I'm new, and unsurprisingly think I am dying :/

[Rosie2]

Hi everyone, I've found this website a few times from
Googling various symptoms and being led here but I've never posted before - but I've never spoken to anyone about my health anxiety and I really need to get it out.

I have lost so much of my life to anxiety. I am only 19 but for the last year and a half I have had no life. I go to work, come home, worry, try to sleep, and repeat. I've lost count of the number of times I have stayed up all night terrified that I am dying of an undiagnosed terminal illness, and waited til the doctors opened and made an appointment after being awake for 24+ hours but only had some temporary relief from their reassurances.

I am scared of everything. Or more scared of everything making me ill. I am fine with broken bones, sprains, cuts - they are all "safe" IMO. What I'm really terrified of is getting cancer. This fear impacts me, pretty much every second of every day. I have googled so many questions about it that I am sure I know everything that causes it- which is so many things. I can't use creams on my skin because I am scared it will absorb and give me lymph node cancer or skin cancer. I am scared to have my phone off airplane mode in case it gives me a brain or breast tumor. I am scared to walk in busy places because the pollution might give me lung cancer. I am just so terrified all the time.

I often think about how much time I've wasted on this, but I can't control it. And the worst part is I have very real symptoms- I have the oh so common weird scary headache (brain tumor), I have a mole which can't be bigger than 2mm and hasn't changed, it is a normal size and shape but for some reason I
Sure it is cancer. Every time I look at it I feel like I am going to have a panic attack. Every time I see or read the word "cancer" or "symptoms" I get so anxious I genuinely want to die. (Which is weird since that's what I'm so scared of). Even just now when I was looking at the health anxiety posts I saw a cervical cancer post which set me off. I have really irregular periods, I have them once a week or 2 so I think that might be cancerous growths. I have a lump in my underarm which I've had scanned and been told it is "probably" a lipoma, but that didn't convince me. I have even thought of ways that they could all be linked - the mole spreading to my lymph nodes, my lymph nodes spreading to my brain, then down my spine and to all my organs (lungs too, hence my chest pains).

Sorry for going on so much (for anyone who made it this far!) but I just really don't know what to do anymore. I am on a waiting list for CBT but it's 6-8 months and I think I might die before I get an appointment. I also don't think my doctor understands how much this is affecting me. I have gone from being popular, outgoing and fun to anxious, paranoid and unhappy in the space of a couple of years. I don't understand how anyone can bear living like this, and I find it so hard to picture myself in the future since I feel I am on deaths door. I just want some relief from this.

If anyone has feelings like this and are managing to cope with it- please give me your secrets! I would love to have anyone to relate to, since I never speak to anyone about this as I know they will think I am crazy, or an attention seeker.

Thank you..

[panickyme]

Just wanted to say welcome, and honey you are not dying. Read some of the great articles to your left, they will explain anxiety, and symptoms better than I could. There are many people on here then can relate to you, including me. If someone tells me they have something, give me 10 minutes, and I will have it also. LOL Don't google it just makes us worse. Hope you feel better. :hugs:

[cpe1978]

Rosie, you are so young to be having worries like this (not that anyone should). Your post makes me feel upset (hard to admit for a 35 year old guy who is 6ft 4tall), but when I read your post all I can do is imagine my daughter thinking the same in 15 years' time and how I would want to help make things better.

As a general rule I don't like giving advice much, as in honesty I don't feel that well qualified to do so, but hey, I am going to try to anyway :)

I think you need to organise your thoughts a little and arrive at a plan to solve this. One of the biggest issues I faced with HA was the overwhelming sense that I was out of control and there was nothing I could do about it. Well firstly that is wrong.

1) CBT sounds like it might really help you. I don't know what sort of relationship you have with your parents, but I wonder whether they might consider paying for a course of private CBT. Usually people need no more than 15 sessions or so, and I can honestly say that some of the things I am doing in CBT are making me feel much more in control and have given me a strategy.

2) Don't settle for a GP who you don't think is looking after you well. A GPs role is equally to look after your mental health as well as physical. Now I know that this is easy for me to say at 35 and working for the NHS, but you need to find a GP who will support you well. Now to be clear, that doesn't mean referring you for every test under the sun......you only have to read a few threads on here to realise what little reassurance that provides In the long term. But you need a GP you can trust and who will support you. For example, when my HA was at its peak a few weeks ago I had a GPs appointment, she listened, did a basic health check and then said,' what would you like me to do?'

I said two things: 1) not to refer me for unnecessary tests based on my neurosis and associated physical symptoms....so essentially to diagnose me in the same way as anyone else and in order for that to happen I needed to trust her.

2) that I wanted to have six weekly appointments whilst I was tackling this to make sure there was some clinical oversight of anxiety and depression. It also gives me a six weekly outlet for random physical symptoms and stifles the desire to run to the docs every two mins.

3) Reassurance doesn't work.....you are chasing the wrong demon. The issue here is your mental rather than physical health. I believe you have to get to a point where you trust your body and trust your GP. Believe it or not the usual trajectory for a human is to lead a relatively healthy life into your mid 70s and then start to decline slowly. On the balance of probability you have a long way to go :)

I hope this helps in some small way. It is probably a bit more disorganised than I would like but I am also trying to stop my two year old spreading jam around the house!

Take care

[Rosie2]

Thank you for your replies! So true about googling making everything so much worse, and telling you every symptom you have (even really common ones) are fatal :shrug:

Thank you for the support! :hugs:

[Round in circles]

Hi Rosie, you're not crazy. I know sometimes it feels that way when the anxiety just won't stop.

I think I was around your age when my fear of.. Well just about everything.. appeared. I think when I realised that I wasn't invincible (the way most of us do when we're kids/teenagers) the fear of dying really kicked in.

I'm 36 now and still here. Of course back then Dr Google wasn't what it is now, so I'm thankful for that. Good grief.. I just made myself feel really old! The fear of everything has subsided. I do still get very anxious over specific things, but not like I used to.

Err I don't think my attempts at being encouraging is going very well. I'll go sit over there with one foot in my mouth ;)

[tracieann]

hi Rosie2 so you worry all the time about cancer either you have it or your going to get it well you sound like me a lot firstly let me assure you this is a brilliant tool in helping to keep you calm all of us here suffer all kinds if health anxieties but ido understand i have worried i have every one and sometimes it alters from week to week its a hard thing to live with we always go for the really serious disease rather than it being something simple i am 50 years old now and have wasted the last 10 years in this state there isnt many things to do with cancer i havent worried about or been tested for and i can reassure others wonderfully that there worries are most probably unfounded but not myself i hate my life with ha it spoils so many things and someone once said which is cruel but true while you are waiting to get a serious illness time is passing you by and its so true Rosie2 anyway here if you need a chat :)good luck