Hello! This is just a message to anyone struggling with facing their health anxiety fear.
I still have health anxiety and have had it for 15 years. I still obsess over tiny symptoms, catastrophise, think the worst etc etc. Currently i have a reoccuring shooting pain in my knee/shin and at 26 years old am convinced i have bone cancer.
But for all this I have a small success story which I thought i would share for those experiencing the same. In this game of snakes and ladders which is health anxiety, the small wins need to be celebrated.
1 year ago I became convinced I had HIV. It developed suddenly after being offered a test by a random university sti testing advocate, who was holding a sign.
"Do you want a confidential HIV test today? Remember, 1 in 5 people don't know they are infected" she informed me in her carefree dungarees and dreadlocks.
"No thanks" i mumbled, not looking her in the eye.
But that was it, the seed had been sewn.
I began thinking... i have been in a monogamous relationship for 4 years, but before that i had a one night thing with this guy. We were drunk. I forced him to wear a condom... but i was drunk? How did i know he didn't remove it? He did seem a bit shady? A bit odd? He had slept around a lot. I could count my partners on one hand and always used condoms.
After that one night stand a couple of weeks past and one day i woke up achey, sore and cold. What started as chills developed into the first full blown adult fever i have ever had. I hallucinated, sweated, my throat swelled and my body felt awful for days after. At rhe time i thought i had the flu.
But now, 5 years on, i had the sudden realisation... it was HIV. Panic. Pure panic. I dont want to make this post an essay so i will cut it short. I spent a whole year barely functioning. I stopped eating, i couldnt leave my bed, i cried daily, i went on anti depressants and became obsessed with hiv symptoms.
Oral thrush.. a sign of Hiv.. i told myself i had it.
That year i had laryngitus, tonsillitus, 3 colds andan ear infection. It had to be the hiv progressing.
I was so convinced i had hiv and so terrified of telling my doctor i stopped living. I cant put into words how all encompassing it became. Until one day i thought of killing myself, right then and there.
And it was at that point where i was so close to ending it that i ran to a and e in a taxi. I poured my worries out and they convinced me to have a blood test. And i was so exhausted, so run down, so weak that i said yes. They told me in the hospital my chance of having it was ridiculously small. "What do they know" i thought. I knew i had it. I could feel it in my body!
Anyhow the wait for that blood test was awful - terrifying beyond words.
However it came back: NEGATIVE
I was fine. No hiv.
It was like weight had been lifted off my that had crushed me almost to death. What i want others to take from this is that fear itself really is the 'thing' that ruins your life when it comes to health anxiety. If you address that fear you can address anything. All us health anxiety sufferers are so brave and so strong and so much morr resilient than we give ourselves credit for. There is a light ar the end somewhere, and sometimes you have to take a leap of faith, step into the darkest part just to find it. But have belief that you will. Although the glass looks half empty there is still a huge mouthful of water left in there to keep you going, and you can keep going, conquer small victories and get better.
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