I know I suffer from health anxiety. I tend to get sort of concentrated periods of it, lasting a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of times a year, depending on what else is going on it my life at the time.

I've been a bit stressed/upset about some not very nice news I had last week and ever since I have been building myself up into this sort of frenzy!

I'm currently training for the London Marathon and I read this story in the marathon magazine about how 8 people out of the zillions that have ever run the marathon have died suddenly without even realising that they had any kind of heart problem. And guess what? Now I'm convinced its going to happen to me! Ever since reading about it I started getting little twinges in my chest and arm that kind of moved around and now its sort of settled into a general burning, tingling sensation at the top of my chest, above my breasts and I'm getting this sort of tingly tense feeling in my shoulders and at the side of my head which I know is anxiety because I've had it before. The pain in my chest kind of eases when I try really hard to relax but then I start convincing myself that its not easing and I start bulding myself back up into this anxious state again!! When I actually go for a run I can run 10 miles and I don't feel anything, I actually feel better, which kind of tells me that the exercise is making me relax and thats why its going, but then who can be that rational when going through a bout of anxiety?! Then within half an hour its back. I've no problems at night, I go to sleep and I wake up without it but again give it half an hour and its back.

I'm too scared to go to the doctors because I think he's going to tell me I've got cancer which is completely ridiculous and completely unrelated to this undiagnosed heart problem that is going to give me a heart attack which again should be telling me that I'm anxious and should just try to calm down but again difficult to be quite that rational. On top of this in the last 2 weeks I've also been convinced that a dry patch of skin on my face is skin cancer and guess what, thats pretty much gone now!

I guess I'm just hoping for someone to say calm down and we know what you're going through and you're not the only one etc etc. And actually I just think I needed to write it all down and get some of it out of my head!!

Thanks so much for reading this!

Swarbs x