Health anxiety

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Does anyone else suffer from severe health anxiety? What are your experiences? Mine is horrendous right now I just don't know what to do...

Yes, from time to time. What are you worried about?

Currently I just feel like I'm going crazy... After 15+ years of anxiety I thought I'd experienced every symptom it could throw at me but recently I've started suffering from a weird thing where I can't feel my legs. It's absolutely utterly rediculous. It got so bad I paid for private therapy as the NHS was taking months and even she said ' well where have they gone? Away with the fairies?'. I'm a businesswoman and a mum yet I'm curled up touching my legs becasue I feel they aren't mine. I am terrified it's going to go too far and I'm going to land up paralysed which is even more bloody rediculous, I feel like I'm going crazy

Re reading that I sound like I need to be bloody sectioned. I just need someone to rant/talk to. It's only there when I'm laying down and I think about it... it's the oddest sensation I've ever had, it's like I need to move them just to know they're okay?

That sounds a little bit like and hallucination feeing that you can't get sometimes.

Does it happen at certain times.
How often has this been happening

I got rid of it for a few months now it's crept back. It's scary becasue it feels so real. It's not a hallucination just a strange tingling feeling I get, I've almost convinced myself it could be something called restless leg syndrome which is quite common... I just don't know if the anxiety comes with that etc. I've got it right now but it's becasue I'm talking about it, it's also creeping into my arms.

I feel like I overthink what my bodies doing if that makes sense, it's like what's small and insignificant to someone else is something huge to me, and as irrational as it sounds and I know it is in my head my bodies just so wired up it feels and analyses every single thing

Yes it's workst when I'm not moving... so watching tv, in bed or sitting in the car. Long journeys are my worst nightmare. Poor DH has to tolerate me shaking my leg all over the dashboard

What help are you having for your anxiety?

Right now I'm not on anything, I've been on and off things and seen so many different people over the years. I know every trick in the book and how evrything works for me but I'm just a lost cause these days. There's no arguing my anxiety is never going away. Everytime I'm free of it it comes back again. Things got bad last September so I went to the gp, he referred me and it was 5 months before my first session... I was back to normal by the time it came round. I walked in to the session free as a bird and couldn't lie about how I felt, we went over the same old diagrams and cycles and I nodded, left feeling great now fast forward a few months it's flared up again. It's never bloody ending

I started having severe panic attacks a year ago. One of the feelings was that my legs felt really heavy and weird. Hard to describe. But it happened when I was sat watching t.v. or in bed a lot. After I'd had a few serious panic attacks I realised I had health anxiety and was terrified of dying. I'm now on 40mg citalopram and it has helped immensely.

I also found that thinking through it logically helped. Just saying to myself that it was the anxiety was what was making me feel these physical symptoms and that there wasn't actually anything physically wrong with me. Letting go and crying and admitting that I needed help from friends and family to talk things through also helped.

I have anxieties over my health since I reacted badly to waking up from an operation in march.

I was absolutely terrified because I couldn't breathe and was shaking like mad now I keep thinking something bad is going to imminently happen to me and I get severe panic attacks.

Oh that's awful regarding the op that must have been so scary for you... I can completely understand how that can push your anxiety levels up. I had quite an awful birth with my second DD, it was 2 years ago now but there's still a lot of anxiety around that for me.

Legs of lead I call it... I get it in my arms as well it's a horrible feeling, it's actually very similar to what I'm experiencing only rather than heavy mine feel paralysed it so hard to explain.

Doesn't anxiety do such horrible things to us... I loved in London for 6 years in my 20s, my panic attacks got so bad I had to leave in the end, I think it was the noise and the business of it all. The therapist I was seeing at the time told me running away wasn't the solution, textbooks say she's right but it made me better for a long time. I did some travelling then settled in the countryside and that did help a lot. I'm certainly not as bad as I used to be but this new symptom... well let's just say it's a bit of a little sod!

I have HA too so can defo relate.
So far, I've thought I had heart problems, brain tumours, various cancers (always terminal) M. S., Parkinsons, its awful. Apologies to anyone affected by them BTW.

All my tests etc have always come back clear, although I'm on yearly recall for smears which I try not to think about as due shortly.

The feeling of legs like lead is common with anxiety but it may be worth asking your GP to rule out B12 deficiency.

To help with anxiety, I take 40mg Propranolol 3 x day, and 20mg Citalopram. Rescue Remedy spray at worst moments.

I'm petrified of going to the GP in case I get told there's something seriously wrong with me. I haven't been since January and thank God I'm still alive and kicking.

HA really sucks!!

Can you put into practice the things you've learnt before? Do you think medication might get you over this blip? And it can go away. It did before! What did you do then to get it to pass?