Scared!!

[MaryMac]

Hi everyone, this is my first post here sorry it's probably gonna be a long one! :) I've suffered from health anxiety most of my life along with general anxiety, panic attacks, emetophobia, agoraphobia. I've had so much therapy and for the past few years have been doing great, travelling, working and been very healthy.
However the past few weeks have been difficult for me. I had an abscessed tooth and I spent my time googling what can go wrong, if it spreads through your body etc and obviously I was very anxious. However I had the tooth out and it all seems fine, even though I was still worried about infection. Since then, my grandmother passed away and I've pretty much spent alot of time alone and started googling things. I had a bad cold and a sort of lingering cough, I looked up leukemia and it's symptoms and I honestly started getting them! Sore bones, itchy skin... this was a few days ago and I feel better now but I'm still waking up in the morning checking for swollen glands etc, thinking "do I have a temperature?"
I've been trying to drink more water and cut out caffeine, and today I woke up really thirsty and I'm thinkign "oh no is this also a symptom?!" I'm having trouble eating breakfast, like I'm going to choke on it.
I'm just terrified for some reason that I may have leukemia! :(

And advice would be great thanks.

[swgrl09]

Oh, I know how you feel. When my mom passed away, my anxiety was through the roof. Honestly the only thing for me that has helped, besides counseling, is going to the doctor for each ailment I was worried about. Eventually I am getting to the point where I am less anxious because literally every time I have googled and self-diagnosed, I have been wrong. So I am starting to just expect to be wrong :) which is not bad. But be patient with yourself, because a death can really shake you up anxiety-wise. I don't mean to be pessimistic, just don't get frustrated with yourself if you are experiencing this. I know I do get mad at myself, and that just makes it worse.

I am sorry you are going through this!

[AllInMyHead]

Hi MaryMac, sounds like you have been having a bad time of it of late. One of the most important pieces of advice is never google! No matter what minor symptoms you have, they will always lead you to cancer / brain tumour / MS and scare the life out of you. If you have a symptom you are worried about, try posting on here and say you are worried but don't want to google. You'll get sensible suggestions about what you should do.

On that note, feeling like you are going to choke is a typical anxiety symptom. I had it when I was worrying about having MS. I had problems swallowing even when I thought I wasn't worrying about it. I don't have MS, and when I got over the anxiety my symptoms went away.

One of the biggest things for fuelling my anxiety was symptom checking, and the best thing I learned from CBT was not to do it. Now, if I spot a worrying symptom, I consciously decide to check again in a week to see if it is still an issue. That means I don't prod / poke / think about it and make it worse in the meantime. I've only had to use the technique a couple of times, but both times I've stayed completely calm, and the symptom had gone within a week. The reasoning is that nothing is going to get worse in a week, unless it's really serious and then I'll end up in hospital and it will be dealt with.

If a week between checking symptoms is too much for you at the moment, set yourself easier targets. For example don't check when you wake up, force yourself to wait until lunchtime. Make the time between checking longer, until you wean yourself off it.