View Full Version : What do you think started/triggered your HA?
For me, it was a few things.
Since my late teens, early 20th my family has always considered me a bit of a hypochondriac. We do have a bit of anxiety in the family; my dad has mild HA and my mum,although not a HA sufferer, is a bit highly strung and seems to worry about everything else!
My HA was fairly mild until my early-mid 30th when two of my friends (around about the same age as me) both died of cancer and this really set off my HA for about six months. Plus becoming a mum and feeling the importance of being around for my children made my HA heighten.
My HA ebbed for a few years until a few months after my daughter was born, in September, I found a Bartholin gland cyst (small and the doctors say harmless) and this really set off my HA for the last few months.
Google is also probably what has also made my HA worse in recent years, plus having a smartphone. When I was younger, you would never have been able to 'research' every little sensation your body had at the touch of a button (and usually come up with Web searches with worst case scenarios).
How about you? How did your HA start off - have you always had it? Does it run in your family?
Anxiety definitely runs in my family, and I certainly started with that...
My HA probably kicked in around 5th grade, when I found a lump in my neck (enlarged lymph node). I, of course, convinced myself it was cancer but was too scared to tell anyone. After that, anything abnormal was just a "symptom of the cancer" -- I got ringworm in 6th grade and again was too scared to tell anyone because I thought I would be diagnosed with cancer.
My sophomore year of high school, it really hit full force. Sometimes my fears were cancer-related, other times it was just random things I was terrified of. I just remember one morning waking up feeling like I was 100% doomed and it was downhill from there with a constant cycle of "illness".
It got a little better when I graduated from high school, but I still had flare ups. When I was a junior in college, I found what I thought was another lump (has since disappeared) and went into full-on panic mode again. At that point, I decided enough was enough and went to my doctor. Only took me eight years, haha! He felt it, did a quick blood test, and assured me it was just a lymph node that never went down. That if it were something else, there would be other indicators.
And just like that...I was pretty much free! From HA, anyway. I still have wicked anxiety from time to time, but thankfully my HA episodes are very, very rare and extremely short lived. It was like I was rid of the thing I was afraid of most health-wise and I could move on.
For me, I think it was just some stressful time during my final year in college. Before then, I was not a particularly anxious person. In fact, I may have been too care free, shrugging off stuff like bad grades and not doing anything about it.
Anyway, towards the end of college it seemed like problems kept piling up too high for me to shrug them off anymore. Little stress symptoms started popping up which at first I just considered stuff my body was doing, nothing to worry about. I got a weird fluttering in my chest, palpitations here and there.
Eventually I stopped college due to bad grades and also thinking I can just start working full time. Then I was let go from my job shortly after stopping college. Being at home all day after going through that, the stress just kept getting more and more intense. Palpitations started coming on every day, then every hour. Then panic attacks started. I think my major turning points was having a panic attack on the bus and having a panic attack at the supermarket.
This was about three years ago. I definitely feel like I've gotten better since hitting a low about a year ago, but I still have a long way to go before I get back to how I was before it started.
Genes...
I'm beginning to wonderr if I don't have bipolar disorder. I go through stages of great happiness and productivity...and then....
I can't pinpoint the exact cause, but I remember the beginnings.
In the 7th grade, my science teacher spent literally the entire year on diseases and human body-related curriculum. It truly traumatized me to learn about all these crazy, exotic illnesses and all of the ways your body can go wrong. We watched movies like Outbreak. We talked about pandemics. I had my first panic attack that year and was convinced I had malaria for no reason at all, and the panic/night sweats continued for much of that year, though at the time, I didn't know what a panic attach was so I was convinced I was just plain dying.
A bit after that, I developed terrible one-sided headaches, and my pediatrician sent me for scans, and all I can remember is that I thought I was dying of a brain tumor.
And on it went, a variety of maladies, all life-threatening. Eventually they all passed, only to replaced by something else. I had a reprieve from about 18-22, I was focused on college and was having fun and living a really vibrant life and it distracted me for a while. I've had some personal stresses over the last few years and things have really flared back up, especially this year. My anxiety is always sky high at the moment.
I'm hoping I can really focus on learning to cope with this permanently so that I can have more good stretches of time where I'm not plagued by paranoia about cancer. I've accepted that I probably will always have HA on the back burner, but am hopeful I can learn to deal with with when it happens and move on!
