Overwhelmed and need some opinions /:

[Savvy_Darling]

Ugh, I think I've seen this topic posted on here before. I can definitely see why a health anxious person would stress over this. Skin cancer... For me, this one really freaks me out. Cancer is my phobia of choice and it's so easy to analyze all the moles & freckles on your body. I've worried about this before over the years but ever since my anxiety got bad instead of worrying for a moment & then kind of forgetting, it's like I can't stop looking in the mirror at ones on my back and looking all over my body.
I feel like my risk factors are high, I'm fair skinned and burn fairly easily. Also, on my dads side there's been some skin cancer.

I'm freaking honestly. I know to go get a mole check but my god does that cause anxiety. What if I have it and have to get cut into or worse yet it's spread throughout my body ;( skin cancer melanoma has horrible outcomes and life expectancy. I'm so overwhelmed.
I've had sunburn before and I have moles and freckles. A lot of them have been there for a long time.
I'm soon to be 22. The moles that worry me are smaller than a pencil eraser but have irregular borders and aren't perfectly round. Although I see a lot of those on my body. Some scare me more than others.
There's one on the underside of my boob it's darker brown but very small.
The one on my back is little bigger but again the uneven borders..
I've gone down the road of looking at pictures and that only made things horribly worse so I'm not doing that again. I will post pictures just for opinions or if anyone have similar ones? Obviously I already planned on keeping an eye on anything I'm worried about. These have been here for a least a year or more but like I said since my anxiety got worse less than a year ago I've never been so over analyzed about my body. The little one under my boob worries me because i don't know how long that's been there and it's in a weird place :(

Thanks to anyone who helps me. This is purely to help me gather my thoughts not for a diagnosis as I know none of you are licensed professionals.
I just feel so overwhelmed and need some help.

First pic with my finger in it is the under boob one. The other is on the back.
None of them hurt or itch by the way. Just stressed over their appearance has got my anxiety reeling.

[Savvy_Darling]

Second picture. On the back one /:

[misslove]

Seem normal to me. They are symmetrical and all the same color. No need to worry :)

[Savvy_Darling]

Thanks miss love /: I don't know about them being symmetrical but from someone point of view other than mine it's a little nice to hear they don't look bad anyway. When something in on your own body I feel like it gets dramatisized.
:unsure:

[MyNameIsTerry]

This is purely to help me gather my thoughts not for a diagnosis as I know none of you are licensed professionals.
I just feel so overwhelmed and need some help.

First pic with my finger in it is the under boob one. The other is on the back.
None of them hurt or itch by the way. Just stressed over their appearance has got my anxiety reeling.

No, but some of us are boring middle aged blokes who have long forgotten what these areas of young women look like so may be experiencing some increased heart rate at the moment...:winks::roflmao:

---------- Post added at 06:20 ---------- Previous post was at 06:12 ----------


I'm freaking honestly. I know to go get a mole check but my god does that cause anxiety. What if I have it and have to get cut into or worse yet it's spread throughout my body ;( skin cancer melanoma has horrible outcomes and life expectancy. I'm so overwhelmed.

What if you don't?
What if your moles are fine & normal?
What if there is nothing wrong at all with them?
What if you don't have a melanoma?
What if you never do in your lifetime?

Counter negative "what ifs" with positive "what ifs". It's a CBT technique.

The thing is, Savanna, if right now you have what you fear, how will having a test do anything? It would only confirm that it's there and start you down the treatment route to resolve it. But thinking you have it and not getting a test wouldn't stop it from continuing down it's course. So, whilst it's natural to fear the outcome of a test like this, it never changes what simply "is" already. This is a way to deal with taking tests, if you ever had to, by dispelling them by accepting that no test changes the situation where it is positive so the additional worry is irrelevant to us. A sort of "so what" approach to it.

That's one way to try to look at how the anxiety is making you feel about approaching that situation. However, upstream from this is the HA side telling you to worry and check. They look normal enough to me too, but obviously only a trained eye and possible testing can ever say otherwise.

We all have risk factors for skin cancers, all we can do is be sensible. Other than staying out of the sun all the time, which is detrimental for other reasons, it's a matter of following healthy guidelines, just like with eating and anything else.

