Is education a good thing or bad?

[damianjmcgrath]

During my time, and obviously still to this day, with health anxiety, I've looked up many things on the internet, read books, spoke to people etc. I thought that knowing as much as possible could help prepare me mentally, help me predict what might happen next and enable my brain to logically classify my symptoms as anxiety.

As a result of looking things up, I've now got a decent knowledge of the signs and symptoms of a lot of illnesses, especially heart related ones. This has helped in one area - if I get symptoms, I can reassure myself it's nothing serious.

However, it has also been a curse too, especially when a) my anxiety symptoms do happen to exactly match a real illness or b) when I can't find any information.

For example, I just read that Bob Mortimer had a triple heart bypass over the last few days. I read that article and was only looking out for the causes and tests (typical anxiety behaviour!). I couldn't really find out anything. I couldn't find out if an ECG would have identified the problem, or whether it's solely caused by cholesterol, or whether there's any warning signs. The lack of information panicked me more.

Do people on here find that being educated is a reassurance or a hindrance?

[FeelLikeNeo]

I think it's probably a bad thing for anxiety. The premise that you can 'get better' through education suggests that an anxiety-suffer will be assuaged by rationality: that by knowing more, you can discount your symptoms.

The problem with that is that a) we're not rational, otherwise we wouldn't think we're dying with a one in a million disease and b) our brains often switch symptoms to match whatever we're worried about. So I don't think education will improve those situations at all. Obviously, this depends on the individual - you might be different!

Having said that, one of the plus sides to anxiety is I know way loads more about health and diseases than the average joe, and that's kinda cool! Maybe not for my anxiety, but for general knowledge it's great.

[daisyflower]

I think it's a bad thing for people with health anxiety. I know with myself, I only have to read something once about an illnesses or symptoms and I can't forget it. My friends joke around and call me dr Daisy but in reality, I know too much but not enough. Although we think we know all the signs and symptoms, we haven't had the 10 years medical training and so jump to the worst case scenario that we have read about.
I remember my doctor being shocked when I mentioned coeliac disease because of skin problems and mouth ulcers etc and he was like, 'wait, what?? You've made a large leap there!' Large leaps are what people with health anxiety are guilty of...I remember when I was worried about melanoma, I was on the train and saw a man with what looked like textbook melanoma on his face. We all think we're experts on the conditions we fear when in reality, we really aren't. A little knowledge really can be a dangerous thing...ignorance is bliss sometimes

[FeelLikeNeo]

Large leaps are what people with health anxiety are guilty of.

Basically! You get a little something that can be as common as an itch (indeed, it may even be an itch!) and think it's the bells tolling.

A family member started getting a numb lower leg, so what do I jump to? Heart disease, a clot, maybe even diabetes.

He ignored it and it went away after a few days.

I'd have been straight down the hospital! :huh::D

[MyNameIsTerry]

I think the focus is on the wrong thing. I have OCD, not HA, so I'll provide an example in OCD terms that I know everyone without this specific form in this example will understand straight away in regards to how information seeking can be flawed.

Say I had a checking form that means I check the locks constantly when going out, even coming back to do it. How would learning about likelihood of burglary, the number of active burglars in my area, the best locks, etc help me? It wouldn't, it would simply reinforce my fear that results in more checking.

So why would learning about many physical health conditions help HA? As you say, only in the short term for reassurance but many can't accept it anyway.

Learning about your anxiety will help. It certainly does with OCD.

[rsanchez]

I think it's one of those things that can be good or bad. It's good to inform yourself, bad to scare yourself. If you're gonna imagine yourself having everything you read, it might be a good idea to take a break from learning about health stuff.

[TheMadOladCoger]

I think this is a double edged sword, yes of course it is a good idea to educate your self to a certain point so that you know when to go and see a medical professional about something. However we with HA don't seem to do that we try to educate ourselves some much that we have an overflow of information and start to think that everything is a sign of something deeper. I think this is why some of us have trouble trusting medical professionals if we have a symptom which we have Googled and we have the answer we are convinced is correct and then we are told that its something else and nothing to worry about we just can't accept it as we have educated ourselves on what Google has told us.

I feel that is the problem with educating your self to much when it come to HA and little bit of information is a good thing but too much you start to thing everything is something.

Peace

[Vet]

I think it depends where the education comes from. Educating yourself via the Internet is not a good thing but I do think when people go to the doctors / dentists then , if they gave a better explanation of what your issue is then it could relieve a lot of stress.

[dizzy daisy]

In my experience definitely bad. When I first started with anxiety I was told by a counsellor to read up on what it was o thought was wrong with me as this would serve as a control on whether my fears were rational or not. I agree with other posts that this is a mistake as we don't think rationally. If we did we wouldn't have health anxiety x