Health anxiety has pushed me to rock bottom

[Anonybrit]

I'm 26 and a doctor. Since a car crash 1 year ago that gave me annoying eye floaters I've had periods of anxiety/depression, particularly made worse by health anxiety.

I had a lot of time off work midway through last year and tried to return after CBT and despite a good start I eventually needed more time off with stress, and decided eventually to quit and try a fresh start later this year.

In the meantime I want to reboot myself and get back on track.

This was my plan for 2015 but almost 3 weeks ago I developed some bowel issues; lots of gas, gurgling, soft stool and sometimes sharp little cramps here and there. This has sent my health anxiety into overdrive and I think now I am the lowest and most stressed I have ever been in my life.

I am constantly afraid that my bowel problem will be something nasty and I can't stop focusing on it in my mind, it drags me down constantly, wears me out. I am now having vivid stressful dreams every night and waking up in a panic, my bowels churning like a cement mixer.

I am considering starting Citalopram and wondering if people have found that helped?

[blueangel]

Is there another medic you could talk to? I've worked in the NHS for years and I know a lot of healthcare workers are prone to health anxiety, which must be partially a reaction to seeing illness all the time.

Health anxiety makes you irrational - that's the really annoying thing about it, particularly if you're normally a rational person.

I'm a long-term anxiety sufferer and over the years I've learned how to manage it so that I can function most of the time. The things that have helped me most are a combination of medication and CBT. I've had various antidepressants over the years; some have worked better than others, but I'm currently taking a low dose of sertraline, which keeps me level without much in the way of side effects.

CBT helps you to relearn thinking patterns and get the rational parts of your brain back. It gets you to think about whether or not what you're thinking is reasonable or logical, and helps stop the catastrophising that is so much a part of the illness.

Have a look at cpe1978's thread which is stickied at the top of the forum - there is lots of useful information on there.

My best advice is to have a plan - and I'm sure in your case that will be a plan to get back into medicine. OK, you'll need to catch up for the time you've taken out, but this is achievable and actually, a doctor like you who understands health anxiety is going to be great with patients.

Good luck.

[Anonybrit]

Thanks for the reply blueangel, I'll check out that thread!

Can I ask if you've ever had bowel problems such as this from anxiety?

I never had a consistent problem with anxiety or health anxiety before the crash last year. I think the floaters get me down and when I'm down im prone to health anxiety. I think I need to get to the bottom of this in order to get better. I want to go back to the old me, I feel like I haven't been myself for the last 12 months, even though I've only had bad anxiety at brief points during it.

Right now I think I'm dipping into the severe anxiety bracket where im finding it hard to cope minute to minute, I just hope it fades from that acute phase soon, it's so so tiring..

I did d a few months of CBT which worked quite well but I feel like it was targeted at General anxiety which I don't really have a problem with 99.9% of the time, it's specifically health anxiety that gets the better of me and gets me into this state :(