you think you will divulge all this to the counseller? Oh and she also said not to go on the interenet!

Hi there

I think that this type of anxiety goes hand in hand with depression, which makes you feel very vulnerable; I certainly react the same way as you, when I am low - both with regard to health issues and larger threats like bird flu. Some people just don't seem to worry. Then there are the rest of us.

I have a great friend who reacts in the same way, but is able to laugh about herself, once the symptoms have disappeared. It's very reassuring to compare fears, and to chat to someone else who reacts the same way.

I really hope that the counselling helps. I think you are wise in realising that the health checks can never eliminate your fears. You need to look at the causes of your fears, which you mole will have made worse, but which will probably have been there anyway. I'm sure that mine is, at in part, learned behaviour. My mum was always ill, and also a world expert on medicines and how to cure yourself. Being ill and trying to cureself and others better was a real preoccupation with her. She really believed that the world was/is a dangerous place to live and that it is her mission to protect herself and others from the dangers of ill health. She spent so much time and energy on this, and was eventually able to go to the docs with early symptoms of breast cancer. Like you then, there is a certain benefit to being 'on guard' but she also lost a lot of enjoyment in life from being so on guard so much of the time.

I will divulge the health fears to counsellor as it takes up such a huge part of my life now and I guess if i want to get the full benefit of counselling then i need to be really honest about what is bothering me. I don't want to feel like this for ever. That's what I hate about some of the anxiety forums is that some people have had extreme health anxiety for decades and i don't want my whole life to be consumed like that.

I will try too see the lighter side of my odd thinking and it does amuse me that I thought I had Polio when i actually had food poisening (DS had just had his polio jabs and i'd read somewhere that you have to be careful when changing pooey nappies cause some people have contracted it that way) I can see that I was being ridiculuos and it does make me laugh now.

Repeat with me do not google do not google do not google do not google do not google do not google do not google.

I'd forgotten the polio vac thing! I used rubber gloves for all the nappy changes for 6 weeks and made dh do the same. (He believes that he is immune to all ills, I think. Strange person for me to be married to.)

I am sure that broken nights/lack of sleep make it worse. That was in those very early days when all of life was a blur, wasn't it?

Best of luck with the counselling.

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I am interested in tackling this via CBT - had normal counselling once before but I just talked about it - I never really had stuff to work on to help me work thru the problem. I will mention it to my GP.

I can laugh about it sometimes - but only when I'm not in the zone. The number of times I've been sure i've had meningitis and it turned out to be a hangover!

I never knew that thing about polio - good thing eh?!

i will not google i will not google i will not google i will not google...

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Oh my goodness - ME TOO, I do this. I lie awake worrying that I may have cancer SOMEWHERE and not know it. And not live to see my little girl grow up....etc etc. It sounds a bit daft to other people I think, but not to those of us who go through it.

I have read that this is a common symptom of PND, and certainly this only started for me in pregnancy so maybe it is a hormone thing. I am also prone to depression though.
Anxiety is a terrible thing to suffer from, I wish there weren't so many of us going through it

Socci, if you don't mind me asking but how long did it take for your anxiety to decrease?

Also what sort of techniques did you use to rationalise it all?

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