Stress and symptoms caused by anxiety before I knew it was anxiety. Headaches, muscle soreness, chest pains, other random pains. I'm a healthy 21 year old dude, and yet always think there's something wrong with me. Also any mole on my body worries me no matter how "normal" it looks so there's that. And then it snowballs into every ache is something terrible.
PrincessPanic89
04-01-16, 23:29
For me, my HA started out as emetaphobia. When I was around 7, I went to the cinema and ate far too many sweets and as a consequence I was sick. Right in the middle of the cinema, in front of everyone. Since then I have had this fear of sick, being sick, other people feeling or being sick but most importantly, me feeling or being sick in a public place. It has made me avoid many situations, I have a food phobia in that I won't eat anything that isn't fresh or has been opened previously and then put back, and it has also given me a slight social anxiety. I get anxious about being sick outside of my house but when I do go out the anxiety makes me nauseous and therefore my emetophobia worsens, it's like a vicious cycle!
However, my health anxiety spiralled as I got older and this was triggered partly due to the birth of my daughter (when you have a child, your realisation of how important life is changes dramatically and suddenly the fear of leaving behind a child makes my HA worse) and also the death of my grandad. My HA is cancer specific in that my main worry above all else is getting cancer. My grandad was healthy, never had a day off work in his life. Then one day he went to the doctor as he was feeling a bit under the weather and long story short, it turned out he had cancer in almost every part of his body that you could imagine and he died two weeks after. To know how bad cancer can be in that you can be fine one minute and only have a few weeks left the next terrifies me.
None of my family suffer from HA. I consider myself a hypochondriac, I have "had" many things including a brain tumour, heart failure, various cancers, diabetes... And that's just in the last year. It doesn't help at all that the symptoms of anxiety are so similar to the symptoms of many diseases which I think makes HA so hard to deal with because you just go round in circles constantly. Thinking you have something, getting anxiety about it, anxiety causing symptoms which then "confirm" you DO have something wrong. It's exhausting!
dakotasmom
05-01-16, 00:07
Mine started when a cousin of a very close friend died in the shower from a brain aneurysm at 14. I was also 14 and I was so afraid that I would die from that too that I wouldn't even get into the shower. After that it progressed from there I would have a symptom and immediately google it and find the worst possible result, then that would flare up my anxiety and send me into a deep depression making me think every day was my last day on earth.
After getting on medication at 19 my HA hasn't been nearly as bad as it was when I was a teenager. Once in a while I'll send myself into a panic thinking I'm having an aneurysm (I'm 22 now and that incident from when I was 14 is still my biggest HA worry). I've been pretty proud of my progress though, HA is just exhausting to deal with as you all know!
luxxinterior
05-01-16, 00:23
Mine is sporadic... comes and goes, and sometimes is greater in intensity. I am fully aware that anxiety is a response to a perceived threat, which is useful information :) ... but doesn't prevent the perceived threat from seeming any less real :|
Worrywart528
05-01-16, 00:29
Mine was my junior year in highschool. I was a competitive swimmer, football player and sprinter. I worked my butt off and was spending hours at swim practice, then 45 minutes of weight training for football and trying to get in winter track workouts. I was also trying to keep my grades as high as possible. I was run down and kept getting sick... Every week I would get sick... Lymph nodes popped up all over my body. I was losing weight fast and felt like death. I convinced myself it was cancer. Saw doctor after doctor... Test after test... At that moment I started what if!!! After about 4 months of testing the doctors found nothing except that I was over trained and stressed my immune system. I didn't have cancer but from that moment on every health symptom
I had resulted in full blown panic!
I can remember being very young and very scared of the doctor or things going wrong with my health. I remember in elementary school having a large lymph node swell under my jaw for at least over a month and I never told anyone because I was sure I was going to die. Then when my grandfather died of cancer when I was 13, my HA really set in and suddenly I WANTED to go to the doctor for every lump and bump. Right after I graduated college, I started graduate coursework (07/08) and was very stressed. That was the worst bout of HA I have experienced. It went on for quite some time and was the same season as now....the holiday season. It ruined my holidays that year just like it did this year. Then I overcame that somehow and managed to get off the hamster wheel of anxiety. I was OK for a while. I noticed my anxiety was heightened after my daughter was born in 2014, like others have said. I'm suddenly terrified that I will die and leave her behind and right now she's not even old enough to remember me. My dad just recently died in October. He had pancreatic cancer but died suddenly in his sleep. We think it was a blood clot. I'm pretty sure this is what set my HA off for sure this time...as bad as it is. Right now I'm terrified of a brain tumor because of constant headaches. It's probably sinuses and anxiety but I can't shake the fear. It's gottena a little better now that the holiday is over and I'm back to work.
