Huge Hypocrite... Totally Obsessed

[PASchoolSyndrome]

I really am a huge hypocrite. It's SO EASY to give advice to other people in a spiral, urge them to treat their anxiety and their current self-diagnosed disease will disappear.

I'm currently finished with my lymph node obsession. I can proudly say I'm 98% confident in myself, my doctors, and everyone that my lymph nodes are so normal and healthy. Everyone once in a while I'll run my hand over them, accidently, and feel one and I'll get that rush of adrenaline, but it doesn't last and then I go on with the rest of the day (that's the other 2%). This no longer causes me hardly any, if at all, anxiety.

So I haven't made it a secret that I have cancer anxiety in the sense that I'm terrified and almost convinced I'll get it one day. I have really good days of "well that's life" and try to live as good as possible, and then other days.. like last night. I have costochondritis and my chest wall will hurt periodically throughout the day, mostly dull aches but sometimes can get sharp, but it makes me focus attention onto my chest. And now my anxiety can't determine if it's my chest or my breasts that's really hurting. Sometimes its obvious and other times it really does feel like my breast.

When my doctor diagnosed me with costochondritis he asked me if I had noticed any breast changes, I said no because I hadn't. But now.. triggered. I'm feeling for lumps (there aren't any) and tenderness (there is in the wall because of CC, also I keep poking). I saw him maybe 2 months ago and he gave me a full breast exam, didn't notice anything, and then at the follow up a couple of weeks ago he felt for lymph nodes in the area, and nothing. He didn't feel anything because there is nothing there to feel.

SO literally nothing but chest pain and now I'm focused on my breasts so much. I noticed some stretch marks that were never there before (I'm sure they literally just appeared as my anxiety flared up - WEIRD HUH???) and I'm convincing myself that its BC skin changes like dimpling. Man. I was just commenting to a poster about her HA and BC about how she needed to work on anxiety.. What a hypocrite I am!

I'm currently doing talk therapy, yoga (helps me SO much), and have lorazepam for when the anxiety rush is too overwhelming but I never take it because I can usually breathe/calm myself down.

[silver_shoes]

I think that many of us are guilty of being a hypocrite from time to time on these posts!! The amount of time I have sat at this computer, attempting to offer reassurance/advice and I am thinking, "why am I able to give this complete stranger sound advice and reassure them, when I cannot do the same for myself?!" Human nature I suppose.
As for the stretch marks - consider if you have lost or gained weight lately? As I know that can give you stretch marks. Or it is possible that you only just noticed them even though they have been there all along, previously when you weren't so focussed on your breasts? Just a thought. Over Christmas, I found a breast lump and it was a bit of a scary time as I was referred to the urgent clinic (Came back totally normal) but I still have the lump to this day and I now wonder if it was in fact there all along!

[PASchoolSyndrome]

Haha oh for sure! It is pretty common of human nature. Ahh man is stinks.

Yeah if I take a step back it's like 100% clear. My weight fluctuates weekly with my exam schedule lately, and my fiancé has noted I've lost breast mass more than anything. I was focused on the other breast so much that it's possible the stretch marks on the one could have been there this whole time. My pain will fluctuate with breast so now I'm pretty sure it's a mixture of my real pain and my mind making it up hahaha. Yet as logical as I try to be my irrational mind is like "what if though".

[Leah88]

I don't think it's being a hypocrite.... it's easy to think rationally when it's someone else's situation but when it's your own, anxiety clouds your thinking and you don't always trust your own brain, that's why we seek reassurance from other brains.

[Gary A]

Not a hypocrite at all, in fact, I think it's admirable that someone in the throes of anxiety manages to stop thinking about themselves for ten minutes in order to aid someone else.

I think that it can also be a form of therapy, as in you might actually start listening to yourself.

[PASchoolSyndrome]

Haha I do hope it does help me see more rationally when I go through it!

[Sphincterclench]

If only I could take the advice I give, not just here but in life.

Id be so much happier I think.

[MyNameIsTerry]

You're definitely not a hypocrite.

If you could give the advice as well as just do it, I would be questioning if you were am anxiety sufferer (unless well recovered) as it's par for the course to struggle walking the walk. I doubt anyone on here is otherwise.

[GlassPinata]

It's not being a hypocrite.
The fact is, we care less whether some stranger on the internet has a potentially fatal disease than we care whether we ourselves have one.
This is only natural.

Since we care less whether somebody else on the forum has ____ cancer (or heart disease, or HIV, or whatever), it is possible for us to look at their situation objectively and rationally, in a way we are not able to evaluate our own situations, since we can only see our own situations through the distorted lens of our anxiety.

It is easy for me to see that somebody who is waving a freckle in my face and insisting that it is melanoma and is eating them alive is actually physically fine, and merely suffering from health anxiety. But I also know that I have not been able to be that objective in the past, when it comes to my own health or that of my children (and to a lesser extent, other family members).

This isn't hypocrisy, it's just human nature.

[PASchoolSyndrome]

That's a really good and truthful way to analyze it!

[axolotl]

If you search my posts you'll find some where I'm giving logical, level-headed advice to others, and others where I'm gibbering around like an idiot at absolutely nothing. I think most users on here would be the same!

[PASchoolSyndrome]

At least we can recognize it in ourselves, right?