Having health anxiety for my partner - and my pet!

[violetdreams13]

Hi all! It's a while since I've posted on the forum, but things are getting rough again, so I'm back.

Basically, I'm really struggling with my helath anxiety at the moment - but the anxiety is all about other people, not myself. For example, at the weekend my partner was in a very minor car accident. He doesn't seem to have sustained any injuries, but I've been panicking loads about whether there's something internally damaged that he doesn't know about.

Similarly, I've spent all of today so far totally paralysed by health anxiety for my cat. This morning, I noticed she had a bald patch on her ear, and my mind is going haywire - what if she's got a skin condition, or tics, or fleas, or even skin cancer? I just can't stop.

Does anyone else get health anxiety for other people? If so, do you have any coping mechanisms? I feel horrible :weep:

[Darksky]

I suppose I'm the same, I do get twitchy when others are ill for sure. I have no concerns for myself at all.

I try to rationalise stuff. Your partner, if he'd got internal bleeding/ injuries from the weekend, I'm sure he'd know all about it by now. There's also a lot of stuff that could be wrong with your cat besides unlikely cancer. It could be an allergy or something. It's easily sorted anyway, a quick trip to the vets and they will put your mind at rest. But ultimately time will sort this out. They will be fine and it will slip to the back of your mind.

just don't go to Dr. google, number one rule for HA, whether it's for yourself, your partner or your cat. No good ever comes from consulting that old quack.

[MrLurcher]

Hi Violet, I also struggle with projecting my health anxiety onto others - mainly my kids and dog. Sometimes my partner, but not so much for some reason!

My dog was sick a few times last week, and I immediately began thinking of cancer, blockages etc. My other dog died last year of bowel cancer, and sickness was one of his initial symptoms. Couple of years ago on holiday she swallowed a bone she found and I began spiraling thinking of blockages and perforations, I couldn't sleep that night and ended up calling my out of hours vet at 11.30pm who said that the bone would probably just get broken up and dissolved.

Same with my kids, when my eldest was a baby, every rash was a potential meningitis or mottled skin was sepsis. My daughter had a lump on her scalp/skull last year - the doc thought it may have been a swollen lymph node. I spent weeks worrying it was lymphoma, or some other sort of cancer to do with lymph nodes. I must have asked my partner 4-5 times to take her to different docs for a second opinion.

There are other things, like my youngest is quite short so i worry she has some sort of growth problem, my eldest daughter has had bouts of random sickness so I think does she has a bowel or stomach disorder.

Of course, there have been many more worries, and I have become much worse over the past year.

It's exhausting, and I fully admit it's not a life living on edge like this being on constant alert for health issues.