when and why did you develop health anxiety

[Thelegend27]

I find it interesting how there's so many ways to develop or trigger health anxiety, for me it started around 7 years ago when I developed heart palpitations, the skipped beats, flutters, pounding heart beats, and Google sent me down the path of anxiety, in the past 7 years I have not lived a day without anxiety, sometimes I feel like my youth has been stolen by a mental illness.

So what started you down the endless path of health anxiety and how long have you been experiencing this?

[Melonpony]

Developed 2 years ago. Had chest pains that turned out to be tight pectoral muscles. But it triggered the health anxiety. My parents getting I'll added to it. Now it's a vicious cycle I am stuck in. Anxiety causing physical symptoms causing anxiety etc etc

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

---------- Post added at 18:46 ---------- Previous post was at 18:44 ----------

How am I experiencing It?
Constantly monitoring my body for symptoms and assuming they all point to something fatal, basically.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

[KK77]

I developed HA when I started reading all the HA posts on here :lac:

[CHELLEB1017]

During my last pregnancy a large jaw cyst was found and I needed a biposy luckily it cam back benign but that on top of my Grandmother and Great Aunt passing away of cancer all within that time frame set my anxiety off the charts! Only anxious when it comes to health! Literally was living a worry free life before this! I have so many more good days than bad but the bad ones when something flares up can linger until I get checked by a doctor!

[darkside4k]

I read an article that a simple itch can be cancer. It was like something snapped in my brain and I've never been the same since. That was about 4 or 5 years ago.

[nhelen79]

i developed this after i had my daughter. I think that the fear of not being there while she grow up hit it for me.

[Hahneclipse73]

Mine started maybe a month and a half ago. We had a young cat have a heart attack in front of us before Christmas...my father had a overdose type thing with a pill he was taking and I came home to him all messed up.. I heard about a kid who died in my area of a rare head injury, etc. I was fine about my own health but constantly on edge about everyone elses 24/7. Lots of stress too... One day I was cleaning my car when it felt like someone started squeezing my heart for several seconds (apparently a first time panic attack/ ecoptic beat), got dizzy, rapid heart rate, shaking, nervousness, etc. It went down hill from there..... now I am not only worried about everyones health but also scared crazy about my own..

[eshu55]

From when I was a child, and was sent to boarding school (aged 9) and horribly bullied. Also, my mother has HA, and we were living in remote African bush, with real threats to us, including a civil war, dangerous wild animals, no electricity so potential exposure to food/water borne contamination and various animal borne diseases including rabid animals etc. My earliest health fears were around tetanus and rabies, and now are mostly around various types of cancer (my mother's HA is similar)...though all my family, i.e grandparents etc, have died of cardio-vascular disease, so go figure.... All my mother's family are anxious, so I figure it is epi/genetic and situational (learned from mother and aunts). Now it mostly manifests when someone I know is diagnosed with some dread disease (which is increasingly common as one gets older of course)

[M00nlight]

When I lost my dad to melanoma 3 1/2 years ago watching the medical field fail him i lost my faith in Drs.. every thing became worse when I became a phlembotomist and dealing with sick people everyday especially pal care

[annie2008]

Mine started after I lost Dad to (C) don't even like saying it or seeing that word. Anything I have wrong (or think I have wrong) then it's C that pops into my head. :(

[CaliSurfGirl89]

Not sure what triggered mine, I've always had a fear of all cancers as my little sister had leukaemia, my grandad died from bowel cancer and my mom died from advanced cancer that came back from breast cancer, so I've always had this fear of cancer. I used sunbeds a lot when I was like 18-19 (and I mean a lot) had some sunburns (none blistering etc) and got a bit sunburnt recently at the beach. Not sure what kicked my anxiety in I remember coming back from the gym and sunbeds in like 2012-2013 and I remember sitting down and this fear just hit me like a brick wall, I honestly don't know where it's come from, I've used sunbeds on and off since then and haven't used any or sunbathed for the past 2-3 years. I'm getting a fear of the sun, I wish I could lie outside like all these other people and not have a care in the world until I needed too.

