Why are we like this?

[jessica780]

Im kind of curious as to if anyone else thinks they know where this stems from? For instance I feel mine was because I watched my grandma die of stage 4 ovarian cancer at a young age and it was traumatizing. Ever since then I cant stop being constantly scared I'm going to die or get sick or that someone I love is going to die of some terrible disease.
Why do you think you became like this?
Have you always been like this or did something happen?
Curious to see what people have to say.

[leebop]

I never experienced a death until I was a young adult but I was convinced I had AIDS at age 10 and have been panicked about illness nearly all my life. I found out a couple of years ago my grandma was the same. :)

[*Fallen Angel*]

Mine was triggered after having a miscarriage and my daughter nearly dying of pneumonia when she was two. Seeing her on a life support machine because Drs said she was fine when she wasn't has destroyed my faith in them and my own belief about health. I never believe what they say and constantly question what they might have missed all the time.

[wnsos]

Quite positive mine was sparked (and buried) by a missed case of pancreatitis. After being in icu I just sort of ignored it happened and got back to my life. Seven years after I had a strange feeling of impending doom hit me with a stomach ache and it started spiralling.

[meche]

Admittedly I've always been quite an anxious person but I didn't realise how much so until an upsetting event a few years ago. It spiralled from that point. I go through phases with my anxiety - I can have a perfect, happy life for months & months then suddenly I go downhill. I have a few weeks of feeling both mentally & physically drained and then I pick myself up & I'm back to normal. I can't control when it's going to happen - it just creeps up on me! xx

[devonbevon]

Mine was definitely triggered when I became a mother and when my cousin died of cancer and left behind 3 young children

[ShaunRyder]

Strangely it was not health or a death that triggered mine, mine was due to the fact in 2011 -2012 I was charged for GBH 'joint enterprise', I was charged because i was at a scene of a fight on a night out even though i did not touch anybody. It went on for 18 months and during the period I lost my job, my girlfriend and just went down hill, I woke up everyday for 18 months thinking i would be going to prison and in the end I did not care about anything or even my life, I was under huge stress 24/7 and mine has stemmed from the stress of that. But I still do not understand why it is my health that I worry about :weep:

[meche]

That's awful Shaun. I can imagine that was a hugely stressful time. I also struggle to understand why I worry about my health. 3 years ago I didn't give a scooby about anything health related and now I know more about certain illnesses & diseases that I've no right knowing about & and I doubt every ache/pain. It's so tiresome. xx

[jessica780]

Its crazy to see the answers here. A lot of them do seem to relate to loss. That fear of losing something. Control, life, someone elses life.
Its such a hard feeling when you feel like you don't have control over your own life out of fear for your own. Its exhausting.
Watching my grandma go through chemo after chemo, beat cancer then have it come back tenfold. It was just too much. She died when I went to the bathroom I came back she was gone. The way she went was too much.
As with all of you whether you've always been like this or something happened we can get through this. I don't know about you guys but I find the people around me are starting to not take me seriously. Especially at work. Its making it very difficult to talk to someone about it because now they just get frustrated and tell me I need to get over it. As if I can press a button.

[ShaunRyder]

Yes Meche i'd say it was the worst time of my life, yep I am with you on that one every ache and pain to is something spreading, I am more concerned over moles and lumps, currently worried about a swollen gland above collar bone, been checked by doc said it is fine and due to infection/cold and to go back in two weeks to see if cleared up but still convinced it is something more serious, but hey that is anxiety! :(

[MrAndy]

mine was triggered when my daughter born @ 26 weeks premature contracted a flesh eating infection in her stomach while in hospital and nearly died.She was ill ill for months and afterwards I had severe PTSD and went nuts :) Before that I was the most relaxed and chilled out person ever and could take anything thrown at me in life ,stress is a bitch

[Natka]

My mother died age 54 from breast cancer after fighting it for 7 years (and hiding the illness from me for most of that time). I was 16 when she died and she was the person to whom I was closest to in the whole world. A year later I started experiencing PVCs and since then I have had health anxiety on and off for about 20 years and feared a variety of different conditions

[Autumn18]

Hi everyone, I am new to this forum today. I have already found comfort in reading the help pages on health anxiety and knowing i'm not alone in this. For the last 6 weeks life has felt like a daily struggle. I have probably always had a bit of health anxiety but it usually passes after a trip to the doctors. however, last month my aunt died, aged 43 extremely suddenly. She was here one day, gone the next. I'm finding it so difficult to come to terms with this and has caused health anxiety to become practically crippling :(

[dac0273]

I've had anxiety for years not sure why , but not really HA until few years ago I've always worried here and there about my health as my dad died of heart attack . but never to this extent . I can't put my finger on why it's spiralled out of control these last few years . Maybe I've not been happy with my relTionship and that's caused me to worry more. X

---------- Post added at 21:34 ---------- Previous post was at 21:32 ----------

Hi autum gosh thats awful and worrying what did yr aunt did of ?

[chickpea]

Really interesting (but upsetting) to read that all of us have had a particular event that has triggered HA.

Mine started about 5 years ago, although looking back, I think I had low-level HA (worrying about catching sick bugs) before that.
In the space of a year, I was carjacked at knifepoint and then my dad developed severe acute pancreatitis. He was in ICU for 6 months before they switched his machines off.
I thought I was ok, but about 6 months after he died, I started to get feelings of panic while a passenger in cars. A short time after that started, I was walking home late at night and felt like I was being followed by a man walking the same way. It completely terrified me and the very next day, I started getting diarrhoea.