Mine started at an early age, but then totally disappeared for about 27 years until I reached 34.
At 34, I started to worry about having all sorts of diseases. Part of this was due to high anxiety, which was made worse when working in clinical negligence and seeing misdiagnosed clients. Awful. I thought I had what they had when physical anxiety kicked in.
I'm still 34 and I'm still fighting it.
I was always an anxious child and I think that is a genetic thing. There is OCD in my family too. My parents have always been obsessive over weight and health so that was always a big thing in my family. When I was a teen my mum got obsessed with this guy called Phillip Day who did seminars on cancer and how to fight it naturally. She played the tapes in the car all the time. HA really started when I was 22 and 9/11 happened. My anxiety became bad and then when a friend told me she had an HIV test done my mind focused on the idea I might have HIV. After I got the all clear from that it spiralled into other things. It got worse after I had my kids.
Mine started 3 years ago in March, all because of a few measly panic attacks. The panic attacks I believe occurred as I was on a placement at the time and was told I would be doing presentations for complete strangers and I am severely self conscious and remember my stomach flipped when they told me this. Then I woke up for around 3 nights in a row having panic attacks which scared me to death as they weren't your typical hyperventilating ones so I never thought they were panic attacks. Once I was told what they were though I've never had one since, although the health anxiety has stuck with me. I do have times when it's not too bad, from around May to November of 2015 for example. Needless to say I never did those presentation and for almost 3 years now I haven't worked or studied and feel like a loser. Today my daughter asked why do some people like me not want to work. It really upset me as I do want to work, I just need a job where I won't have a complete breakdown.
My parents both had serious health issues when I was a child. Dad had a heart attack when he was 38, I remember that he refused to see the GP in the weeks running up to the attack. I was 7 years old. When I was 13 my mum was rushed to hospital to have a giant ovarian cyst removed. It was the size of a large baby and she had ignored the symptoms for so long it became an emergency. Get the pattern? When I was 30 I had a dermoid cyst removed and had to push for six months to get a diagnosis - GP thought it was IBS and never examined me properly. At 42 I had a suspected ovarian cancer, went from diagnosis to total hysterectomy and menopausal n 10 days after struggling again to get a diagnosis. It wasnt cancer thank goodness. Mum diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012 at 72 years old advanced and terminal because she had been having symptoms for three years without saying anything. She died in 2014. Dad has denentia, not diagnosed until quite advanced. I am worn out. My HA is through the roof - I have become terrified of seeing the doctor, thought I have a blood pressure checkup every year. Was so scared I was physically sick and couldnt attend first ever routine mammogram last summer. Am going to try again in Feb. I will see the doctor if I have any symptoms but I check everything so much - breasts pummled at least twice a day to soreness, stools and urine examined visually every time I go to bathroom. Check blood pressure everyday. Convinced I have breast cancer, colon cancer, kidney cancer, lymphoma ..... etc....etc life is just awful. Dr knows I am a hypochondriac. Has me down in notes as 'anxious patient'. It is a living hell.
Cerridwen
I was always anxious as a child, my mother was really overprotective and a hypochondriac herself. Sort of person who when I went to flamingo land with school she told me not to go on rollercoasters incase they come off the tracks sort of worry!
Couple that with my dad was always really overweight and I used to worry that he would die of a heart attack all through my childhood.
Tipping point for me was in 2012 when my stepdad who was the figure of good health (didn't smoke, didn't drink, went to the gym, didn't eat red meat, perfect diet, not overweight) died suddenly of a heart attack.
That made me realise overnight just how fragile life really is and caused me to keep asking "what if" at any given opportunity.
Only now am I starting to be able to manage my anxiety with the massive aid of Lyrica/Pregabalin.