[Savvy_Darling]

Thanks Terry. I appreciate the well written out reply. It helps. I guess for me ignorance is bliss so getting a test scares me. I also don't like the only options for any cancer treatment. That scares me as well. Obviously no one wants to have to go through that.:weep:

Also didn't mean to race hearts lol

[MyNameIsTerry]

No, no one ever does. It can be a tough regime but not everyone going through even that suffers to the extent that we have probably become accustomed to hearing. My GF's mum has had 4 rounds of chemo and weathered it well, only needing an anti sickness injection once.

The unknown is a big issue for anxiety sufferers but outside of anxiety, many people have that issue about how someone in white coat saying it means it's finally real and until then, it doesn't exist. It's another form of avoidance, doing an ostrich impression, and so it can help to reduce the fear of a scenario by learning to accept them e.g. you may see therapists telling their patients on here how they can say "so what if I have cancer" or even telling themselves they do, therapists are obviously trained how to handle the mixed emotions such attempts can bring.

The thing is, despite how we always seem to be hearing about someone with cancer everywhere whether in our lives or in the media, do we ever think about all the people who haven't? How many people go their entire lives never once experiencing any form of cancer? That could easily be you and when it comes to skin cancers, there are things that are practical that you can do, just how not smoking it certainly the best way to reduce a lung cancer risk. Beyond that, the unknown we can never control but living your life being afraid of something that may never happen to you, doesn't it sounds irrational when you don't hide in your home to avoid the risk of being killed by a car, or by violence, or all the other things in life that we equally can't control? What do you say to yourself when one of them comes to mind? Or do you find your mind just lets go of it, just like how mine does when I see a mole or a bump or lump?

[Shazamataz]

They really do just look like normal freckles.

I agree with what terry said. Worrying about it won't make the outcome any different so why not get looked at to ease your fears?

[Savvy_Darling]

:weep:
I'm just soo scared and overwhelmed that it's like I feel like I can't do anything. I hate this feeling. I appreciate the reply Shazamataz...

Terry- you're very right and I've thought of things like that but I guess I just let anxiety and fear of the unknown take over completely and it's how I find myself crying periodically throughout the night. I was doing so well and I feel like I relapsed and it feels horrible.
Although these are really real fears I feel like I have a hard time handling them properly and I get too scared to get tests.
It's odd I don't worry so much about things like car accidents or getting shot.. Just health related things. I hate cancer. I hate the word. I hate everything about it. I'm sure everyone could agree.. I just wish I wasn't so fear paralyzed.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Well guess what? Cancer doesn't frighten me in the slightest, it really doesn't. If anything it bothers me about loved ones getting it, but not me as I came to terms with death decades ago. BUT if I did have it, I would be worried about the appointments because of my OCD around routines, I would worry about the side effects as I struggle with the physical side effects of anxiety.

I struggle with work, with change, with plenty of things. I don't worry about being hit by a car, or violence causing death, disease of any kind, etc. I worry more about life! Life is harder to me these days and things many people just do are much harder now.

So, it's all a matter if perspective. My anxiety takes certain forms, yours does others. That's why these places can be useful in support as we can all help each other see if from the other angles that our distorted thinking isn't allowing.

Do you need tests? If they look fine, why? Just for reassurance? There is the real enemy, the obsession driving you towards tests you fear for something that looks no different than any other normal mole. I've got a few like that and have had them since birth.

So, the answer is not in seeking reassurance when there is nothing to actually seek it for. That is where the battle is.

Blip or relapse? I always believe that a relapse you will know. It will be crushing. I've relapsed once since my original breakdown and I can tell you it was a continuous downward spiral for months. I always say to look for trends before judging, although it is painful to us at the time. Until you see trends of you getting worse & worse, it's a blip. And blips happen a lot. They don't last too long.

Were you paralysed with fear when you weren't posting on here recently? No, you were doing much better - your own words. This is a classic thing I know I've seen on here, people do better think it's great, get triggered and think it's a relapse. The truth is, it never went. It was a better period but if it had truly been resolved, you wouldn't be triggered like this because you would have recovered. There wasn't enough time to recover, it's a long process.

