Severe health anxiety

[mickmck]

Hi, I'm not expecting any miracle answers to cure me of health anxiety, but after reading many posts, felt compelled to post myself.

I have had anxiety for at least 15 years, well started with panic attacks and has finally developed into severe health anxiety. In the last year, I have diagnosed myself with most types of cancer, even typing the word, distresses me. I can't even read a newspaper now for fear of the seeing the word. Also, if I read that someone young has died suddenly, that panics me too.

I'm father of 5 with a demanding job and my mood with the kids is at best irritable, probably because I go to bed extremely anxious and as soon as I wake up I am extremely anxious. I have Ulcerative Colitis and have to have blood tests every 12 weeks (which have always been OK). I had a routine Colonoscopy in January with biopsies and all was fine. If I hear someone has an illness, I will usually find a symptom that I have got too. I would say that I have severe health anxiety with the added issue of medical phobia. Sometimes I wish I could stay in bed all day as getting out of bed means the anxiety is on its way. I work in IT, and a few months ago, I started working from home full time which means I can google medical problems all day and check my body for issues, means at end of the day, I am an absolute mental wreck. Wondering if anyone else has health anxiety and medical phobia? If so, how do you deal with it?

Michael

[Toby2000]

Hi,

I'm sure most people on here can relate, HA is horrible :(

Toby

[emmalj0]

I google most things if i know people are ill it panics me and then i think iv got it. Iv diagnosed myself plenty of times iv always been wrong. Currently i have a lump which at worst has been diagnosed as a fatty lump but iv convinced myself cancer. I just try to keep busy, spend time with my kids it does help and im currently waiting cbt which iv been told is good . I hate being like this its awful

[themr87]

Same boat over here. Terrible isn't it?

I'm a serial Googler and it's definitely the worst thing you can ever do to yourself. Try your best to refrain from Googling anything health related. That's a step closer to less stress.

[Enoughalready!]

Ugh, the googling! I'm trying to explain to my husband how I correlate one symptom with something sinister because I looked it up online and he just tells me not to google. Any anomaly can be a symptom of something really bad when you google.
His solution is to simply stop googling, but it sure isn't that simple! A lot of times, I google for reassurance that what I have is normal, but something scary comes up instead. I really hate that. I know I'd be a lot better off if I could resist searching.