Interesting read (admin pls remove if not allowed)

[Munchlet]

I just read this article and it's really interesting and explains why anxiety makes us feel ill.

Worth a look for all us with HA!

http://www.calmandcourageous.com/why-anxiety-makes-you-feel-ill-and-anxious-about-your-health/

[cattia]

There is some really interesting stuff here, and I like the suggestions about controlling thoughts. The thing that I struggle with is that I don't really tend to worry about symptoms that I know are caused by anxiety, like heart palpitations for example. For me the problem is worrying about symptoms that are not really associated with anxiety and interpreting them as something serious. Since they actually could be something serious I find it hard to know how to break this cycle. My therapist talks a lot about OCD and irrational thoughts, but to me my thoughts are not that irrational at all. I mean, one in three people get cancer in their lifetime, so I don't see it's that irrational to worry that it could be happening to me? The idea of challenging thoughts seems to be to accept that it's not that likely that I have cancer now, or that the symptoms I experience are a sign of something serious, but to me that is reasonable and feasible assumption. I'm interested to know whether anyone has any input on how to deal with these issues as I am sure we all face them and I haven't really found a lot of answers so far.

[Munchlet]

I can totally relate to what you are saying Cattia and it is something I struggle with too which is why I have yet to conquer my HA.

I think my problem is very similar, everything I have I relate to cancer and because you hear about people having it on a daily basis I find it hard not to link my symptoms to it.

Not sure what our cure is, I know they say the symptoms can be linked to 101 benign things but it's also the fact that they can be linked to cancer as well and that's my problem!

[Emc]

I guess the problem is that our minds jump immediately to cancer or other terribly debilitating life long diseases. We see the worst case scenario in every symptom. I don’t think it is unreasonable to wonder if the nausea or headache is cancer but it’s not being able to put things in perspective that defines health anxiety. So worry is normal but we can put it to the back of our minds & get on with our day. When we see a doctor & they say everything is ok the person without HA will accept that & stop worrying. Our issue is that it becomes all consuming - I have an enlarged lymph node, it must be lymphoma, I must check it 20 times a day because maybe this time it will have gone (despite the fact that deep down we know that never happens) - it makes us unable to consider the other more likely explanations & takes over from all the other things we should be doing with our lives.
I sometimes find it helpful to look up the incidence or prevalence rate of certain conditions & compare them so for example say I have diarrhoea - the most likely cause for me is gastroenteritis or IBS (incidence of that is say 1 in 10), more rare causes are coeliac disease, inflammatory bowel disease (incidence say 1 in 50), more rare again are pancreatic cancer or colon cancer (in my age group incidence is say 1 in 1000) it helps to put it in perspective although occasionally backfires if I can’t persuade my brain that i’m Not necessarily the ‘one’.