Read this for ultimate reassurance about your symptoms

[skippy66]

This really resonated with me - read this if you want to be reassured about your scary symptoms:

http://www.healthanxietyhq.com/reassurance/

[RVP]

Good read, thanks for the post.

[skippy66]

No problem. How are you getting on? I remember you had heart fears a while ago...sounds like me a few years back.

[RVP]

Doing great in terms of heart worries, even my anxiety as a whole is a lot better from what it first started off which is great, just need to apply what this article says to the symptoms i get :p

[Geestar]

But we are all here for reassurance :)

Always been told to talk about my symptoms rather than forgot about them.
I seek reassurance daily and if I kept them bottled in I would go crazy lol.

Seems like everythinh I have been told has been condridicted :S

[skippy66]

Reassurance seeking only makes health anxiety worse in the long run. It can provide some short term relief but the way I beat this was to stop the reassurance-seeking behaviour. It's all about an attitude change from fearing the symptoms, which increases the fear and brings on more symptoms, to thinking 'to hell with these symptoms, I'm not scared of them'. As soon as you face the fear, you beat the fear. This is the basis of CBT.

[Geestar]

Yeah I agree with that :) but....

What if you are experiencing a symptom that is a symptom of an under lying illness ans keeping on puting it down to anxiety can leave some illness left untreated. By comming onto sites like this you can express your fears and get reassurance untill you are able to get professional help/opinions at the doctors.
Also people with health anxiety dont always believe its anxiety therefore wont be able to jusy accept a symptom thats down to anxiety.
I believe in the long run its a good way to be but perhaps a little advanded CBT for this site as if we didnt need help/reassureance/support/opions etc about talking about our current health worry there would be no point in comming on here and there being sites like this.

[skippy66]

This forum was an absolute godsend for me when I was down in the depths of health anxiety, but it provides short term relief not a long term cure.

If you actually want to beat HA once and for all then you need to change your attitude to illness and in many ways life in general.