Scared of living, scared of dying

[ghostinthemachine]

Have changed my name as just can't face fessing up to the mess I exist in.

I am an extraordinarily lucky woman. I have a moderately functional family, two healthy and happy sons, a loving DH whom I adore, a beautiful house, financial security, a job I enjoy etc etc etc. My cup seriously runneth over.

The thing is I ruin it all for myself by being totally negative about things, worrying about stuff, getting in a stew and, in particular obsesing about my health.

I'm particulary terrified of cancer and every day I'm convinced that my symptoms fit something I've read in the news / on here or something. I also worry that my worrying will actually cause cancer, in a kind of self fulfilling prohecy kind of way.

I really, really don't know what to do about it. I'm totally terrified of dying and worry about what would happen to my children and how the loss of their mother could affect them. I think about it in terms that someone already diagnosed with a terminal illness might. I haven't quite planned my funeral but to be honest I sometimes get so into the whole fear that I'm almost at that point.

I go the GP immediately anything worries me, and quite frankly it's laughable how often I've been there in the last 6 months. When I get there I present the public facade of being mildly concerned and 'oh I'm just checking' kind of lighthearted approach that I give to most people when in reality I've been awake all night thinking the absolute worst. I can't bear to tell the real story as GP's just write off hypochondriacs. Also GP's will just give me AD's which I really don't want to get as I want to try and beat this anxiety rather than mask it. Am also scared of taking them.

My poor DH of course sees the real me and it's beyond him. He can't understand why I'm so scared of illness and being a bloke he's not a high scorer on empathy. It's fair to say his sympathy supply is near empty. He thinks I am like this for attention, but if that is the case the attention is so negative and I put myself through so much trauma in the process that I just don't really feel that's the root of it. My family know I'm a bit of a worrier (it's a famly joke) but don't know the half of it and I don't want them to either.

The bottom line is I really need help in tackling this. It's horrible living like this - constantly on the look out of possible symptoms of illness, feeling permanently anxious to the extent that physical symptoms to start to present themselves and I get even more stressed.

I don't know what to do. I don't know where to get help. I don't know if anyone else is like this. I feel alone and scared.

i hope you are ok, i am different in the fact that i hope i will find a lump or something, or that i stop breathing in my sleep.
am v depressed as you can tell, dont know what to suggest for you, but CBT sounds great.

Is that really how you feel? I'm really sorry. I don't know what to say. Have you sought help? You poor thing. Why do our minds torture us like this?

yes
i am on ADs but only been on them 2 weeks so not noticing much. told the doc i was suicidal but she didnt seem bothered..
hope you find relief soon too.

allgonebellyup, have you felt suicidal only since taking the citalopram? Or has this feeling got stronger? If that is the case you MUST go back to the doctors, you MUST. I wish i had more to say to help you hon, just keep coming on here and vent vent vent.

Ghost, there is no shame in what you have, you know that, be logical about it. If you had diabetes you wouldnt be ashamed. Its not your fault, its a wiring problem. I totally understand you not wanting to talk about this in front of your lads, is there anyone who can watch them a while, or maybe have a chat to the clinic, explain you need to see the doc about personal issues and could they arrange for the boys to be watched for a few minutes.

ghostinthemachine. I used to feel like this as well. You are suffering from Health Anxiety and you are far from alone. I found a good website called No More Panic. They have an excellent forum which includes a special forum for those with Health Anxiety.

They are here

I'd really recommend them - if nothing else you'll be able to talk to other people who really understand about this.

That's a really great site, thanks for that. I had a look on the forum and there's all these people worrying about their health and it freaked me out a bit, I really don't want to get to their level (if I'm not already, that is).

lucyellensmum, i did feel suicidal before, but now i would say its slightly worse, but not every day. i take several paracetamol to block out the pain for a few hours.
seeing doc tomorrow hopefully, i dont know what they can do though.

Allgonebellyup I think I was chatting to you on another thread earlier in the week - do let us know how you get on at the Docs tomorrow.

It's sounds like you're in a really painful place. Suicide can sometimes feel like a real option and I'm wondering how much you're thinking about it. Please don't be afraid to talk about it, I don't know how much you're comfortable talking about in public like this, we're all different, but I'm sure you have reasons for feeling this way, so it's important to talk about it with someone you know will listen. If not the Dr you see tomorrow, please try to see a different one - a good one will listen and help, they just sometimes need a bit of tracking down.

