Does your mind ever play tricks on you ?

[worried girl]

Hi,

I feel like I am going a bit crazy there, here is the story.
I have been obsessed with bowel cancer for a few years now. I am trying to cut down on checking which means only glancing quickly at the paper when wiping because as you can guess I am scared of the possibility of blood in stool.
Anyway lately it does happen quite often that on that first glance I feel like I see bright red. As a result I look closer and bang nothing there... Even it is the same piece of paper.
I feel like my mind is tricking me into thinking I see blood so that I don't stop the checking behaviour.

Can you relate ?

[Skye Winter]

This happens to me, too. I think it's because you're looking out hard for the symptoms, you start to get a sort of negative hallucination where you see what you're looking for, even though it's not there.

I did it too a couple of years back. I have a fear of having a heart attack, and it all started one night when I had bad palpitations due to a temperature, and I was convinced I was going to die. I went to the hospital and found everything was normal, but after that my brain decided it would be a fun idea to mess with me. I actually started imagining symptoms. I was imagining palpitations that weren't there, chest pain that wasn't there and more. I went back to the doctor and he told me it was literally all in my mind, and the ECG wasn't showing any signs of anything, and that it was merely my imagination.

It's strange, but yeah I get it too.

[LE]

This has been happening to me too. I have become obsessed with BM. I have been looking at it on the toilet paper and it looked normal. But when I stared log enough I started to think 'could this have blood in it'

Then when I went out of the toilet I started thinking it might have looked maroon which can mean blood. I was obsessing over it. So when I went to the toilet again I got it on the toilet paper and nope it was brown. I even took a photo!!!!! And sent it to my sister who is a nurse! OMG I'm taking this to a whole new level!!!!

Anyway she text back and said it was more than fine. Abso normal.

So yes I had convinced myself that it was a totally different colour!!

[worried girl]

Thank you.

It is comforting to know I am not the only one. I guess I see what they mean when they checking is no help... If you decide to see what you fear then it has obviously no way of reassuring...
It is crazy how anxiety can control your logical mind.

[Raidenshred]

Yep. Stare too long at anything, your mind will start playing tricks, even with colours. Kinda like when you say a word over and over and over and it stops having meaning and just turns into an odd sound. Concentrate on anything too long and your brain starts to mess with you.