Purely for curiousity

[hm1177]

why do you think its easy for us to reassure others on here that they are fine but not ourselves?

If someone has the same symptoms and fears as you do you find yourself being able to reassure why they don't have MS/tumours/MND etc, or not?

For me i can reassure people that their symptoms are caused by anxiety, except when its the symptoms I am worried about at that moment. It doesn't make me better or worse but a little happier (?) that there's a lot of us going through same stuff.

[AnnieMags]

Do you know, I have been thinking exactly the same thing! :) Could it be that it is easier to reassure others because deep down we know that everything happening to them is likely to be caused by their anxiety (which we know they have, otherwise they would not be posting here! :) When it comes to ourselves, however, the irrational fears take over and all those persistent 'yes-but-what-ifs' easily win the day! If there is a one percent chance that a symptom is something life-threatening, that one percent is me, every time!! :)

What do others think?

Best wishes from Annie

[lauren6]

What a great question! I think we are able to do this because we spend a lot of time pondering this problem and developed some skills as far as knowing that we indeed to this to ourselves. For whatever reasons we are afflicted with this, we can't convince ourselves but know deep down it's so much psychologically based and we want to tell others that because we feel for them when we read these posts.

There is also a lot of research that shows that people with anxiety disorder are usually very bright, sensitive people! So we have a lot of insight into this...you know, many therapists are pretty troubled themselves. People in general are far better at helping others than themselves.

It helps to read the posts on this board because as an outsider, we can see the absurdity of many of the posts and then we realize our fears can be just as absurd, maybe unwarranted is a better word. And maybe eventually it will sink in that it's just too much, to live like this day after day, when we see ourselves in other people and can be more objective and turn that objectivity to ourselves...and hopefully talk ourselves out of this.