I'm sure us mums will be here to listen to you more if you carry on feeling this way after your appointment tomorrow. Take care x

Lulabelle I didn't mean to jump in there and ignore your post - i got delayed in my post to agbu. You are not selfish and stupid, your feelings and fears are very real to you and you are reacting to them - i can't believe your dr told you to just stop it!!! As if it were that easy? What do they teach them these days... did they offer you any counselling or cbt - you're meant to be able to get it on line but don't know if available yet.

thanks webdiva, i think i feel worst when im totally on my own and the kids are out/asleep then i picture my ex with his new woman, torture myself imagining them having sex/kissing etc, and then i torture myself thinking of their baby thats on the way.
the worst feeling is if i have a dream that we are all back together and that dh is with me again, but then i wake up to a freezing cold dark morning and realise it was just a dream.
i am happy to talk on here, but dont want to bring anyone down!

agbu, i think you should start a separate thread - this one is confusing me

But i am so with your ex!! He doesn't deserve you, i just want to say to you not to waste anymore energy on this pig. Does he realise what he has done to you. You will move on from this, you WILL find someone who will love and appreciate you for the lovely person you are. In all of your shit, you have still found time to post to help others, that takes a special person. Then you can look back and think you have had a lucky escape, you deserve better than a man who can leave his family and set up home with another woman in no time at all. I feel quite sorry for his new woman (and who cares about her, bloody man stealing bitch) but she now has to live with the fact that her man not only walked out on his family, terrific character reference that, so is very likely to do the same with her. Take heart honey, this will be her in a few years time. By that time, the snivelling rat may be knocking back on your door, and i garuntee you will have the pleasure of knocking him back into the gutter. Now come on girl, take control here, you are a lovely intelligent woman and you deserve better, your children deserve better. I know you are in asuch a shit place just now and i can't take that pain away, its something i guess you have to go through, but you will come out of the other end and it will be sunnier. STupid bloody man, doesnt realise what he has lost, his loss, totally.

thanks

but it was me who asked him to leave as we had been bickering for months and i was sick of it. He was gutted, suicidal apparently when he left, he tried to come back many times but i said no.
then i suddenly changed my mind and he wouldnt return.

So it IS my fault, this is where my pain comes from, i am kicking myself that i let him go and he moved on so fast.

I really wish I had had Mumsnet in the dark old days when I used to suffer exactly like the OP. Just knowing there were other people about with the same condition would have heartened me: my family just didn't understand how very real it was.

Everything I read about, I developed the symptoms for. I was sure I was going to die of cancer and leave my DDs motherless. My thinking got so twisted that every time I had a headache, say, instead of thinking 'that's a headache' I was sure it was a brain tumour - I mean REALLY sure it had begun. Likewise a sore throat became oesophagal cancer - literally everything. But that's exactly what it was - twisted thinking.

It helped when I STOPPED reading any and all cancer stories and articles (stopped buying women's magazines, for example, which ran such a story every single week, and I would become that woman instantly in my head.) After all, imagine if you lived in a period of history when the word 'cancer' was unknown, how much dread and fear would we save ourselves? - I managed eventually to twist my thinking back around again to how they would have done in those times - 'ok so I look a bit pale, I'm probably a little tired' as if there was no such thing as cancer - because after all, 99.9% of the time there IS some transient and unimportant reason for any symptom.

Time has been a healer, in my case - 'well, it wasn't cancer the last 100 times I had a headache in the previous XXX years since I've been worrying, so why should it be this time?'

Also, it gets easier as one's children get older (not an immediate help to you, I know) but every day that passes your children are that little bit closer to being old enough to cope without you - not that they will have to, but that's a thought that helped me.

Poor, poor you. I have every sympathy for you and anyone suffering from this horrible condition which sucks the light and happiness out of every day and prevents one from enjoying the here and now as one should. But take heart: I hope it will pass for you as it did for me. Mild tranquillisers did help for me - if only to the extent it calmed the physical anxiety symptoms which in themselves made me sure I was dying, and helped me break out of the spiral of dark thoughts. Giving up alcohol completely also helped me - alcohol relieves anxiety in the short-term, indeed, but it actually feeds neurosis and strange thought patterns in the long-term, IMO.

oops by the way i am very sorry for hiijacking someone else's thread

Hello ghostinthemachine hope you've had a better couple of days. Have you managed to see your doctor yet. Wishing you the strength to ask for help.