This carried on for some weeks, getting worse and worse and then I started passing blood and losing weight rapidly - I was on the toilet 20 times a day.
Saw my GP who mentioned Crohns and ulcerative colitis, but discounted both because "if you had either, you'd be very, VERY ill." She basically told me it was stress, causing severe IBS and to come back if it got worse. It did get worse, so I went back and she did blood tests. The blood tests came back normal and I was told that "blood tests don't lie - if you were actually ill, the inflammation markers would run into the hundreds. There's NOTHING wrong with you!"
At this point, it was suggested I be referred to a gastroenterologist "so that he can tell you there's nothing wrong with you", and put on Citalopram for anxiety.

So, I'm still losing weight, still on the toilet day and night, still passing blood at this point. I took the first dose of Citalopram and almost straight away I developed panic disorder. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I was unable to function or be on my own, I was in a state of pure panic and anxiety all day.
The GP told me that it was not the meds, but anxiety...and upped the Citalopram and gave me sleeping pills and diazepam. At this point, I just wanted to be admitted to hospital and sedated until I was better - it was honestly the worst time of my life.

Shortly later, I had my appointment with a gastroenterologist. His first reaction to my story was "IBS doesn't cause weight loss and doesn't cause blood loss." He ordered a colonoscopy. Some 8 months after I'd first started the symptoms and when I was actually feeling much better, the colonoscopy diagnosed Crohn's disease - my consultant actually said he couldn't fine one bit of healthy colon to show me on the screen. I cried with relief, just to know that I was right all along and I wasn't going mad.

Since then, I have developed a phobia of doctors and the whole experience has made me doubt what they tell me. The blood tests DID lie, and the anxiety I suffered was because I KNEW there was something physically wrong with me but no-one would listen.

I have had long periods of being HA-free since then, but lost a friend to breast cancer a couple of weeks ago and that, combined with what I think is the start of the perimenopause and crazy hormones has triggered it off again recently.

[Avasmummy_x]

I've always been a bit overdramatised when I got ill as a kid. If I got a cold I'd insist I need the day off and wouldn't leave my bed. But never thought of anything worse or look in to symptoms I just accepted I always got the worst case of colds and bugs lol!

I was perfectly happy and healthy till I became pregnant. I lost weight instead of gained, I had severe morning sickness all the way through and had bleeding so ended up in hospital with suspected miscarriage. All was good. Then I hit 30weeks pregnant and became very ill very quickly and doctors kept misdiagnosing in the end I was rushed in to the hospital at 35weeks very ill and my daughter being at risk for stillborn. I had very severe pre eclampsia and it made me very I'll and my placenta wasn't providing enough oxygen or food to my daughter. I'd had high blood pressure and awful symptoms for weeks and nothing was looked in to and it almost cst bit hour lives. It didn't get much better after birth it took 8weeeks for my bp to come down which started off the health anxiety still to thus day I'm scared of having my bp taken incase it becomes high.

Now I just think with every symptom I get I'm dying in some sort of way.

[unsure_about_this]

Mine was when my Dad reached 60 a few years ago when he was sent his bowel screening test. I had abdominal pain soon after and was worried I had a bowel cancer and even though I had a lot of test and scans done all was okay, at one stage I got told a possibly of a pouch on small bowel which could be correct by keyhole if needed.

It did not help as well looking for articles on line about people who have had bowel cancer in their early 20s to 60s who got told it was IBS or something similar (I have now avoid daily mail.)

In late 2012 to 2013 I thought I was going to die because of my abdominal pain I really thought I had something wrong with me, always asking have I lost weight

This year my parents were very sneaky to hid his next screening from me so I will not worry all his screening came back good.

[Autumn18]

Hi, I don't want to say and increase everyone's fear and googling!....

[ScaredLizard]

Mine was triggered at a young age. I choked on a runt (a hard candy here in the USA) and my mom sat next to me and had no idea.

After that it was compounded by my mom watching Rescue 911 and often it showed children getting ill and dying and hurt.

Then in 2007 while pregnant with my daughter I was admitted to the hospital for bleeding and stayed for 6 weeks. I hemorrhaged after birth and my daughter died of renal failure at 23 days old.

For me.... my fear is of death. I'm afraid of dying and ceasing to exist.

[wnsos]

I just want to thank everyone for sharing their stories. It's something to think about that we've all had these experiences (that the CBT modules refer to.) it's such a battle but I feel like a huge step is to not feel alone. :hugs:

[jessica780]

I just want to thank everyone for sharing their stories. It's something to think about that we've all had these experiences (that the CBT modules refer to.) it's such a battle but I feel like a huge step is to not feel alone. :hugs:



I agree with you there. Especially when sometimes people in our day to day lives don't understand or stop taking our fears seriously.
I noticed a lot of these are the fear of death. I feel it has a lot to do with not having control of our lives. Its comforting to see I'm not alone here.

I just don't want to turn 50 and look back and wonder what happened. I don't want to spend my life worrying. Life is so short and you only get the one chance to live it. No sense in spending that valuable time on worrying and not living.
My mom even told me that people who do have cancer or some sort of disabling illness would be looking at me wishing they could have the life I have that I am wasting away. Unfortunately its not an easy mentality to just rid yourself of instantly. I'm so glad I found this website. It's probably been the only helpful thing google has brought me to when I was feeling scared hahaha:blush: