How can you tell if it is anxiety or not

[Alice1]

I guess one of the reasons I struggle so much is in the uncertainty of certainty.
When I tell myself 'this sensation is just anxiety' there is always a doubt in my mind unless I am 100% certain of the root cause (i.e 'I have a bruise on my leg because I just ran into that table', 'I'm really tired because I got 2 hours sleep last night.' or 'I feel really sick because I've just been in a car and have had travel sickness my whole life').
I know how anxiety causes over sensitisation to normal bodily symptoms as well as blowing mild benign ones out of proportion and creating problems of it's own.
But how do you know.There is no comprehensive list online describing all the different avenues of a symptom and which ones lead to concerning illnesses. There is no doctor who possesses the capabilities of being able to diagnose every illness known to man, or even few who are able to pick up on seemingly innocuous, random symptoms that actually turn out to be a serious disease.

I wish there was some way of differentiating between serious and non-serious symptoms. Obviously there will come a time in my life when I am ill. Be it in a month, 5 years, or 70. I am aware I am going to die of something. But will I tell myself it's 'just anxiety' all the way up to my death bed?

Are you only meant to go to a doctor when you are so sick you cannot function, other then to occasionally moan in pain and try and tell your family you don't want them to wear black to your funeral? People are encouraged to go even for mild symptoms that they just have not had before. If this is the case then I keep having mild reoccurring symptoms that I have not had before. Yet when I go to a doctor they tell me it's probably anxiety.

I just am so clueless of the protocol. How do you know. What do you do. How do I stop feeling so sick if I'm apparently medically healthy.

[Mindknot]

I totally get where you're coming from, I have these exact same concerns... and much I've tried to step back from the cycle where my anxiety symptoms cause more health anxiety, there still always a bit of a niggling doubt in my mind... I don't have a solution for you, I think we're aiming for some balanced mental position in between, the doctors and ourselves can never be 100% perfect, but we need to try to be people who don't over analyse the way we feel, and certainly not doing our own research about minor symptom X, Y or Z - I feel like we might have an instinctual recognition thing that will kick in when actually sick - and then finally we just have to trust the doctors... :shrug:

I'm much better with my health anxiety when I'm able to zone out outside influence from posters, adverts, media generally.... so my aim is to find peace with my mind and start trusting my body more... that sounds a bit hippy, but body/mind balance or something... y'know. Sorry for the crap explanation, hope you find a way to work it out :D

[AlexandriaUK]

I think Mindknot has answered you very well, I also am not 100% all the time but trust my Drs to know what's best for me, even Drs have to trust other Drs sometimes.
I agree that deep down inside you will know when there is a real problem, in-between just try to seek help when you cannot control your HA, even people without HA worry about symptoms, they just don explode them out of control, they also have the ability to walk out of the Drs surgery when there told its a virus ect and not give it another thought other than to pick up some OTC meds.
Life must be bliss for them LOL

[BoneyCOrk]

This is probably useless advice as you can't actually implement it, but getting properly sick actually helped my Health Anxiety somewhat. One of my biggest issues when I first accepted HA was learning how to deal with it without wanting to become ignorant regarding my own body.

Then, I caught a horrible prostate infection a couple of years back and it was so blindingly obvious from the start. There was no need to question my fatigue, my fever, or my pain. And there was no eye-rolling from my wife when I suggested going to the doctor. When I did see him, I didn't get a disappointing wishy-washy response, I got immediate care. It set the bar for what being sick is and I can easily measure most symptoms since then against it.

I still suffer from HA. It gets me all the time, But don't worry about missing the clues when you're legitimately sick. It's often blindingly obvious.

[Mindknot]

I still suffer from HA. It gets me all the time, But don't worry about missing the clues when you're legitimately sick. It's often blindingly obvious.

Yeah, that's what I thought, indeed remember, from pre-HA days. Perspective just gets so skewed...! Nice reminder BoneyCOrk :)

[Akaleez]

I cant get my head around Anxiety, we believe every other illness has symptoms but why cant we believe anxiety has them too. I still believe its other things wrong.

[Alice1]

Yeah, that's what I thought, indeed remember, from pre-HA days. Perspective just gets so skewed...! Nice reminder BoneyCOrk :)

That's really reassuring to hear, thank you so much.
I don't think it's actually getting sick that worries me to the states I get, although obviously I do still get worked up over the possibility of the more extreme illnesses, it's the uncertainty of having an undiagnosed illness ignored by everyone and then dying suddenly and unexpectedly with no one believing me.

I guess because bar a car accident when I was 5, where I spent a month in hospital with my mum, and a sleepless night in excruciating pain due to a knee sprain when I was 15, I've never been truly sick. I wasn't even registered at any GP or dentist until last year (when I was 18) as there has been no need to ever go.

But if you guys think there is a definite sickness threshold, and I'll know when I am ill, then I really want to believe it. Because the uncertainty and pondering and umming and ahhing really drives me crazy sometimes.

I've never really known sickness. And I've never really known death. And the reality of both things has sort of hit me with a vengeance this past year and it's all I really think about.

[Mindknot]

I've never really known sickness. And I've never really known death. And the reality of both things has sort of hit me with a vengeance this past year and it's all I really think about.

Hmm, yeah, I've had a similar experience I think although I'm older than you, the last decade had been fairly non-eventful in those terms, and it sort of sidelined me when I realised that that is what could happen to people that I love and that I myself may have to tackle at some point. I have never spent so much time at the doctors as I have in the last year, and I think that's because I realised that I was the one responsible for monitoring my own health - and of course then when I thought about it there were a hundred little "symptoms" that I noticed all of sudden - quite a large proportion of them unchanged for years!

The anxious mind will do that though, it makes you hypersensitive and so what you need is to aim for is a balanced connection between body and mind where you are able to say - "is this really something I need to consult the doctor about?" Where it gets confusing is when anxiety becomes that thing that you need to consult the doctor about, and the absolute best way to stop future confusion over symptoms is really to treat the anxiety part. :)