To visit the walk in centre?

[Sienna333]

The top of my bumcrack has a small white/flesh coloured spot on it and although it looks insignificant, it is stinging like mad and I can barely sit. AIBU to go to the walk in centre? I can't take a minute more of this and what's worse is that I am on my period :(

all the people here with actual illnesses

And this alone is why most of us with mental health illness keep quiet.

I'm sure we hear you loud and clear, once. I was not purporting to speak for everyone - just saying that as someone with cancer I am not offended by the OP's posts.

Exactly, Chowmum!

The OP is NOT pretending to have cancer - she believes that she does have it.

I have also suffered with HA, in my case the anxiety was caused by untreated hypothyroidism.

OP - hope you have seen your GP to get some help. You can and will get better from this.

Ffs cunts on this thread are the reason suicide is so high.

I have health anxiety, as bad as yours, op. I'm a mess at the moment, so bad that your comments about crohns have triggered my anxiety. I too had bloody diarrhoea and am worse in the way that I have had stomach pains and loose poo for almost a year now. Unlike you, I have a hideous phobia of doctors and medical tests and cling to the hope that my anxiety is causing my symptoms and that they will eventually go away. Honestly, just writing this is making my heart race.

What I have learned is that asking for medical advice and reassurance on a public forum like this is going to make you feel worse. There will always be the people who say, 'I had a cousin who had that and they died' etc etc. Don't do it.

People find it hard not to feel angry at people with health anxiety. Even though I have it myself, I can see why. I have a friend with it and the only time she calls me is if she wants reassurance and fails to ask how I am, etc. It does make you selfish, but you can't help it. People have a lot more time for people with depression and wouldn't dream of saying, 'why are you so down, there are people who's children have died and they have something to be sad about, not you.' However, that's the way many people feel about health anxiety.

I'm fuelling my own anxiety by reading your posts, op, and I know I shouldn't be reading them. STAY OFF GOOGLE.

Think of it like this. Health anxiety is like a hole in your roof. The rain pours in through the hole, eventually leaking through your ceiling. The more it rains, the bigger the leak gets until eventually, your upstairs carpets are soaked. The hole in the roof is now gaping and the leak is so bad that your floorboards are rotten through and your electric blows. Your bum sore is now the rotten floorboards. You could get someone in to fix them, get a decorator to paint over any damp marks and an electrician to fix the electrics. You feel better for a day or two...but guess what, that hole in your roof is still there. The rain will never stop and the problems in your house will never stop coming unless you fix the root of the problem.
All the reassurances in the world are not going to do more than mop up a bit of your 'leak' and temporarily hide the water marks. You HAVE to accept your health anxiety and treat that before anything else.

Excellent analogy, Ansumpasty. Sorry to hear you are also suffering.

Have you had any reassurance, OP?

Christ, if you're SO offended by the thread, don't fucking read it

I hope you've had some reassurance/answers OP

'reassurance' is the last thing she needs. It just keeps feeding the illness, as the mind just skips onto the next worrying symptom.

OP how are you today?

If you don’t like it once you don’t have to read it, you can close the thread.

Better still, hide it.

That's what I feel, Jessica. Reassurance rewards the gremlin that wants to imagine a possible physical problem so the gremlin keeps finding more things to fret about with every bit of attention the gremlin gets, rather than the sufferer resolving the very real mental health problem.

OP I hope you get treated soon.

I have IBD, and you know what? It's not that bad! It's annoying but it is nothing like as painful as mental illness is.
I lost more of my life to poor MH than I have/will to IBD. It is crippling.

If you address your HA, and I strongly urge you to do so, you will be able to enjoy your life again. This must be so consuming!

Agreed. So do I. I am SO offended by the whole of this thread. It's an insult to all the people here with actual illnesses who are showing more decorum and dignity in their thumbnails than the OP has in about 15 pages of her nonsense whingeing and histrionics.

Well i'm sorry you are offended but she is mentally unwell.

I watched my children lose their father to cancer. I then watched them watch two grandparents just weeks after die of cancer.

Their father dealt with his dying in a way that amazed me. I was a complete wreck because I thought I was dying (after he died). The reason why I was a wreck was because I was mentally unwell and I was petrified my children would have to go through the same with me.

