Persistent fears of Dementia, going crazy etc

[Ida123]

Hello this is my first time posting here. I'll try to keep this brief.

I have a history of health anxiety going back to when I was 14 years old. I am 27 now and I regularly go through month long bouts of intense health anxiety shifting from one focus to another. I've worried about just about every possible condition and disease but what triggers my anxiety the idea of progressive conditions that would erode my mind, my memory, my sense of self. (dementia, tumour, schizophrenia etc) This has mostly manifested in the past 8 years. The idea pops into my head that I'm not as sharp as I used to be, that my memory is worse or that I can't handle multitasking as well, or that my thoughts are less organized than they used to be. I, of course, start ruminating and analysing my own mind. I hyperanalyze my own thoughts. Every single time I have a brain fart and forget to clock out a work, or it takes me a moment to remember what day of the week it is, or I forget an appointment or something, I spiral. I worry my mind is eroding away and that I'm a shell of who I once was.

I try to reassure myself by considering how common a mistake the mistake was or something but that just causes me to ruminate more and more. It'll get to the point where assessing my own cognitive abilities is a secondary mental task that I'm doing all the time. This, unsurprisingly, makes me very distracted and causes me to make more mistakes. An important thing to note is that I have ADD and my executive functioning has probably always been poor, I've always struggled in school and professional settings. I try to remind myself of this. I remind myself that my brain has struggled more with certain things and that my own anxiety is probably exacerbating it, but even still it terrifies me, I can't stop thinking about it.

I got fired from a food service job recently because I was underperforming. It required a lot of time management and multitasking and quick methodical work. It felt like the harder I tried at it the worse I was. I managed to keep myself from ruminating on these things but since I was fired the fear has bubbled back up. I find myself constantly second-guessing my short term memory. "did I already ask this customer if they want a bag?" "did I say this thing I thought of saying, or did I just think about it?" the other day I got it into my head that the store I work at closed at 5 that day when we actually closed at 6. I told a bunch of costumers that we were about to close and then my coworker had to remind me that we weren't. This triggered a hours of rumination. I've been tripping over my words lately. It's entered my dreams too-- I analyze myself in a dream and realize I don't know how I ended up in this situation, or I realize that I did something that doesn't make any sense, and then I wake up and realize that of course it didn't make sense because it was a dream and not reality.

I started seeing a therapist about this again recently I'm hoping it will help. I'm terrified that psych or neuro testing would confirm my worst fears. I'm going to try and go on Adderall or something soon, I'm tired of feeling so disorganized and unmotivated. The ADD and Anxiety seem to work together to make things hard for me and have been for many years so I don't know what makes more sense to treat. This is no way to live. Even if something isn't wrong with my mind now I'm bound to get less sharp as I get older, it would be such a nightmare to still have this anxiety when I'm old and my body and mind are actually starting to fail me. I'm tired, any reassurance or help would be really helpful. <3

[Ida123]

Hello again! this has only gotten worse. I'd really appreciate any input. I've been making so many blunders at work and at home. I meant to say "cookie-cutter" in a sentence last week and accidentally said "candle" instead. I thought I was starting to do better but I put something in the oven yesterday and went to do something else and it slipped my mind until half an hour later when I smelled it and wondered what my roommate was cooking. I was then able to remember everything about what I had prepared and everything leading up to putting it in the oven and everything after. I had a panic attack. This morning right after waking up when I wasn't acutely anxious, I sent a text to my friend that ended in "lol" and then when I went to type in the name of a website in the search bar I wrote "lol" instead of the name of the website, and hit enter. Any time I google any of this I end up back on dementia, or neurodegenerative diseases. I'm so scared.

[emmc]

Do you think maybe you being so focused on this is causing you to do things like this?

I have also had a health anxiety bout that was based on this and found the more I panicked about it the more I tripped up on words, felt like I couldn’t form sentences and other strange things.

I found myself hurting my own brain trying to remember if I had forgot something or remember if I should be remembering something.

[Ida123]

Do you think maybe you being so focused on this is causing you to do things like this?

I have also had a health anxiety bout that was based on this and found the more I panicked about it the more I tripped up on words, felt like I couldn’t form sentences and other strange things.

I found myself hurting my own brain trying to remember if I had forgot something or remember if I should be remembering something.

Yes, I keep trying to reassure myself that these issues are caused by the anxiety itself, but the fear that it's something more is always there. I guess if my anxiety cooled off for long enough I'd be able to assess my symptoms better.

I've had several neuropsych referrals fall through in the past year or two. Either because of insurance issues or the process got so complicated or the waits were so long that I didn't end up following through. My doc just gave me another referral for ADD testing. I'm so terrified that they'll find that my brain is just complete mush or that something is horribly wrong. My mind being severely eroded or totally fine feel like equally possible outcomes to me.

[Lana]

Ida,

Are you aware of the fact that if something was really, seriously and dangerously wrong, you would not be able to think, and then write down your thoughts about this so eloquently, as you have through these posts? You would NOT be able to write several smart and clear posts about what you feel is wrong with you.

You should take some comfort in what I wrote, until you see a real neurologist. I am saying this not because I think something is wrong, but because , having horrible health anxiety myself, I know you will not calm down until a doctor tells you that this is probably severe anxiety, hyper-focusing on words, and maybe some ADD.

[Ida123]

Just to update people on this. The dementia fears have subsided to a mostly manageable level. It was helpful for me to look up a lot of the things I was worried about on the ADHD subreddit and see dozens of presumably healthy ADHD sufferers complaining about the same thing. I'm still very in my head though. Lately I've been very aware of my abilities to interpret words, speech and images. I've noticed I've been confused by pictures slightly more often. Like "is that amorphous shape a face or something else? is that water?" etc etc. Also needing to ask people to repeat themselves because I'm having trouble making out what they're saying like mishearing consonant sounds. I've also been very aware of my own reading/writing: skipping over words, misreading words, like reading "however" instead of hover" or something. Typing in a random word into the google search bar that happened to be bouncing around in my mind instead of what I meant to type.

Anyway, I'm aware anxiety and cause all of those things to some extent so I've been reassuring myself and trying to remain calm. I did start on Adderall. As I feared, it triggered SVT almost immediately the first time I took it. Subsequently I've been taking a tiny dose (1.25mg) along with metoprolol each day and that has been good. My mood is usually good on it and I'm much more productive and sociable. Still scatterbrained and forgetful but I actually have the energy needed to do what I want to be doing. My HA is still present though because I've noticed numerous beau's lines on both my thumbnails-- little indented horizontal lines. One set of lines wouldnt worry me too much as it might just indicate that I had an infection or something but I have 5 equally spaced lines probably a month apart which, to me, would indicate constant burden on my system going back months! I'm a bit worried about something immunological being wrong since I've had 5 colds and Covid in the past year + constant allergy symptoms and post nasal drip the past 4 months. Yesterday I felt a funny sensation in my left hand and wrist, it felt fuzzy and tingly when I opened and closed my hand. I've also had a frequent slight tingling sensation in the left side of my butt. I had weird nerve sensations on the left side of my face over the spring/summer that made me terrified of MS. This is bringing back that fear. I know Adderall and Metoprolol and both cause tingling in the extremities but my butt is not an extremity so that freaks me out :/