So, expect blips. Expect to be triggered. Just keep going. When you were doing better it was because you had started to move forward. When I was bad both times my anxiety was 24/7 7 days a week, no reprieve. Once I started having more normal days and even good days, I was moving through my recovery.

[Savvy_Darling]

I really appreciate that Terry. I always enjoy your very logical replies. They do help me think things clearer.
Today I'm still feeling pretty anxious and have that butterfly sick feeling in my stomach and just feel on edge but I'm trying to stay calm. I feel lazy though and don't even wanna workout, when I get this worked up over something I find I have trouble getting enough energy to do anything. I just get that "what's the point" feeling. :(

[Savvy_Darling]

Of course I've found another to worry about and it's on my back shoulder area... This one makes scared because it's darker in the middle..:scared15:. I took a picture do I can monitor changes but I can't help but feel like it's spread throughout my body and I'm basically a ticking time bomb. And that dreadful feeling I haven't lived long.. Only 22 years.
I'm so sad :(
I did find a thread on here that reading helped me but there was no pictures of his worrisome moles but he was scared of them like I am. He went to a dermatologist and was told everything was ok. I keep wishing and hoping that would be the case with me if I get looked at.
I just wanna rip them off my skin because seeing them is a reminder of why I'm scared and that I could be dying and don't even know it. :weep:

[Fishmanpa]

This must be mole week! The number of mole threads and the persistence of negativity despite medical evidence and popular opinion to the contrary is overwhelmingly irrational and sad to say the least.

What can be said on an "anxiety" forum that holds more weight than professional medical opinions and diagnosis?

The key is to treat the actual illness (anxiety) as opposed to worrying and chasing a diagnosis that will never come.

Positive thoughts

[MyNameIsTerry]

That's going to depend on your version of HA though, and severity too. For instance, the Somatoform Disorder group we have in the WHO manual (so not for you guys in the US) makes continual rejection of medical professionals advice a required part of the criteria.

I think the thing to remember as well here that if you make it to a dermatologist, they would give a jot about your anxiety disorder, just that they do their part with your skin and push you back out the door back to your GP. Your GP may have even sent you to them or given the option for a referral because they can only check moles to a certain level of reassurance.

But why go through it if you don't need it? Part of the issue here is the same lack of equality between mental & physical problems, just from a different angle. We can't be 100% sure because we are trained to make that call.

So, let me spin it another way. If you were on this website on the OCD board and someone said they had obsessions that they had run somebody over, the old "hit & run OCD" as it's termed, what would you do? Would listen and then say there was no chance and that it was their OCD? Or would you not be able to say for sure, since we are not law enforcement officers, and say they should start ringing the police and contacting hospitals?

Same issue to me. The only difference seems to be "don't take the chance" when anything physical is mentioned. In which case, a doctor needs to look at everything first, and maybe not just once doctor as mistakes happen or it could be outside a doctors knowledge so a specialist is needed. Where does it end? Private MRI's, body scans, people paying a fortune to have every mole removing by unscrupulous private doctors who are more than happy to collect a down payment on their next Porsche?

If someone is going from one disease to another, if everything looks ok and sounds ok, is it not anxiety?

---------- Post added at 05:49 ---------- Previous post was at 05:25 ----------


Of course I've found another to worry about and it's on my back shoulder area... This one makes scared because it's darker in the middle..:scared15:. I took a picture do I can monitor changes but I can't help but feel like it's spread throughout my body and I'm basically a ticking time bomb. And that dreadful feeling I haven't lived long.. Only 22 years.
I'm so sad :(
I did find a thread on here that reading helped me but there was no pictures of his worrisome moles but he was scared of them like I am. He went to a dermatologist and was told everything was ok. I keep wishing and hoping that would be the case with me if I get looked at.
I just wanna rip them off my skin because seeing them is a reminder of why I'm scared and that I could be dying and don't even know it. :weep:

Have you seen Reb90's threads? She has much the same issues with moles, raised, darker, dark spots in them, etc and some of hers have been checked by a nurse.

People go their whole lives with moles. Some people just have to take them off as they don't like living with the possibility and the unscrupulous private doctors love these people. I was born with several, one is large, and I'm still here, so why wouldn't you be? Oh, and I went a few years using sunbeds too in my mid twenties. I used them too much based on current guidelines, still here though.