Hey, I am certain I know what caused my H/A. I am a 21yr old female, I suffered by then recovered from bulimia in my mid teens, so maybe the anxiety is related to that illness? Anyway, what I feel triggered my hypochondria occurred a year ago. I went to the doctors feeling well apart from very tried (I have now learned this in itself can be caused by anxiety) I had just started uni and was trying out a largely plant based lifestyle so expected the blood tests to show low iron. A few days later I got a text from the doctor saying I need to come back in- still wasn't worried. So i go back to the doctors and the receptionist says I can just see the nurse, so I'm thinking it can't be serious. I go into see the nurse and she takes one look at the computer screen and says she can't tell me what's wrong and that I need to see a doctor ASAP. So I asked her what the results were and she says white blood cell count is low and I have a b12 reading off the scale. It's the end if the day, so I get booked in to see the doctor tomorrow. Meanwhile I go home and Google the test results.. worst decision EVER! Literally the only thing that comes up is Leukemia or liver failure. Well let, I went in to panic mode. Dozens of tests later and u appear to be fine, but the damage to my mental health is done :(
lindadiana
18-01-16, 23:19
I think mine was caused by actually ever being born,ive had them as far back as I can remember(first one at 5 years old because the teacher had said we better open the windows before we all suffocate,it was a hot steamy day and it had been raining,the only reason I understood the word suffocate was because my hamster had had a fight with my sisters and it was in a right state,we couldn't afford vets in those days so my dad put it out of its misery with gas,i didn't see him do this but did insist on running past my dad saying I want to see,he tried to stop me but it was too late,i can still see that beady eye looking at me through the plastic bag he was in so from then on plastic bags suffocation ,tats how it started nobodys fault just one of those things plenty of kids may have seen the same kind of thing and thought no more of it) its rotten,as most of you will know,you feel useless,stupid,trapped in an imperfect brain,im a very intelligent woman,but by the way I carry on it doesn't come across that way.when I had cbt they have you do the questionnaire,it said are you likely to harm yourself or think about harming yourself,i just looked at him and said,well it says in my notes death phobic,so the answer to that is an absolute no,but if I could phrase it a different way,i just wish I had never been born.he didn't seem to think I was serious asked why I would say that,i said its simple if id never been born I wouldnt know,and I wouldn't have to do through this every day of my life almost
nirvanainchains
19-01-16, 00:00
I was always anxious as a child, my mother was really overprotective and a hypochondriac herself. Sort of person who when I went to flamingo land with school she told me not to go on rollercoasters incase they come off the tracks sort of worry!
Couple that with my dad was always really overweight and I used to worry that he would die of a heart attack all through my childhood.
Tipping point for me was in 2012 when my stepdad who was the figure of good health (didn't smoke, didn't drink, went to the gym, didn't eat red meat, perfect diet, not overweight) died suddenly of a heart attack.
That made me realise overnight just how fragile life really is and caused me to keep asking "what if" at any given opportunity.
Only now am I starting to be able to manage my anxiety with the massive aid of Lyrica/Pregabalin.
I remember now, the gastro doctor who diagnosed me with Gastritis and GERD prescribed me Pregabalin ‘cause I was complaining of numbness/tingling sensation in my left face. I suggested to him that maybe I have a sinister condition but he just smiled at me and told me I am too young, then he prescribed me with omeprazole and other meds for IBS/Reflux Disease and Pregabalin. An hour after taking pregabalin, my penis went numb and for a couple of days I am not having a libido. I was worried if I am having an erectal disfunction at such a young age then I remember that Pregabalin, googled it and it is the culprit. I stopped taking it and my penis went from being dead, to being mighty once again. :yesyes:
I don't really remember why.. But when I was 13 I randomly just came to the fact that one day, I am going to die. And eventually, that turned into me being terrified of dying young or early. So, to prevent this, I was determined to be certain that I am healthy and if I do get cancer I will catch it early and I will survive. So I became obsessed with checking myself and getting everything checked and removing moles and whatnot. I still am. 17 now.
BlueEyesShining
19-01-16, 17:45
I have always been like this-prone to overthinking everything. Reading health articles, very intersted in medicine. I guess, it started at a very young age. I had problems with my throat. It was sore nearly every month and I started thinking that something is wrong with me. That I`m going to die soon. And beware, I was only 7 years old.
I think that my father contributed to my anxiety, big time. He tends to panic about everything.
For me personally i believe it was the use of weed for 3 weeks straight D:
PlantsForHire
20-01-16, 00:55
I was misdiagnosed with thyroid cancer when I was 12.
I had a episode of severe dehydration (scary stuff people... stay hydrated!) during a scorching hot summer day that sent me to the emergency room because I thought it was a heart attack because I wasn't very educated about cardiac health issues at the time (I'm 17 years old, very skinny, no family history, non-smoker, exercise, eat ridiculously healthy... silly right?).
Had ECG, bloods, x-ray, and ultrasound that all came back perfect.
After that experience I've been worried about my heart health constantly even though my tests came back normal. I frantically took my BP everyday for the following week when I was having a panic attack and that didn't help at all because my BP was elevated from that.
