So, I’m a 23 year old male and I’ve had two pretty big health anxiety episodes in my life, one a that lasted two years in 2015 and one now which has been going for over 3 months. Both involving the same fear, bowel cancer. The last time I broke free from it by having an invasive camera test done which I now believe was a mistake. It meant that I never had to face it and fix it myself. This time, it started with a completely unrelated illness in which I coughed up some blood (and was treated and fixed) and then developed into this again.
Now, once again, I’m stuck and despite my hardest efforts keep failing to break free. I’ve had all the usual reassurance from doctors e.g too young, no family history etc. but non of it ever provides more than a few minutes of temporary relief.
I’ve become obsessed with checking my bowel movements every morning and I believe this is what’s holding me back. 90% of the time I look and it’s normal, the other 10% of the time, something will stand out to me, whether it be discolouration or a bit of bright red blood (which I’ve had for years and explained to be a fisher) or my brain tries to convince me there’s a dark red tinge. My heart then drops and this then sets me back as I obsess over it in my mind until the next day comes and I can check that it’s back to normal. Even when I see it’s fine, I’ll just keep checking until something isn’t.
I’ve tried to fix this by not looking in the toilet when I go, which I’ve successfully done a couple of times for 4 days, but an energy builds up in my mind saying ‘what if all this time whilst you’re ignoring it, real symptoms are developing’, and that is what ultimately leads me to check ‘just one more time’ and boom I’m right back in it. I convince myself of other symptoms too such as tiredness or lack of appetite but these usually subside and don’t have the same impact on me mentally as the bowel movements.
I’m writing my dissertation for university at the moment and pretty much put if off until the last couple of weeks whilst this was all happening which is adding to my stress. I just don’t want to waste another two years of my life in this hell. I know the odds are overwhelmingly in my favour but that just doesn’t seem to help.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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