---------- Post added at 20:00 ---------- Previous post was at 19:57 ----------


When I lost my dad to melanoma 3 1/2 years ago watching the medical field fail him i lost my faith in Drs.. every thing became worse when I became a phlembotomist and dealing with sick people everyday especially pal care

I know exactly how you feel, my moms Dr dismissed her breast lump telling her it was just from her injury (she fell downstairs and got her boob caught in the banister) and to rub ibuprofen gel on it, she ended up going back and the female Dr she saw referred her straight away and I think if he hadn't had misdiagnosed her she would maybe be here today so I don't trust Drs diagnosis on anything unless I've had multiple opinions x

[unsure_about_this]

Started in late 2011 my Dad reach the age for being tested for bowel cancer, I think my HA started proabably back in 2000 but I did not Google back than. I been Googling since 2011 in the space of time I have been to the GP a number of times, had scans etc I thought I have had at least 150+ types of cancer, every symptom, pain I get I automacially think it is cancer.

[braginskaya]

I've had anxiety my whole life (used to get panic attacks when I was nine or ten years old), and once I got into my teens and started learning more about biology and understanding how the body's supposed to work I guess I latched onto illness/death as a particular trigger. When I was about fifteen I noticed my left breast was bigger and more dense than my right one and convinced myself it was cancer even though I couldn't feel any clear lumps or bumps... I'm still alive and kicking six years later but I still convince myself every small symptom is something serious that'll eventually get worse and kill me! I once had a cramp in my leg on a long-haul plane journey and spent the whole journey thinking it was a blood clot and that I'd be dead within hours. It's not fun.

[worriermama]

When I was a child my mom had lyme disease which went undiagnosed/misdiagnosed for a while, and was very scary and traumatic. She was told by one doctor that she had 2-5 years to live (she's still kicking!).

Around the same time a few of my friends' moms had breast cancer and I saw them lose their hair, etc.

My sister's best friend's dad was diagnosed with lymphoma.

Also I remember watching Superman and seeing the scene where the dad has the heart attack in the airplane. It terrified me. Plus one other weird/scary scene in a movie at a neighbor's house, I think it was a film about a nuclear blast or something.

It all added up to make me terrified of disease and totally distrustful of health/the body.

[Mojo61]

Had a pain in my stomach, googled it and it said cancer.....

[maianixon]

Mine was when I found a lump in my breast and even after an ultrasound showed it was nothing I kept getting random pains in that area until I just woke up one morning with countless physical symptoms and it took 5 doctors before one finally explained to me how that can be caused by anxiety, so by that time I was already convinced I had a brain tumour.

Although thinking back now in my life there has been quite some instances of HA before that and physical symptoms that no one could explain that gradually disappeared on their own that I can now clearly see was anxiety but at the time I didn't even know physical symptoms of anxiety or HA were a thing

[Leah88]

When my brother in law died young from melanoma after 3 drs misdiagnosed him, then soon after a friend died at 27 from uterine cancer ( again misdiagnosed for a benign cyst ) which then spread to her spine. Last but not least I watched a show about genetic mutations and found a syndrome I thought I had and this was the beginning of my spiral into hell.

[mpeckich]

