View Full Version : what triggered your health anxiety?
westofengland
21-11-10, 18:37
be interested to hear what other people feel were their triggers
For me - always being anxious and pessimistic about future....
Then, wife getting cancer at 43
Reading and hearing stuff in the media....
Triggers can come in the unlikeliest places. I've had a major lung cancer panic as somebody mentioned on Radio 3 for god sake that a composer had just died of lung cancer - at same age as me!
I have come to realise you can't avoid triggers unless you live in a cave, not in our information obsessed society, so I guess it's about learning not to compulsively act on them
I had a muscle spasm in my chest+massive panic attack and thought it was a heart attack. I expected to wake up the next day and the pain and panic would be gone but it's stayed with me for 8 months now. ;(
My health anxietys very heart focused, I don't worry about cancer usually. Sometimes I'll have a quick worry about it but it's usually gone by the next day but my heart worries never go. x
same here guys i have major heart worries and Ur right when some one mentions someones had a heart attack it gets you thinking. also my son has been in hospital for 3 wks comes out this wk. but every time i go in there i get depressed i see ill people every where and i start to think is this what i have in store when i get older i cant seem to think any thing positive for the future except getting old and illness.i had cbt once he had me runing up and down the stairs listening to my heart beat. i also had to say im having a heart attack over and over again did not work though. also i think it spreads to other thinks in Ur life .
Ella_Jayne
21-11-10, 19:31
I started worrying about my heart after hearing stories in the media about SADS (Sudden Adult/Arrhythmia Death Syndrome) It kept coming into my mind on a daily basis and I kept saying to myself that I should get tested.
I was home alone one day and got short of breath, then had ectopic beats followed by a full blown panic attack. 15 Months on and Countless trips to the hospital, 30+ ECG's, an Echo, 24hr holter, dozens of chest X-Rays, 3 Thyroid function test, numerous blood tests, and full neurological examination later... I'm still worrying I'm gonna just drop dead from a heart problem!
Tried CBT twice. Helped but not enough!
:)
My daughter being ill a couple of years ago, she had a problem with her clavicle and when I took her to the docs we were told it could be cancer of the bones – untreatable. As it was it turned out to be a chronic infection that required very invasive treatment –operations, permanent lines so antibiotics could be administered intravenously over three months then a course of other intravenous drugs endless MRI’s, scans, x-ray’s etc. In all two years of treatment at Oxford mainly as an outpatient (We live in Northamptonshire), she was twelve when this kicked off.
My psychologist also thinks my father’s illnesses played a part. Without going in to deep with family issues I was only ever called to my father when things had got bad. I had a call one night a midnight to him and when I got there was informed ‘he hasn’t done a number one for 24 hrs, turns out he had been having problems down there for months – prostrate obviously but why leave it:shrug:
Then four years ago same thing called out at some mad hour your dad can’t keep anything down been going on for weeks. Turns out in fact it started months and months back but no one told me.:mad:
Diagnosis oesophagus cancer – he died two weeks later. He was turned eighty mind and an alcoholic who had smoked Park Drive since he was twelve so not a bad innings actually.
So that was the combination that started my HA
countrygirl
21-11-10, 20:04
Mine was from childhod trauma with illness and death so not a surprise reaction!
Grandmother brought me up and when I was 4 she had a major stroke and I found her - I then was left with a paralysed person who had no speech for up to 4 hrs at a time and had to look after her - she then went into hospital after 6 months and I had started school and never saw her again as children not allowed to visit then she died.
I knew even at 3 yrs old that she was a diabetic and should not eat sweets so was constantly watching her so knew she had an illness and the 4 yr old put illness and death together and thought they always followed one another.
That was over 40 yrs ago and no amount of therapy has improved me but has made me understand why - i am about to start hypnotherapy.
ME,ME and only ME.
