Consuming my life! please help me

[emmalouise92]

Hi everyone, i'm new to this site and I'm so glad I found it. To cut a long story short, I'm Emma and i suffer with severe undiagnosed health anxiety ( no it is not my anxiety making me think i have anxiety, i actually do have anxiety but won't go to the doc about it! lol)
basically I am a nervous wreck and i worry every single day of my life about health conditions that could kill me. mostly the 'C' word. it's like saying 'Voldemort', makes me wrench.
I now feel as if my health anxiety has progressed severely over the past year, i even ended up in A&E on christmas day over the head of it. my family don't know, only close friends because people just don't UNDERSTAND. You can't just 'get over it' and think of something else..
Have any of you actually been diagnosed with health anxiety? if so, what is the procedure? i don't want to start going to to the doctor (I go way too much as it is) i don't want to go to just be pumped with depression meds.

Please help, losing the will.

[luc]

Hi Emmalouise - you have come to right place. I went to the doctors 10 years ago and told them I had HA. They had not heard of it! I think I may have discovered the term through this forum and soon after went to a conference in London on HA - oh the relief. It has been myself who has subsequently informed new doctors and in some cases they have got it and other times they have not. I think awareness of HA is much greater now as is, (I hope) the difference between HA and the old stereotype of a hypocondriac.

[emmalouise92]

Hi there :) thanks for your reply. yes, I used to be called a hypochondriac a lot. At least you hear a lot more about HA now. IN saying that, social anxiety seems to be more common. I just wish people could be more understanding. telling someone with anxiety to just 'stop worrying' is like telling a fish not to swim

[HoneyLove]

Hi EmmaLouise! Welcome to the forum, luc is right that you're in a great place to get some help :) All of us here know what you're going through and understand how hard it can be when the people around you just don't get it.

It's a good step to talk to your GP, they can give you advice about different resources for help in your area. Meds are not necessarily something you have to take, they are usually used to help people calm down from high levels of anxiety so that they can begin work on the things that are causing them to be so fearful in the first place. There is a lot of work you can do to help yourself without medication, I've never taken them myself and have come a long way :)

I wrote a really long post in another thread this morning about the things I did to help combat anxiety, if you'd like to have a read of it here's a link (http://nomorepanic.co.uk/showpost.php?p=1319607&postcount=7).