Crippling health anxiety

[Newcomer12]

Hi,
I'm new here but I was wondering whether anyone could help me. I am dealing with crippling health anxiety that started few weeks ago when I got the covid jab. I am a healthy 23 year old, never before had any issues with anxiety or depression. I was exercising daily, going out, enjoying life. Few days after getting covid jab, I read some comments online from people that didnt wanna get vaccinated calling it experimental therapy and that it's gonna cause long term health problems and stuff like that. That freaked me out and ever since then, i can't shake that feeling. What made it worse is that I had covid before so I didnt really need to get it. And the thought of me not being able to take it back is even worse. Its got so bad that I abrely leave my house because of the anxiety, cant sleep, dont reallt go gym anymore, basically everything I found enjoyable just seems a waste of time now.
I tried to talk to my GP about it but he told me to try to relax and that he can't really help me with something that might or might not happen in the future. He then told me that he can prescribe anti depressants if it persists for couple more weeks. But thought of that freaked me out even more because I was fully fine before the getting the jab so I got even more scared. I am now convinced that something bad is gonna happen to be because of the jab and that I destroyed my life. Please can someone help me or share whether you had some similar issue and how it got resolved?
Thank you.

Oh, one last thing before I go and harvest my almonds. You mentioned CBT techniques so here's one for you. Think back to a time when you were absolutely convinced of something, but it turned out you were completely wrong.

Maybe the time when you absolutely knew your sister had stolen your shoes, but they were in the back of the wardrobe all the time. Or the time you knew you had failed that exam, but you actually passed.

Or look back at the recent thread where the poster knew the appliance her husband was using was an oven, not a microwave. Turned out she was 100% wrong and it was, in fact, a microwave.

Write them down and remember the original thought, the feelings that arose from that thought and then the feelings you had when you realised your thought was false.

Try The Worry Trick book by David Carbonell. I found it really helpful.

I think maybe this triggered fear of death in my mind and suddenly I cannot stop thinking about it. I know that the rational thing would be to make the best of it since we only live once but the anxiety just makes me not want to do anything no matter how I try to justify it.

www.healthline.com/health/thanatophobia#outlook

You've got +/- 60 odd years left, statistically, so you could waste the next five years or so paralysed with fear and still have a long and productive life. Or you could seek the help you need now. Up to you.

Covid is actually know to cause some people to develop mental health issues. Your problem is not the vaccine, but you are possibly suffering a long term effect of covid.

My usual suggestion for anxiety is that you increase your consumption of magnesium. Dark chocolate is a pleasant way to do so but you could also eat nuts or take a long soak in a warm bath that has epsom salts in it. You can absorb magnesium through your skin. If near the sea go and swim in it, magnesium in the sea too.

Should that fail go back to your gp, ask them to look into higher levels of anxiety post covid and prescribe something to help.

I don't think it's the long term effect of covid because I've recovered in January and I was completely fine until end of June (when I got the vaccine). I was going through a reddit page where people report side effects and some were reporting anxiety/depression post jab without experiencing anything like that before. I thought it might be that as well but most of them said theirs went away within couple of days/weeks. I honestly feel kind of defeated because so many people I tried to talk to about it couldn't get through to me. I dont even know what triggered it. First 14 days post vaccination I've had terrible anxiety attacks that had no particular trigger. At that time I was worried about some effects on my health but I just brushed it off but these attacks kept persisting. Then it stopped for about 2 and a half weeks. And then it started again but much worse to the point it is now. The only difference between those 2 stages of anxiety is that during 1st I wasn't really worried about the possibility of dying because I was able to convince myself that it will go away. But during this 2nd stage, that feeling of hopelessness never goes away because I keep thinking that there's no way to take that decision back now and that triggers worries about dying and it just spirals out of control from there. At this point I honestly think that maybe some sort of medication will help but even that seems a bit of a stretch.

Go to your GP. Don't try CBT techniques on yourself as they won't work until/unless you understand why they are used.

You will get through this but you do need outside help.

I had a similar thing - my anxiety seemed to start one day in March this year, had my first panic attacks and it was horrendous.
It has been a journey of several months, which has been up and down, but cbt has helped. You can self refer for this via health in mind. It hasn't stopped the anxiety, but it helps you to identify key thoughts and processes that are unhelpful, and guides you through addressing these.

For me, I actually realised I've had anxiety for a few years without actually recognising the signs, and the lockdowns and reopenings just bought it all to a head and it all boiled over.

It does get better, be kind to yourself and please self refer for cbt - it's not a magic wand, but it does help.