Petra x
My parents have both had a very tough time oftime it and both have had mental illness. They met, married and had me - by this time my dad was abusive towards my mum, sexually, and money wise. My mum spent 5 days out of 7 in hospital for a year and i saw people doing things to her when i was a toddler that il never forget. My dad left when i was 4 after a very traumatic week, but thought he would tell me that he was leaving, before he tild my mum.. he then didnt recontact until was 17 and sent me a very traumatic email. I was also being bullied at school, sexually and emotionally, i saw a new gp around this time, for a minor issue, she commented that i had it tough , im also dyspraxic, and my sister is autistic, and it was like a can of worms was opened,?like trying to process years of hidden feelings and memories .. apparently it has all resulted in where i am today - that and just my personality in general.
My story is very similar to countrygirl. I was exposed to a lot of illness and death at an early age, so for me as well illness = death.
My granddad died when I was 3, and as far as I could understand at the time, just disappeared and was never seen again. My dad developed MS when I was two; he seemed to have a rapid form of the relapsing-remitting one, and I remember seeing him collapse when I was four. He was dead by the time I was seven, and then my gran had a stroke at home when I was ten.
This was also interspersed with various other elderly rellies dying, so I suppose this is one of the disadvantages of being the only child in an "old" family.
Thinking about it, I've been anxious as long as I can remember. It does go away, but it's an underlying thing that is just part of me.
I never thought i had a trigger that set my health anxiety off i always believed it was something i had developed over the years, i found this hard to deal with, but im having cbt at the moment and doing this i have realised that my health anxiety started around 6 years ago when i nearly died after a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. It started gradually with just a few problems here and there but has been pretty constant since i came of my meds for postnatal depression in january although i am getting better.
Im a huge worrier too and i dont think this helps, i also have a very unnatural fixation on dying right to the point where i have the images in my head of my own funeral.
I have to admit tho cbt is working wonders for my and my panic and anxiety have really reduced since i started 6 weeks ago. Ive swayed off track a few times especially when i developed gastritis after a nasty sickness bug.
I believe i can beat this at least i hope i can!
Sorry ive gone on a bit :)
xxxxx
happycamper
22-11-10, 09:59
Oh, the big 'C' in my family, despite the fact my parents are still alive, the last 5 years they've had malignant melanoma, breast cancer and bowel cancer and it totally freaked me out.
My mum needing emotional support 110% of the time, of course it's totally to be expected but I was giving it to her and not receiving any myself, so my coping ability went down the snake and I'm now trying to climb back up the ladder again! Hey ho. X
mine started with the death of my dad at 54 with lung cancer that was 20yrs ago and it was made worse by the death of my beautiful mum from cancer at 68 yrs my mum was my rock and feel so vunerable to every cancer since we lost her 2 yrs ago x
Mine started when my hubby had a heart attack i had been low for some time as my mum has passed i thought i was coping but may be not then when hubby was in hospital i had my first panic attack it scared the hell outta me i thought i was gonna die alone ,then just as we were trying to pull ourselfs together the shock of my only brother being found dead in his bed alone and not knowing why tipped me over the edge and now every day i have heart attack on my mind iit does not help that i am having acid reflux 24/7 having tests meds and have to have a ct scan on my heart waiting for appointment i can not shift this feeling that hubby survived his heart attack but i wont have had ecgs blood tests scans for gall stones test for gluten intolerence ect ect next test for me is ct scan and no doubt endescope yippppeeee not x
All the scaremongering in the media 20 years or so ago about HIV and AIDS set me off and I had a panic and thought that maybe I had it. Of course I didnt and there was no reason to think that I did but since then I slowly began to develop health anxiety and have worried about many different things over the years, mainly cancer.
I think mine started after my first panic attack, all my childhood memories came flooding back to me, mainly of finding my beloved Grandma dead from a brain aneurysm as a ten year old. Can't stop thinking about when it's going to happen to me even though she was a heavy smoker and had stupidly high blood pressure.
Ever since thinking about it, I can't get the thought of this and heart related problems out of my head, which in turn feeds my everlasting chest pains I guess!
