Conversations that set you off !

[kimmy]

If we believed or took notice of eveything we wouldnt function!!!!!! Its hard but you have to move on, dont mean to be blunt! BUT we just have to!

[sarahe2905]

Ooooh i know all about this one!

I thought recently i had managed to get a grip on my health anxiety. Until i spent one day whilst sitting in a lecture theatre. I developed a headache and started to feel pretty shite, i was coping with it quite alright until people were asking me if i was alright? also becuase i had been suffering with dizzyness a few weeks ago my friends started saying, 'im really worried about you'! 'You haven't been right for a while'!

And even though i knew that my headache were just a symptom of PMS i went home that day feeling incredibly anxious and depressed!!! I kept on thinking well there must be something wrong with me then!!! Even though my rational brain knew it was PMS.!!!

what this has taught me is that if i keep telling people about the symptoms i'm feeling im bound to trigger off negative worrying resonses. This in turn just feeds your anxiety! My boyfriend quite rightly pointed out to me to stop telling other people who dont understand this anxiety thing about my symptoms as they're only going to put ideas in my head that .....it could be something!!

Sometimes though its almost like i am telling people for a reaction. Like i want them to confirm my worst fear to prove me im not going mad! Even though i know it feeds my anxiey!!!

Does anybody get this?

[PITITA]

I can relate to this post 100%. The worst ever line for me is when people tell me, stop thinking about going crazy, because you will :(
Or when I confide in a friend and say I feel DP/DR, they just say you should be careful, because if you don't stop thinking about it, it WILL make you go crazy...sigh xx

[rb1978]

I can totally relate to this post. I used to work in an office with someone who used to watch all of those awful programmes about weird medical conditions that you get on Channel 5 etc You know the ones - the man who's body reacted to something and now he's dead. Then she'd come in to work and relate in minute detail what she'd watched. Once I'd realised I was the only one who wasn't interested, I used to end up picking up a file and a pen, to look like I was going out on a work-related matter , and leaving the room. Seriously though, before I started walking away I used to remember the smallest details of what had been said and then be mulling them over and mulling them over.

I've tried to be quite strict with myself lately...I don't watch things about health on TV, try to avoid films etc dealing with the dreaded C word - the slightest mention of that sets me off and am trying desperately not to Google symptoms though that's a tough habit to break. Getting out of that office was a big plus too.

PS I'm a Cancer too

[Charlottie]

The pharmacist at my work asked if I was diabetic the other day cause I was coming in every few minutes for a drink. Even though I knew it was just because the heating dries my mouth out and I'd only drunk 500ml of pop through an entire 9-5 day it set me right off! Grrr.

[clickaway]

I went through a phase where watching any kind of physical sport would make me worried, thinking they would keel over any minute!

[anxious]

mention the word lump and im totally off on one

[spacebunnyx]

yeah- i can completely identify with this! i always find that if someone says they know someone who's very ill of some disease - i think i have it not too long after! and i have to admit i was a victim of the Kylie effect- in 2005 had HUGE anxiety over breast cancer (apparently it was really common that year a gynae friend told me!)

[Elemental Child]

Thank you.....these posts have had me in stitches.....only because in each one I see myself, hear myself....I used to read through huge great medical book convinced I have some disease. I think deaths of friends and family set me off. I can totally relate to your stories and especially because I can't stop monitoring myself and my sanity....AAGGHH!! and my friend said a few days ago well if you continue to do that you WILL send yourself mad! lol

I think it might be good to write these things down....you know like a little short story...indulge in the fact that a character might make a cup of coffee and feel a bit strange...use the powers of your imagination to be creative....I do think that if you bring it out and just reread it as it appears on paper.....make it real....not computer...it may act as an exorcising process. Reread it again and again until it loses its power!!

Strangely enough I feel comforted by "Six Feet Under" haven't quite worked out why seeing that it tells of exactly the fact that we go in all manner of situations....but perhaps it exhausts us in possibilities.

Take Care
xx

[ksmith]

The weather here has been quite hot lately and a colleague commented that I looked brown. What did I hear? "you look a bit yellow" ...... and you can guess what went through my head. My colleagues are terrified to compliment me lately as I take anything they say and construe it to feed my own bloody health anxiety. If I look like I've lost weight and suntanned, don't tell me!! lol

Kay x