SimonGT
30-09-13, 03:21
This is my first post here. In fact this is the first time i have ever used an internet forum to discuss my mental health. My Health Anxiety ( a much kinder term than hypochondria isnt it?) is really causing me to have very little quality of life. It will probably help if i make contact with others who suffer the same. I won't feel so alone with it hopefully.
Eighteen months ago my health anxiety kicked off bigtime. I hadn't heard from it for a number of years, but for the last year and a half its been constant. I'm particularly obsessed with oral cancer and have been obsessing about some mouth ulcers and oral thrush i have had. If its not that, its blemishes or marks on my skin that terrify me. One thing after the other. When there's a period (increasingly brief) where there is nothing i can find to panic about, I cant relax anyway cos i know its only a question of time before I find some other minor symptom to catastrophize about and completely blow up out of propertion. So its anxiety 24/7 really. With Health Anxiety, I can see myself doing it, but i cant help it. Its like some kind of schizophrenia. When its is full on, as it is most of the time, as i said I have absolutely no quality of life, as all i can do is obsess about getting ill and dying. Thoroughly miserable place to be. I'm in a bad mood all the time and gripe and snap at people. I see others laughing and having a good time and i'm filled with sadness and resentment. There is part of my head that buys into the health anxiety, and is utterly terrified, and "prepares myself for death", and there is part of my head that tells me to get a grip cos its my health anxiety and there is nothing really wrong. Its a constant tussle between the ill and the sane part of my brain arguing with each other, with the ill part mostly winning out. It's so exhausting!!!!!! I can't stand it !!! Sometimes all i can do for relief is to try and read spiritual, and life after death books to convince myself death isn't so bad after all. How low has the quality of my life got to be that i have to do that just to cope?
I am on Mirtazapine and Propranolol which kind of take the edge off. Thank God for the meds, without them i'm suicidal (entertaining suicidal thoughts as a kind of pre-emptive measure).
I'm on the waiting list for one on one CBT.. Will that help?
If I knew for sure that life after death and heaven existed and that death wasn't a terrible thing, I'd be fine. Sometimes i think that the only cure for my health anxiety would be one of those sublime near death experiences you hear about where people come back from being technically dead and from that moment on any fear of death is removed cos they know that a place of bliss awaits them. How i envy those people. To be free of fear of death..
Hoping to hear back from folks
Simon
Eighteen months ago my health anxiety kicked off bigtime. I hadn't heard from it for a number of years, but for the last year and a half its been constant. I'm particularly obsessed with oral cancer and have been obsessing about some mouth ulcers and oral thrush i have had. If its not that, its blemishes or marks on my skin that terrify me. One thing after the other. When there's a period (increasingly brief) where there is nothing i can find to panic about, I cant relax anyway cos i know its only a question of time before I find some other minor symptom to catastrophize about and completely blow up out of propertion. So its anxiety 24/7 really. With Health Anxiety, I can see myself doing it, but i cant help it. Its like some kind of schizophrenia. When its is full on, as it is most of the time, as i said I have absolutely no quality of life, as all i can do is obsess about getting ill and dying. Thoroughly miserable place to be. I'm in a bad mood all the time and gripe and snap at people. I see others laughing and having a good time and i'm filled with sadness and resentment. There is part of my head that buys into the health anxiety, and is utterly terrified, and "prepares myself for death", and there is part of my head that tells me to get a grip cos its my health anxiety and there is nothing really wrong. Its a constant tussle between the ill and the sane part of my brain arguing with each other, with the ill part mostly winning out. It's so exhausting!!!!!! I can't stand it !!! Sometimes all i can do for relief is to try and read spiritual, and life after death books to convince myself death isn't so bad after all. How low has the quality of my life got to be that i have to do that just to cope?
I am on Mirtazapine and Propranolol which kind of take the edge off. Thank God for the meds, without them i'm suicidal (entertaining suicidal thoughts as a kind of pre-emptive measure).
I'm on the waiting list for one on one CBT.. Will that help?
If I knew for sure that life after death and heaven existed and that death wasn't a terrible thing, I'd be fine. Sometimes i think that the only cure for my health anxiety would be one of those sublime near death experiences you hear about where people come back from being technically dead and from that moment on any fear of death is removed cos they know that a place of bliss awaits them. How i envy those people. To be free of fear of death..
Hoping to hear back from folks
Simon