Mine started about 20 years ago same as Humly. I had never worried about my health too much, but then the HIV scaremongering came along, and I had a panic about it, and spent 2 miserable years convinced I had it when there was no reason to believe I was at risk. That seemed to start the whole thing off, and it's waxed and waned over the years, and changed form worrying about HIV to worrying about cancer. Especially now I'm approaching 50. At least I could convince myself that it's rare to die of cancer when you're young, but now I'm getting older I keep thinking that there is more chance of it happening. I think it's probably best not to read health scare stories, as they just ignite the panic. At the moment I'm using a "so what" attitude to my worries and it does seem to be helping. I'm not cured but taking more interest in my daily life. Starting another round of CBT soon, so will see how that goes.
Good luck everyone
Primula x
Mine was from being around too much knowlege... it is a lot of the time a bad thing...
I am a nurse, i deal with acutely sick people everyday and death, it's my job, i chose it, i deal with it. I can pin pinpoint the exact moment anxiety became an issue....
A visitor confronted me about an issue i wasn't even involved with, having a man stood 2 inches from my face screaming abuse at me about an issue i had no dealings in was a very frightening experience... i tried to carry on my duties but i could feel something bubbling inside and 2 mins later.. my very first panic attack. I became hyper-aware of my heartbeat, and it has become the all consuming thought... what is my heart doing now????
Working in medicine i know about anatomy, physiology and medications.... but it's surprising how even that doesn't help, only seems to make things worse. Sometimes i wish i could just be ignorant to all of it. But it is constantly there, everyday i deal with health problems, i do have a few of my own too which are not helping in the mix... i had half my thyroid removed at 19yo and have recently been told the bit i have left is starting to fail... i would be given thyroxine.. this speeds up the heart... oh fabulous, as if it isn't going mad enough already!! I also have PCOS, so naturally i have hormonal imbalance .. i have even found a pattern where my palps/ectopics get worse at different times in the cycle. Since my first episode i have had 3 further panic attacks, ectopics every day and racing heart all the time. I have had loads of ecgs... at one point was in the back of an ambulance and the paramedic said he found something... "might be nothing"... and wouldn't tell me what.... thanks mate that made my anxiety worse. I have since had a 5 day event recorder and the results were sinus tachy with frequent ectopics... great!! although a cardiologist wants to see me.... this made me worry, why would he want to see me if there was nothing dangerous in the report.... still, i shall go mad thinking about it, as have another month to wait to see him. So, that's my happy story.
Ducky xx
I had my first experience on the day of my best friend's funeral. He died of cystic fibrosis when he was just 24 and it really made me think about death and mortality and all that. I couldn't get my head around someone dying so young and just thought that it could happen to anyone at any age. I became absolutely terrifed of death.
Anyway, when I was home after the funeral, I felt what appeared to be an electric shock across my chest and down my left arm and my heart instantly started racing. I felt like a couldn't breathe and my heart just kept getting faster and faster, so much so that I thought it was going to stop. My parents phoned the doctor and he suggested they take me in to A&E. I had all the tests under the sun performed on me, ECG, X-Ray, blood tests, you name it. I was hooked up to a heart monitor all night. All the tests came back normal and the docs put it down to anxiety.
I thought I'd add to this as I'm frustrated at the moment. I think mine stems back to having my gallstones missed and becomming ill with it and ending up in hospital.
The thing that frustrates me though is that I just had anxious thoughts and that was all that troubled me. Until that is my friend started getting anxious and started having ectopic beats. She mentioed it to me and got some tests done on her heart.
I think I suddenly thought well what if there's something wrong with my heart, perhaps I should ask for tests, and it all went downhill from there tbh.
It makes me so frustrated that I hadn't even noticed any of these sensations until I decided that I needed to be tested too just to be on the safe side. Now I can't get rid of the damn things.
I think what kicked off my main health anxiety was my mum getting breast cancer when i was about 22..
.. it was very aggressive and had started to spread. it was stage 3 and she was so lucky they found it when they did.