Now I still have pretty bad HA but it's manageable and I'm going to start seeing a therapist next week! Anxiety is a horrible thing.
GingerFish
20-01-16, 12:40
My OCD triggered my HA. I was constantly fearing I had been drugged or poisoned and looked for the slightest symptom in my body which when you have anxiety, you're obviously going to find. I've been like this since I was a young kid. I don't know any differently.
BriAnnMyr59
09-02-16, 05:17
After my mom died of cancer when I was 18 and I was her main care giver I was okay for about 6-7 months after then BOOM! Every headache, every cough, every sneeze, every ache and pain. I had cancer and was going to die a death just like my moms. So I'm 20 now
And still convinced 90-95% of the week that I am going to die.
I'm 28 and it started for me around age 10. Didn't have Google back then, but my mum had a book of A-Z health ailments. Well! I looked up diabetes because I was an avid reader of The Babysitters Club and one of the characters had diabetes and that disease was in my head because I was a kid who loved lollies and cake.
I'll never forget it. The symptoms were listed and the last one was "coma." I developed most of the symptoms listed like "excessive thirst" and I had great anxiety about comas.
Not being able to eat lollies and cake anxiety was one thing. Death anxiety was a whole other. I always believed in God so death didn't frighten me. I was more scared of getting cancer and being in pain and everything that comes with it than I was of death.
Then I got involved in a religion that taught me death is the end of everything unless you were part of that religion. The panic attacks began at their church. I thought I would pass out and die right there and then. So I got baptised into the religion yet the fear remained. Death now terrified me. Especially if death feels like a panic attack. But I read a testimony of a girl who survived the Asian tsunami. She was struggling in the water, clutching a tree branch and thought was she about to drown and said she felt very at peace at the point where she thought she couldn't hold on any longer. She said she felt herself slipping away but felt very calm. Then she was rescued. It comforted me to read that because it's the opposite of a panic attack.
I am now out of the religion. I still have faith in God, I've seen miracles, have heard incredible stories (like my mother was in an abusive marriage with a psychopath and not wanting to cop a beating when they got home, she was so scared she jumped out of a moving car on a highway to get away from him and she survived without a scratch) but the uncertainties of life and death fuel my panic attacks. My faith helps a lot though. I know life is not for nothing. But HA has definitely stolen the past few years of mine. It's like something was triggered and I can't grasp that it's not NORMAL to worry incessantly about the future and ones health. I hate that I know names of diseases and parts of the body my friends haven't even heard of. They smoke and drink and don't care about tomorrow.
The trick and the relief from the what ifs is to live in the moment and it makes sense to do that because we only experience living at that speed.
For me it started when I was about 7-8 and something not very nice happened to me and my cousin at a party with a male cousin who was 16, we didn't tell anybody but at that time I remember eastenders was covering AIDS, I was convinced I'd got it because of what had happened (even though the terrible thing didn't go all the way so it wasn't possible ) but I didn't understand that. It sent me crazy washing my hands constantly, I was obsessed constantly I had touched dog mess and was going to go blind. It sort of phased out when I hit my teens , only to return with a bang in my 20's. Only this time I had Google to confirm my fears :-( xx
I've always been a bit of a worrier, but my HA became worse 4 and a half years ago, I found a breast lump. Turned out to be a cyst (which came about after hormone changes after a miscarriage a few months before), but I was in the grip of fear.. Obsessed over liver disease, cervical cancer, ALS for months.
After 5 months of CBT I managed to keep my HA under control for 4 years, until last December when it kicked off big style.. and here I am! xxx
half-empty
09-02-16, 12:36
sadly it was being happy :/ I had a baby ( not my first id had twins 3 years before this and was fine ) and all of a sudden I realised my life was actually pretty great. had a partner who treated me like a queen! three gorgeous boys a nice home etc everything just seemed too perfect....then I started to expect something terrible to happen and it all turned into severe HA!! I overcame that by myself and I am proud! but, 6 months ago we completed our family with a beautiful baby girl and my god its back with full force much worse than before!
I hate that I know names of diseases and parts of the body my friends haven't even heard of. They smoke and drink and don't care about tomorrow.
This is something that bothers me too, Ditapage! :weep:
littlemissworry.x
09-02-16, 18:51
having my daughter triggered mine! as i am so scared of dying and leaving her as i feel no one can love or care for her like i can! therefore i obsess over everything and am always convinced i am dying:( its really sad:(
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