Hi all. I haven't been on this thread before but it popped up on my Active conversations so I've had a read of some of the posts. I wanted to chip in and offer a bit of advice/support, if I can. My background is I am 39, two kids, and have had HA for my entire life - initially just focused on my own health, and then once I had children, it transferred to them too. You name it, I have worried I have had it. I don't actually want to list the things I think I or the DCs have had as I don't want to trigger fear in you when you're reading this, but suffice to say just about every form of cancer known to Man, plus MS, dementia and loads more. Seriously. I know exactly how it feels to feel you need to leave the dinner table to go and feel your neck lump to see if it's grown for the fiftieth time that day, or to not be able to leave the house because you can't stop checking your breasts or you're trying to convince yourself that that mole doesn't look dodgy or you've always had that slightly odd-looking birthmark on your arm that you've never really paid attention to. I have spent family holidays feeling totally paralysed by the fear and obsessing over a symptom, while also feeling angry and frustrated with myself because I know I should be able to handle it, and genuinely wondering how people without health anxiety live their lives. I have been back and forward to the GP with so many different symptoms, always seeking that reassurance. So I hope you believe me when I say I totally understand your fear and how you're feeling right now.
The reason I'm posting is that I am genuinely in a really good place with my mental health these days, and if I can do it, you can too. Honestly. I never thought I would get over health anxiety. It completely ruined my life and destroyed happy family time as I could never concentrate on anything. I would hold it together at work (distraction is good) and then come home and spend all night surreptitiously checking my symptoms and hoping DH couldn't see me doing it (because we all know deep down that our fears are irrational, but that doesn't stop us doing it).
What helped me was advice from an anonymous poster on a forum (ironically about medical issues). I don't know his name, but to this day I am so grateful to him. He explained it all so clearly to me. He said that HA is a form of OCD, and once he said that, it made total sense. I also displayed OCD-symptoms as a teenager, so it's logical that it spiralled into HA. With OCD, the person feels a fear, they can't stop worrying about the fear, and they develop rituals that their brain associates with making the fear better. Doing the rituals provides reassurance (which reinforces the need for the ritual) but this then tricks the brain into thinking that the fear is genuine, so ultimately makes things worse. Eg if you have OCD which manifests itself in fear of contamination, you might not be able to use a toilet that you know someone else has used. You start cleaning all the bathroom with bleach before you use it, and eventually you develop a pattern for how you do this cleaning. You feel temporarily better, and then you can use the toilet. But soon the fear will come back, and you'll have to do the cleaning all over again. The ritual provides temporary relief but ultimately reinforces the fear.
This is how HA presents. You develop a fear of a particular illness, generally triggered by perceiving a symptom (or often just being fearful that you have a symptom - eg obsessively needing to check your breasts for lumps, and panicking that you might have missed one, so checking again). You Google for reassurance, hoping to read stories that this type of illness is very rare, particularly in someone your age group or with your lifestyle. Often you do then find this kind of information (especially if you're worrying about one of the rarer forms of cancer), so temporarily, you feel better. But it's not enough. The fear comes back. You google again, needing more information to reassure yourself. Or you go to the GP, and they reassure you. You feel better for a while, but then either the fear comes back (what if the GP missed something? Should I have had a scan? Or if the GP offered you a scan - they must be worried, or they wouldn't have offered it...). You end up going back to the GP again for the same problem (to get the "fix" of the reassurance) or the HA just transfers itself onto a new symptom, and the cycle starts again.
Here's the thing. The googling and the GP visits are the ritual, and they provide the short-term reassurance. Ultimately, however, they just feed the fear. So does the constant looking for symptoms or feeling your skin for lumps or whatever. All these behaviours just reinforce in your brain that yes, there is something to be scared of. And then you need the rituals again for the temporary relief. Once this was explained to me by that internet poster I realised it was true and that actually the Googling and GP visits were ultimately making my anxiety worse.
He recommended the following:
- This is key. Confide in someone you trust. For me it was DH, but it doesn't matter who you choose, it just has to be someone who gets you and will support you, and crucially, who you trust to make good decisions. However - and this is really key - it also has to be someone who is in a stable position with their mental health, and in particular, does not have HA.
- Don't Google symptoms. Ever. Go totally cold turkey. If you find yourself in a position to need to do this, distract yourself however you can. Go for a walk, make some food, do something with your hands, make yourself do a puzzle. Talk to the person in point 1 about how you are feeling. Ask them if they would worry if they were experiencing this symptom (this is key for me, especially if I am worrying about the DCs - I ask DH because they are his children too. It has actually really helped not feeling like I have sole responsibility for worrying about their health). If they agree that they would be worried, ask what they would do. This tells you what a neurotypical response would be. The most likely thing they will tell you is that they wouldn't be worried about the symptom, or that they would wait and see how you feel in a few days, and then consider going to the GP. The key is that you must follow their advice, even if you feel you don't trust it. While you are recovering from HA - and you recover - you have to give temporary responsibility for making decisions like this to someone who doesn't suffer from it, to regain a sense of what a normal response to possible illness is. If they feel they wouldn't be worried, tell them to be a bit harsh with you. DH used to say to me, "this is not something you need to worry about and I am not going to provide you with reassurance because you don't need me to." It sounds harsh but you have to convince your brain that the fear is not rational (because it isn't. How many of you have actually ever been diagnosed with any of the illnesses you've terrified yourself that you've had?)
- Do not go obsessing and checking for symptoms. If your brain tells you to, or you get a fear-thought, develop a mantra to repeat to yourself. Mine is "this is just my silly brain talking". The key thing is to minimise the fear. Do not allow your brain to dwell on the fear. Repeat your mantra and shut it down.
You must not, not allow yourself to take part in the rituals. The rituals are Googling and GP reassurance visits. If you have a genuine illness, yes, you need the GP, but that is what the person in point 1's job is, to temporarily decide for you what to do. This is hard. It is really hard to not go to the GP for reassurance.
I would also consider whether being on a thread like this truly helps you. I don't wish to seem harsh, and I know you've probably been chatting for a long time, some of you - but I've only read a few posts and could feel some of my old fears rising, and I am in a much better place mentally these days. Consider carefully if this thread is part of the reassurance-ritual trap which provides relief but ultimately heightens the fear and whether actually, stepping away from it might be better for you.
I'll repeat it one more time: the rituals make the fear worse. The drives for reassurance are temporary and not ultimately helping you. You are addicted to them in the same way an alcoholic wants booze. Learning this was the most important thing I ever read on the internet. I am now three years down the line from my crisis point and I am at the point now, honestly, where I feel my fear of illness is almost on a par with DH. I went to the GP on a monthly basis in 2017; I have been once in the last 18 months (and that was because I had a bad eye infection, no mistaking that one!). I can even allow myself to google medical stuff now, but I can step away from it when I recognise the anxiety building.
I'm going to stop there now because this is ridiculously long, but I hope that maybe it helps someone like that poster helped me.