Amazed at how people feel about anyone with health anxiety

[countrygirl]

I am on another forum that is not remotely connected to health anxiety but someone posted a question about hypochondriacs. I kept quiet but someoe else on the forum very bravely explained how they suffered with it and how bad it was so I added my support to this poster not saying much and adding that it was a mental illness but did not get any sympathy.
99% of the posts were very derogatory about anyone with health anxiety.

AT least it proves my point about there being no sympathy for anyone with this form of mental illness.

[sparkle_1979]

It's really sad. This is why I don't talk about it apart fom here x

[Whiskey]

wow, that's shocking. It is difficult to make people understand if they have not experienced anxiety themselves. Someone said to me a few weeks ago that I need to snap out of it and get on with it!!!! Wouldn't it be great if it was that simple?

[Spot-the-frog]

Just want to say I don't have HA but I do understand what it is like to have something like this. I suffer with depression and anxiety, I find people 'sort of' understand the depression but not the anxiety, I too keep quiet!

I too have been told that I should be over this by now, as if I have a magic wand and can just make myself ok!!!

[Uncertain27]

Yes, my brother earlier said "The doctor will say you're a headcase" because he's sure there's nothing wrong with me. How does he know, anyway? :dry:

[xfilme]

Its one of those things that are hard for most people to understand. This is because when you've never had health anxiety, you can totally rationalise everything. When you develop it, your ability to rationalise goes out the window. Its hard to make a rational person disengage their rationality to understand how it feels. This is why most people don't even know how to empathise with us, because logic is enough to ward off or prevent the intrusive thoughts us health anxiety sufferers are crippled by. To these people, following our twisted logic and negative 'what if?' thought processes, is no more than endulging in the absurd, and therefore we must be doing it for our own gain in some way... the most common presumption is attention. They couldn't be more wrong x

[Mr m anxious]

Ha is an illness, which no one understands. Even I don't get it and I have it, well in a way I hope I have it because my symptoms would be something serious if not.

[Patrick8]

I don't know enough about the different causes/cures of HA. But I know I developed it due to my father passing and also to developing lumps(benign).

I also know I was naive enough beforehand to underestimate the effects of anxiety disorders. So I can't say I blame people that haven't been through it. It's one of those things that is hard to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it.

[Coppernob]

We had a lady living in our Close who was terribly anxious about everything, but especially about her health, and living alone following a long ago divorce and subsequently the death of a new partner. Although she had a big family who lived nearby and whom she saw frequently, she hated living alone and built up every little symptom into a major problem. All of us in the Close feel desperately sorry that we didn't take her seriously, because we and her doctors had had years of her 'crying wolf' and, knowing she had in the past been a strong and very active person, got irritated with her constantly calling us for the slightest reason.

It turned out her latest symptoms were in fact serious, and having had a diagnosis after an emergency hospital admission, she died 2 weeks later. She was 76 so not a young person, but we all felt terribly guilty for being so dismissive of her. I had had HA in the past but had actually been fine for years and forgot what it felt like.

Now it's come back and I know!