Googling Symptoms Is Ruining My Life!!!

[willtheconk1998]

Hi I suffer a lot with health anxiety mainly about heart and brainwith loads of ectopic beats and sinus tachycardia according to my gp and hospital ER staff because of anxiety.

I have tried to accept that and get on with life but I constantly google for advice and to check frequency of these things (I get 5000 extra beats a day!!) and occassional sinus tachycardia, headaches head pains neck pains etc etc. I have recently had brain and neck mri (all clear) and I should be happy but my heart symptoms won't go away.
I think between my stressing and googling I am make it worse but I have become addicted to trying to google myself better and all I am dong is making everything a lot worse.
I was up til 3am this morning googling and am convinced I am going to develop a really bad arrythmia and die or going to have a massive heart attack and die.
There is so much scary stuff when you google symptoms. I tried to stop before and felt better but I am worse than ever again.
How can I stop and does anyone else find themselves caught in a web of cyberchondria???
I have an appointment with gp in the morning I am really struggling worse than ever with my health anxiety...how can I stop.
Google is great but in the hands of someone with high health anxiety like me it is a curse!!! Sorry folks am so down today :weep:

[valleybear]

Sorry you are having a bad time at the moment. I had 2 really bad days on the cardiac/blood pressure panic trail but feel a bit better now. I read a lot of old posts on here...going back years (there are links you can follow) these really helped to put things in context. Also had to resort to Rescue remedy 'cos my stomach was churning and the dizziness threatening. I never google now 'cos have had horrendeous panic attacks before when I did!! googling won't make you better, but you can make yourself calmer...try relaxation tapes and the Claire Weekes download from the shop here helped me. Hope you feel a bit better soon.

[tayside lassie]

my advise is ...DONT GOOGLE IT WILL SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH ..

but really dont its not worth the anxiety it causes

[Anxious_gal]

googling is making your anxiety worse, i think googling may give you a purpose even a distraction.
if you cant stop, get rid of the Internet.
if you dont go to therapy then go! if you can find a good therapist it will be the best thing you can do for yourself.
if you honestly can stop you really need to find some help.

[yanksforever]

My health anxiety began with some twitches and a panic attack...but it continued to get worst because of google. Doctor Google has given me 6 different types of cancer, tons of other organ problems, blood issues, and a couple of genetic cardiovascular problems, oh and diabetes as well...

You have no hope of recovering from HA if you continue to google. Your symptoms will also get worst...

Stop Googling.

[jadeyjade]

I know how it feels to be 'addicted' to google and everyone tells you to stop and you just think no i can't!!! well i have been this way for months but i had a better week last week and didn't feel the need to google quite so much, i actually went a couple days without it at all and i can honestly say i felt a million times better. private message me if you want, you sound like you have the same things going on as me! :)

[Gemma T]

Dont worry your not alone. I found this website a couple of days ago and whilst i feel so much better i came on today after googling strokes (damn those adverts). Everything gets better in time. Just keep reminding yourself that its just anxiety and eventually your nervous system will get the message. I think ill print this message and repeat it to myself.

Take care and remember that combating anxiety is a working progress x x x x x

[Dazmondo]

I found this site purely by accident a day or two ago and I it has at last shed some light on a problem I have been grappling with for some twenty years. I have suffered health anxiety since I was seventeen years old and in that time I have had lung cancer, several brain tumours, bowel cancer, stomach cancer, appendicitis, the list goes on. My latest 'illness' (I use the term in a very loose sense) is throat cancer. I have had a 'sore throat' now for a couple of weeks. I went to see a doctor, he took a swab and the result have come back just fine however I cannot stop thinking I have throat cancer. I googled throat cancer and I now have all the symptoms, symptoms I never had before I found out what they were.

[meggyjo]

I used to go through the medical book, (before I had the internet) and I had everything going. Once I was treated for my anxiety, which came to a head five or six years ago. ( I was a mess and felt so ill I never thought I would get better, but I did and have only had a couple of "blips" since. ) Although lately I have been obsessing about heart and lung problems, but am trying to battle through it without taking medication, unless it gets so bad I have to. I know how scarey it is to feel the way you do, but it really isnt wise to google symptoms, believe me I know.!! There is help out there (mine came in the form of Prozac and accupunture) and once I got "better" my life was better than it had been for 20 years. My confidence was like it had never been before and I enjoy life. I will not let anxiety take over my life again, however hard it tries!! I try to tell myself I can beat it, yes there are some days when it is hard and I feel I'm on that "slippery slope" again but I try not to give in for my sake and my kids, their quality of life has improved since I got better too. Good luck.

[mick_uk]

Hiya,
For ordinary inquiries I use Google.
When I'm anxious about symptoms I use the one I made :D

http://www.harryzimmermanpodcast.org.uk/

take care

mick

[willtheconk1998]

I think we all know life would be so much easier if we stopped Googling every little ache and pain and symptom.
It becomes an obsesssion, we go on looking for "cures" or remedies when really there is nothing wrong and when we find something positive it cheers us up in the short term but we never stop at that point and take the positive....oh no...we keep looking until it is terminal or life threatening and then the high anxiety comes in again and we convince ourselves we are on our way out.
I was at GP this morning and he is sending me to see a Phsycologist who specialises in CBT as he thinks it will help me loads.
He reasuured me for the hundredth time that my heart is perfectly healthy and the symptoms I am having are anxiety related (he has been brilliant) he told me that Google is turning the world into hypochondriacs and a little knowledge in people who don't really understand what they are reading is very dangerous and has challenged me to stay off for a while....I will try.

[Norwich]

Its not just google for me, at the moment my HA is so bad that I can't look at my face in the mirror or down in the shower without spotting some abnormality, muscle wasting etc- so I have stopped doing so, I even shave 'blind' at the moment and have been changing in the dark so I can't risk a peek at my legs. Hopefully it will help in the long run!

[lauren6]

Instead of googling, go to Amazon and type in "Stop Worrying About Your Health". One of the best books...spend a few dollars and get that one and "It's Not All In Your Head". People mention Claire Weeks but that stuff is way old and she doesn't specifically address health anxiety alone.

I think everyone here has cyberchondria, myself included. I feel like such a lunatic when ai do it and after, want to just crawl under the blanket from depression about what I have turned into. Just keep trying to see yourself as more worthy of a life that doesn't include this. The books help me, really.