How did your health anxiety start?

[jared]

Mine started with chest pains from what was later diagnosed as Costochondritis. I have to continually remind myself I'm not having a heart attack or anything like that. It's hard though. The chest pains caused anxiety (which I struggled with already) which developed into panic (it didn't help that my dad told me to go the ER!) , which then developed into cardiophobia, and then into hypochondria.

I have it under control for the most part... but once in awhile it springs up and I remember where it came from.

How about you?

[fruity]

o yes i remember all mine infact i could write a book but to cut story short. i had post-natel dep with my first child in & out of hospital due to gall-stone,pancreatus. then when my daughter was 6 months old i had my gall-bladder out then i developed ibs then i fell pregnant again & as soon as i had my boy i had post-natel dep again,low iron anxiety then 1 night when my son was a few months old i was thinking about a friend who,d past away only in there twentys and i had my first panic attack. my but i started to get a bit better untill nearly 2 year ago when my dad died suddenly of a heart attack he had lymphoma too. he was 62 years of age. & my world came crashing down. panic attacks for 2 weeks and high anx for ages. but the past few months i,ve been better again. i mean i have my bad days. but no panic attacks. o & also i walkd out ov my marridge he was violent. im 29 now & my children are nearly 6 and the other is 7. but i do belive i am overcoming this finaly.

[ballerina]

Mine only started a couple of months ago over something really stupid, I cut myself by accident at my friend's house and she had no plasters or antibacterial stuff (student, so typical) so then it looked a bit infected the next day when I was going home, I googled it and all this stuff about loosing limbs due to infection and the infection spreading to your blood and causing blood poisoning came up, I had a panic attack and somehow thought the hyperventilation etc was due to my cut so I went to A&E, they said my cut wasn't even infected and it'll be fine, and that I'd just had a panic attack. I also developed a throat infection not long after that. I've been obsessed with my health ever since, I'm going through a rough patch with it at the moment, I just want to feel back to normal. I never used to go to the doctors ever and now I'm there like 3 times a week. I've always suffered from anxiety but I'm really missing worrying about things that aren't my health, as strange as it sounds, at least I didn't think those things were going to make me die a horrible death. :(

[unsure_about_this]

A few years after the football match when Wednesday played Yeovil (score line 2-2) it snowed so we had to walk some of the way home, thought I was starting with bone cancer because of the pains in my leg. In late 2011, early 2012 my Dad had to do his poop bowel screening because of his age (his test was fine) It has pretty much gone from them. Worrying about cancer no stop.

[Mrs Anxious]

Mine started 14 years ago when my nan died.. I developed labrynthitis which is an in er ear infection (I didn't know is at the time) for about 2 mins while sat watching tv my vision went funny zig zagging really fast and I could t see anything at all... I thought I was going blind and it brought on a panic attack, ever since then on and off I have had anxiety and panic attacks always due to my health worries

[kerri]

Mine started in 1999, was on holiday, just me and my daughter who was 5 at the time and I became ill and was taken into hospital with food poisoning and ever since then I have been convinced I have something awful wrong with me

[cattia]

I have had anxiety for as long as I can remember. When I was ten years old I had an ECG because they tjought there was something wrong with me which turned out to be panic attacks. Even when I was much younger than that, probably seven or eight I remember having rituals that I had to do before I could go to sleep and I thought that if I didn't do them something bad would happen.
My first bout of really severe anxiety and major depression didn't happen until my early twenties. I had what i suppose was a sort of breakdown. That was triggered by me having flu and it took me a while to recover so I became convinced that I had ME and was not going to be able to do anything at all for at least the next ten years. The internet was just starting to be widely available then, so i started being able to read horror stories. ME is a sort of default fear for me that I tend to return to.
Since then, I have suffered from various anxieties, most of them health related but I also scored top of the scale for generalised anxiety disorder when I took a test at the start of my telephone CBT course.
Throughout all of this, I have held down a successful career, got married and had two children. It's definitely worse since I became a parent, but as I am older now (36) I am more mature so have more of my own experience to draw on. I believe I will always be prone to anxiety but I hope for long remissions and shorter and more managable relapses.

[PBL80]

Mine started summertime! I was walking down the high street when all of a sudden my legs felt weak and I felt really dizzy, I felt as if I was going to pass out! I took myself home and went to bed thinking that I'd sleep it off, but not long after waking i got the dizzy sensation again. I ended up googling my symptoms and as we do we always focus on the worst scenarios I really frightened myself I already had mild Anxiety. I took myself to the docs were I was diagnosed with labrynthitus within a few days on antibiotics the dizziness cleared, however the scare led to my anxiety growing resulting in my having panic attacks, hot/cold sweats and heart/chest pains. I found this site and realised I wasn't alone! What had really helped me was reading the symptoms section on this site at this moment I feel in control of my anxiety and I'm not on any tablets at the mo neither.

[BeckyBop]

mine all started when i was in class and my teacher mentioned breathing being a automatic process not controlled by us then i started thinking about it and but what if it just sopped? and here I am now