Too many worries

[Toby2000]

Hi,

At the moment I feel like I'm being flattened by health anxiety and eurgghh.. I have my leukemia fear, my mum having throat cancer fear, my sisters stomach tumor coming back (sharp pains in stomach) fear and my other sister having leukemia fear.. I'm close to worrying about a lump in my dads nose too.

What can I do short term to make myself feel better about everything?

Thanks :)

[Light_Bringer777]

In the short term it's pretty much just distracting yourself from it and being productive if you can. When we're both feet in there really isn't much to do besides ride it out and try our best not to feed the fear.

Mid and long term you should definitely work on the anxiety itself if you're not already doing so.

[wnsos]

Try and think of it this way: what are the chances all four/five of you have cancer at the same time?

Light said it best. You're young, working on your anxiety now will benefit you later in life as well as help you through this. But you need to. Find something you love doing, even if it's watching films or (like it was for me) playing video games, and as became the NMP motto for me: feel the fear and do it anyway.

[Emilym80]

I would try this short-term:

Every time you notice yourself worrying, simply accept your worrying instead of trying to resist it. Take notice of it and it will probably pass instead of lingering and causing anxiety. If you can do this every time you notice yourself worrying, you will hopefully notice a pretty quick reduction in the severity of your anxiety and feel a lot better- when I had crippling HA a couple of months ago I was able to do this every time a worry entered my head and honestly felt considerably better about my worries within an hour or so.

You can also download an app called SAM if you have an iPhone, it's free and basically has a bunch of CBT exercises and meditative techniques, as well as lots of resources that explain how anxiety impacts on you physically and mentally and the physiological/mental functions behind it.

Best of luck :)

[Toby2000]

Thanks for your replies everyone :)

My older sister had a rare nervous system tumor when she was an infant, they said it's not likely to come back. They even stopped the scans (which picked up nothing 6-7 months ago) because they were so sure it wouldn't reoccur. Now she's had like a sudden, sharp pain in her stomach so as you can imagine, I'm really scared. Would they have picked something up on her scan if there was a problem?

---------- Post added at 11:35 ---------- Previous post was at 11:33 ----------


I would try this short-term:

Every time you notice yourself worrying, simply accept your worrying instead of trying to resist it. Take notice of it and it will probably pass instead of lingering and causing anxiety. If you can do this every time you notice yourself worrying, you will hopefully notice a pretty quick reduction in the severity of your anxiety and feel a lot better- when I had crippling HA a couple of months ago I was able to do this every time a worry entered my head and honestly felt considerably better about my worries within an hour or so.

You can also download an app called SAM if you have an iPhone, it's free and basically has a bunch of CBT exercises and meditative techniques, as well as lots of resources that explain how anxiety impacts on you physically and mentally and the physiological/mental functions behind it.


Best of luck :)

That's some really good advice, thanks. Unfortunatley I don't have an iPhone :sad:

[anthrokid]

The SAM app is also available on android devices (e.g. samsung). But you can also google self-help for anxiety and find lots of helpful resources and materials for managing anxiety :)

---------- Post added at 23:17 ---------- Previous post was at 23:09 ----------

If you have a look at the following link, you can find a whole set of activities and information to help understand and manage health anxiety. It is designed for you to work through each section at your own pace. For example, this week you might work on the first section, and next week on the next, and so on. Even if you don't want to work through them, I'd really recommend at least having a read of each section because it has some great explanations and suggestions :)


http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/resources/infopax.cfm?Info_ID=53

[Toby2000]

Thanks for that :)