Anyway... 7 years later and she is still with us :) xx hasnt helped my mental state though !
x
I had an accident which landed me in hospital with all kinds of tests (I collapsed for no apparent reason and hurt myself pretty badly). I became terrified that something was seriously wrong and it seems to have not gone away, even though that was 6 years ago.
I had an accident which landed me in hospital with all kinds of tests (I collapsed for no apparent reason and hurt myself pretty badly). I became terrified that something was seriously wrong and it seems to have not gone away, even though that was 6 years ago.
Same thing happened to me last Christmas but did not hurt myself too much though, They said it was hypoglycemia but my brain has kept telling me it's something else. Anxiety started slow for me but kept getting more frequent and now I get it every day.
My Dad had a lot of heart problems when he was younger and a few years ago he had a pretty bad angina attack, then near enough 3 years ago my Dad died of a malignant brain tumour when I was 14 I had to watch him suffer and the worst part of it was there was absolutley nothing I could do, then 6 months after that me and my Mum got called home by my Grandma whilst we were having a holiday in Scotland to visit my Dads relatives, saying my Grandad was suffering with an internal bleed. We came back later on that day to visit him the next day in hospital hoping he could get better (though I don't think I knew quite how serious it was), though the next day we got to the hospital and he'd already died. My grandad too had a lot of health problems (diabetes, ulsers, toe amputation etc.) so i've been exposed to a lot of health issues with my family over the past couple of years.
I never knew that my Dad's brain tumour was malignant until the night he died, as my Mum thought it was best I didn't know he was dying.
So ever since then I've feared my own health worrying I have every type of cancer or heart problem under the sun, even when the doctor tells me I'm fine I get suspicious in case people know something I don't.
I only realised last year my Dad, the fact my Mum kept it a secret my Dad was dying and Grandad's death played a huge part in my health anxiety, I now worry everyday I have something wrong with me.
It's so awful!
Babyalpinestar
26-11-10, 20:10
I have had mine since I was about 11 years old when my uncle died from Cancer, I have struggled with it ever since. I have phases of illnesses I think that I am going to die from, from a Brain hemorrhage to Heart conditions, my brain picks up every single signal that other people would ignore, I have been to the doctors so many times my file is huge! im so tired of feeling this way and just want to behave normally. I feel that in my head I have been ill since I was 11, so when I actually am ill physically it feels even worse to cope with. My family do not understand and I feel selfish for constantly thinking about myself. I have anxiety issues aswell so a bag of nerves most of the time. I would really like to talk to other people who have it to have some understanding for a change instead of someone in my family saying "your not bloody ill" lol
I went to bed one night and the panic started for no reason. After sleepless nights and all kinds of weird symptoms it just developed. Over a year later and new things pop up that freak me out.
miggymoggy
06-12-10, 16:47
I originally had severe HA when my Nan died very unexpectedly when i was 18. She was very fit, had recently been told that "although she was 74, she had the heart of a 50 year old" and then, without warning, she died of a heart attack in her sleep.
I remember for a couple of years after that I was in a terrible state, constantly thinking I was dying.
August 2008 my Mum died of lung cancer. She was very fit, still working, aged 68 but going to the gym 5 times a week. A bad back turned out to be cancer spread from the lungs to the spine. She had NO lung symptoms, yet she died within 10 weeks of seeing someone about a bad back.
Since that, I've been an absolute wreck.
I've had numerous ECGs
I've had CT scans, MRI scans
I've cried myself to sleep so many times, convinced I have terminal cancer.
Every ache, every pain, I'm convinced is something awful.
Lately I have been shaking all the time and can't eat. I HATE THIS!!
My health anxeity was triggered when my son was born - he nearly died and needed an emergency operation when he was one day old due to a blockage in his gut. He is also suffers from a very rare brain disorder - only 70 people in the world are known to have it, so he is disabled and has special needs and ongoing medical problems.
I was never like this before - my boy is 5 now and always has a big smile and a kiss for me. Love him to bits :-)
L.x
I've always had bad anxiety but it got worse when i took a large amount of speed. Now everyday i worry about dropping dead from a heart attack.
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