Well I got sneezed on my a small Chinese kid at the department store I worked, the family was visiting China and he got sick there. Well I it was the A6 virus of hand foot and mouth and its predominantly found in China and East Asia. Needless to say I was getting sicker the second day I was at university I asked my mom to take me to urgent care and I was googling after when the doctor said he didn't know what it was. Well the only three things it could be was hand foot and mouth, syphilis, and AIDS. I thought I had AIDS... Needless to say that's when I was first becoming sexually active and I had poor sex education in high school I didn't know the virus couldn't come from nowhere, so I believe I had AIDS until December 2015. I constantly felt for Lymphnodes thinking that they'd pop up somewhere on me. And they did that December when I was sick so I went to google and bam lymphoma fear started.
In January i would loose feeling in my pinkies when I'd wake up, because I'd sleep on my funny all the time and looked up weakness in hands and tingling. Thought I had MS for all of three hours until I read about ALS.. I've been living in fear ever since... So that's how my health anxiety spiraled out of control. The good news is I saw an ENT on an unrelated issue; and she dismissed my lymphoma fears, and I know I don't have AIDS not, but now I've been fixated on bulbar ALS for six months and have a federal to a neurologist.. So we'll see how this goes I how it ends my fears for good... Currently trying to get back into therapy too.

Mostly I think I've always been an anxious person whenever I was 12-16 whenever I'd she something about the end of the world I would panic so much I'd have to call my mother and I was so scared of December, 21st 2012 because of the whole Mayan calander belief. But now I just worry about my health idk why. I think a main factor to this was the fact that I was bullied a lot from first to twelfth grade, and now that I was at peace socially (in university) I had to mentally ruin it. Just my thoughts on how my health anxiety started.

[Worrywart1234]

4 years ago I found out I had a benign tumour on my adrenal gland. Had surgery to remove it which went horribly wrong and I almost died (as a result of the surgery not the tumour!). Doctors discovered a small tumour on my other adrenal gland a year later and I've struggled to find peace ever since.

[Kay8010]

** TRIGGER ALERT***
Mine started when I was 16 and developed DVT and hospitalized for 3 months, Dr diagnosed me with a torn calf muscle, nearly had my leg amputated and worst of all nearly died...then I had a blood clot in my lung and they thought I had asthma, again nearly died & gall stones for a year and they thought I had an ulcer, again nearly died from infection spreading in my whole body.... so yes.....my HA was created from all the above incidences.......

[hannahc128]

I literally woke up one morning in 2015 convinced that I had breast cancer. I had never had any anxiety before, I just woke up completely terrified and it sucked me into a long road of physical symptoms that I've since learned to just roll with. Thinking back, I think a lot had to do with the fact that my mother had a somewhat traumatizing breast cancer journey that she finished treatment for in early 2015, then my grandfather died in June 2015, and I think slowly it started to catch up with me mentally until I just woke up one day a complete wreck.

[CaElley]

I think the combination of my horrible medical expereince as a child at the hospital, plus a bad social experience at the doctors office, has made me very afraid of health problems and having to deal with health problems. I have horrible health anxiety but I am also terrified of going to the doctors. I very rarely ever go.. but I need to.

[Twisted-Melody]

Hmm, a few things. Gallbladder trouble, painful periods and IBS for years. Then, I found a breast lump and absolutely freaked out. It turned out to be benign, and I developed two more after it - they were all fine, but it shook me and my own mortality.

Then, I had a work-related stress breakdown and developed the weirdest headaches, brain zaps and head pulsations. I thought I had a brain tumor or was going to have an aneurysm. It took a long time for those sensations to go down, mainly after every doctor told me it was anxiety. Now, I don't even feel that anymore, but it likes to move around and affect different parts of my body. These days, I get palpitations, weakness in my legs and chest pains, but I try to ignore them :) Especially since I had everything checked and the doctor said I'm fine, I just need to stop worrying!

[Aleman200]

Mine came out of nowhere really, had never had any stomach problems until one month when i was convinced i was going to die, i didn't know why either. My dad has crons disease and lives with it happily and my mum has one kidney, normally wouldn't bother me but for some reason from my first doctor visit and then on i was worried about my health and still am to this day. It's stupid, i hate it.

[Bmorgy05]

My HA started when social media became an outlet for horror health stories. I remember being pregnant with my 4th child and seeing story about the mother dying during delivery from an embolism and it triggered something in my mind. It's awful!!!

[sporque]

After glandular/fever mono..