It isn't logical. You have no reason at all to be offended. It isn't an insult to those who have died or are dying because it isn't logical, it's a mental illness.

I looked back at my children's father dying, we watched him dying in front of our eyes, in agony at a lot of points and that still didn't help me to realise at the time that I was severely mentally unwell. I still have flashbacks to that time, it was horrendous. Not something I would belittle and pretend to have for attention. I was ill.

I wasn't pretending I had cancer. I thought I fucking had it. Why on earth would I pretend to have it after the horrific images of my children watching their dad die went through my head constantly? You think I would want to pretend I had the same? That's a pretty sick thought.

OP is not pretending nothing.

You want her to get banned because she is mentally ill?

When my husband was psychotic he genuinely believed a lot of things. Thankfully, no one told him he was pretending to be all these things. People accepted for the most part that it was real to him, because you know, he was ill.

And yes, reassurance keeps the monster alive.

It was the hardest thing to tackle.

Once I worked on that in CBT I got much better pretty quickly but it took more strength than I can explain to stop seeking it at great lengths.

Well, I didn't stop completely. We have a plan. Anything new i'm worried about I seek reassurance from my husband once. He knows when I am worried because I need to be genuinely concerned and he knows when I am worrying because I am anxious. I am pretty good right now at knowing myself when I need to see a GP and when it's just my anxiety, but in the early days I still needed a bit of help with that.

He stopped the reassuring me countless times a day about the same problem and he won't feed into that any more. He always said the wrong thing accidentally and made me worse anyway.

My poor husband and mum could never say the right thing and I hounded them for reassurance all the time. Absolutely hounded them. It only made me worse and frustrated the ones I love and kept my anxiety alive.

Yep, another one here who has a serious illness and isn't offended. I've been in and out of hospital for 20 years, lost family to degenerative disease, lost a friend to cancer. I've also had HA (tbf there's nothing quite like waking up one day as a 15 year old with symptoms of a life changing disease to make you fearful of what's around the corner!) and i know the last thing the OP it's trying to do is hurt or offend.

OP have you seen the gp and told them how you're feeling?

I agree U2, it really does test relationships and exhaust family members, while at the same time making anxiety worse. My husband is sick of me talking about my worries and I'm driving my mum crazy. It really does push people away :(

The times when I feel best is when I'm with people I don't know very well and then am unable to mention my worries. I forget about them and my pains etc feel better for a while. Try and do this, op. Get out with friends or tell yourself, 'I'm going to have a great day out, listen to loud music in the car, have a laugh, etc for 5 hours (for example) and then allow myself half an hour to worry later. It does your body the world of good

Sienna try not to worry too much. I have internal piles and the toilet water goes bright red and blood on the paper and other than that they cause me no issue.

Some people make me sick and I don’t mean the OP. I watched my darling Mum suffer with depression but not want to see the doctor because she felt there was a stigma attached to it and reading some of these posts I can see why.

The OP is not claiming to have cancer, she’s terrified she is going to be diagnosed with it. FFS I hope some of you never have to deal with mental illness.

OP, I think I remember you saying upthread that you had a GP appointment booked for today - I hope the doctor took your health anxiety seriously and is helping you make plans up tackle it. You can do this.

Yes Ansumpasty It does push people away. I was pretty horrible to my poor husband looking back. I remember him getting flustered once and telling me he couldn't remember what size my mole was months ago. It brought on the mother of all panic attacks and I was crying my eyes out, shouting that he needs to remember. It wasn't pretty.

I think one of the most helpful things was also learning to live with uncertainty. I wanted to control it. I had somehow convinced myself I had cancer and the doctors weren't listening and they were preventing my children from losing two parents. Of course it wasn't logical but it was an ill reaction to a situation. My thought process was fucked. Magical thinking kicked in.

I am learning to accept that there is very little you can control in life and to sit with those feelings of uncertainty and accept it. It's not easy, but right now I am accepting that there are things I can't control and that is something I have to live with, like everyone else in the world does.

I couldn't have done it without profession help though.

ansumpasty that’s really good advice you are giving, but it really sounds like you need to follow it yourself