What causes your health anxiety? [Archive]

spacebunnyx

11-09-12, 19:33

OK, so I have Health Anxiety and I'm having CBT at the moment. I was talking with my therapist and we were trying to get to the bottom of why I have health anxiety. By knowing maybe then I can learn to deal with it.

So we thought that the health anxiety come from the fact that my family when I was growing up (even now) doesn't show their feelings and so its easier to focus on internal worries than deal with stressful situations around me. :blush: The "health" bit probably comes from the fact my mother is a doctor and would talk "doctor talk" at me when I was a kid (people dying, horrible diseases etc).

I've been ill a few times in the past and originally thought that's where the HA came from.. but now I'm really thinking about it the thought patterns came much earlier.

So, I was wondering, if you would share with me what you think is the cause of your HA?

thank you!

loopylu86

11-09-12, 19:39

Mine is due to a traumatic fainting episode. I always analyze whether I'm feeling faint or.not. If not I will be sure to.find a way to make me feel queasy. I suppose that I too come from a family that although very close tend to brush things off. Until it's absolutely vital to.address them. I had a 9 month episode of anxiety 4 years ago and it resulted in me not working. I always had the feeling that I was a burden and that no one really "bought" it. That I was choosing not to work out of laziness. Not the case at all. It's hard.to.really look into these things but it certainly helps getting it off your chest. Xx

ElectricAlice

11-09-12, 19:40

Mine was triggered by the sudden death of my mum :(

paranoidtree

11-09-12, 19:54

Mine triggered from my appendicitis being removed last July. i woke up in pain one morning, called NHS Direct whilst taking some ibuprofen. Started feeling better, NHS Direct said nothing to worry about, just see your GP. I wasn't going to bother making an appointment, my husband insisted. So i went that morning, GP examined me and told me to go to hospital. Later that evening i was having my appendix removed.

Now i over-analyse every ache, pain, twinge and wonder what it is. last time i thought a pain was nothing and ended up having an operation, now i worry :wacko:

ScaredLizard

11-09-12, 19:59

My health anxiety is caused by a severe fear of death. I lost my daughter in 2007 and I was already scared of death. Now I'm just even more traumatized by it :(

ri-ri

11-09-12, 20:11

I think my health anxiety was due to the fact that i used google often to try and diagnose myself, but i didn't go looking for serious illnesses.

It started around 4 months ago and i was suffereing from a harmless infection but it took the infection a while to go, i started getting frustrated and thought maybe the doctor missed something. So i googled my symptoms and i had no idea what scary things i would be faced with, the more i focussed on what i had read the more i could feel the different symptoms i had read.

I went through a very stressful phase, then more symptoms were arising, by now the infection had gone, but now i was googling all these other symptoms i was getting, it was like an obession, I convinced myself i had a serious illness, my symptoms seemed to be spreading and even getting worse.

I went to the docs and everything was fine.

But even after this i was going through this vicious cycle of looking for symptoms constantly and checking on google.
I'm now getting CBT therapy now and i hope its going to work, good luck with yours and my best wishes to you :D

lindajane1971

11-09-12, 21:34

mine was was also triggered by my mums sudden unexpected death from a heart attack 4 years ago
I am 40 years old and when i really think hard about it i think ive always been a worrier and i think its been simmering in the background for years and then mums death just made it explode!!

Ferry1995

12-09-12, 01:23

Mines quite an odd one, Ive been having anxiety all my life, mainly social, so when my last relationship broke down, and I finished college I didn't have the confidence to go out and find new friends, so I tended to spend a lot of time internalising about things, mainly my health, then one day I remember getting up from my chair and just thinking instantly, I'm about to die, this is it, since then I've been through it all, started off as a brain tumour but since then I've also suffered from a heart attack , pancreatic cancer, stomach cancer , MS, aneurysms, the works. a lot of it is probably due to the fact I have relatives suffering from cancer and my grandad died from ms, so that's what triggered my problems, hope the CBT works out for you, certainly helping me a lot more than meds without the nasty side effects :)

justina

12-09-12, 08:48

My HA began when my father died of cancer. He was very athletic, strong and had always been extremely healthy. I realized then that cancer can kill anyone and since then my fear has only been growing more and more.

MARK1971

12-09-12, 09:19

hi my road into panic and ha began when i developed right sided facial twitching that convinced me i had developed a norm form of parkinsons, ms or mnd. a five stay in a neurological when i was scanned, videoed while twitching, poked, prodded. did nothing to alleviate my fears. infact they escalated to point where i was admitted into a itu section of a psychiatric hospital with psychotic depression. the meds too numerous to mention worked. 15 years on i still twitch but have learned to live with it.

spuder

12-09-12, 11:00

mine was when my niece got stabbed at xmas just gone she nearly died if it wasnt for her dog she would of been.

fred_h

12-09-12, 11:01

Mine began in my early 20s, I convinced myself I had a brain tumour when I was simply suffering from tension headaches. The root cause is probably a fear of death I didn't cope with very well in my early teens.
My anxiety has been under control for years now, but I still have occasional and excessive health worries. I just do my best not to let them turn into full blown anxiety again. My 'cure' is to read research papers on health anxiety instead of googling symptoms. I've found out understanding those mechanisms from a psychological point of view alleviates my fears.

JoannaS

12-09-12, 11:34

spacebunnyx

12-09-12, 20:33

Thank you for your replies - its quite a personal thing to ask. It's really interesting to see such a range of triggers for HA and I'm sorry that so many of them are so tragic. There does seem to be a "trigger" for HA in a lot of people.

If anyone else reading this would like to share please do so! :-)

busybee09

12-09-12, 21:12

My 2 fears have always been not being able to breathe and feeling dizzy. Everything was fine up until my first panic attack and both of these symptoms scared me so bad that i now focus on them everyday

Eek

13-09-12, 05:55

Mine started because of my phobia of death. I had severe HA when I was younger but managed to get over it for a while, it came back when my dad died a couple of years ago and I've been suffering ever since.

cassie1975

13-09-12, 07:54

Mine started after a few life stressors, moving house and then my husband becoming ill. He had been really poorly Dec 2009 went to A+E twice the doctor there told me it could be lucky they found IT early. He never elaborated and left me with that thought, I was worried sick ! I was worried for my husband his skin turned yellow he lost tons of weight. I really struggled there was nothing positive in these symptoms. Three weeks later he had a ultrasound scan. He had Gall stones very small ones that had moved into his liver hence the yelow. I will never forgive that doctor for what he did at the time I was just glad my husband was going to be ok. I was so worried two years ealier my sister in law had died from Ovarian cancer aged fifty and eight years before my other sister in law collapsed on a night out and died. She left two young children behind. I also have a weight problem(which I am trying to rectify). I have convinced myself I am going to end up with cancer if I dont lose the weight. I have had a little CBT I am waiting for another appointment. Good luck with your Journey :hugs::hugs:

loopylu86

13-09-12, 12:33

Mine was from my dad dying from cancer when I was 18. He was turned away from the doctors numerous times and told he just had IBS when in fact he had bowel cancer. This has led to me having no faith in doctors and even their assurances that there's nothing wrong with me, doesn't make me feel any better! However, this didn't start until about 2 years ago, I'm now 26, so there was quite a delay from him dying and my HA kicking in. I've had CBT and that's helped a lot, but I still get bad days when a little symptom will trigger me to go crazy with worry again!
I had to reply because I noticed your message. I too am 26 and at 18 lost my dad to cancer. My nan passed away on the a month ago and this has been the first death since. It has triggered my panic attack and anxiety. If you want to chat then I would love to hear your experiences x

---------- Post added at 12:33 ---------- Previous post was at 12:32 ----------

I am not actually illiterate..I am writing from a BB playbook. Difficult!! lol x

lldconter

13-09-12, 15:00

Mine was triggered by the sudden death of my mum :(

I think a sudden death of someone who is really close to us especially family members could trigger anxiety.

JoannaS

13-09-12, 15:46

Hi Loopylu, would love to chat, sounds as though you and I have quite a lot in common! I have many, many experiences to share if you'd like to hear them. Panic attacks, health anxiety every day, CBT, phobias, OCD..... Right now I'm panicking about a pain I keep getting in my head, can't wait to go home! x

saab

13-09-12, 18:02

It is sometimes useful to try to find the origin of something psychological as it can make you see your HA more rationally.

My HA focuses almost exclusively on my heart - massive anxiety caused by having hundreds of palpitations a day which started after an operation to remove an ovarian cyst.

However, looking back I can see that I was already quite a worrier and I think the HA was made worse by the fact that I these very large ovarian cysts, one whilst pregnant, and then another one after. This meant lots of trips for scans - and it was never good news. I think this meant that I found it very hard to accept that my palpitations were harmless as I had had three years of worry over the cysts.

Once HA gets ingrained it's really hard to stop. I have what cog therapy calls 'catastrophic thinking' - I expect the worse outcome in any situation. It's a hard habit to break.

petermorrisonusa

14-09-12, 06:58

Welshy

14-09-12, 07:16

Mine sounds really stupid compared to the rest of you. I get the heart anxiety everytime I hear of someone close having a heart attack, I automatically go into panic mode about my heart for a while until the mental fear eases.

justina

14-09-12, 08:42

Mine was from my dad dying from cancer when I was 18. He was turned away from the doctors numerous times and told he just had IBS when in fact he had bowel cancer. This has led to me having no faith in doctors and even their assurances that there's nothing wrong with me, doesn't make me feel any better! However, this didn't start until about 2 years ago, I'm now 26, so there was quite a delay from him dying and my HA kicking in. I've had CBT and that's helped a lot, but I still get bad days when a little symptom will trigger me to go crazy with worry again!

It was the same with my father...he had symptoms for at least 2 or 3 years. The doctors kept telling him it was nothing serious. He also looked extremely healthy (athletic, good looking, strong) and I think that is part of why they didn't take him seriously.

Toffeeapple

14-09-12, 14:07

Mine started 10 years ago when I thought my husband was having a heart attack while on a plane.
In fact he was just dehydrated as he had a hangover and puked the night before. As soon as he had a glass of water his symptoms stopped.
But it left me in bits. I had been sick with fear, literally I was sick and then fainted, which makes everyone laugh when I tell the story.
But I think I was an anxious person anyway, and googling things really made matters much much worse.

---------- Post added at 14:07 ---------- Previous post was at 14:05 ----------

P.S: I've no faith in doctors either, I think I know more than them and I always tell them which blood tests they should give me. :blush:

spacebunnyx

14-09-12, 15:41

Quite a few people have posted that they've "always worried a bit".. even before the HA. I'm the same. I wonder why people worry excessively and why we, as people with HA, turn it in on our own bodies.

If I think back to why I used to worry as a child its because I was afraid of telling my parents I'd lost something/done something wrong... it would eat me up. I was afraid of talking to my folks because my mother had a temper and I didn't feel secure at all.

I think I learnt the worry from this and never really switched it off.

Sorry for all the navel-gazing.. but I'm trying to get down to the bottom of where my HA comes from.

xxx