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So I’m posting on this forum for eyes and stuff. Maybe I should just stop posting there. Especially because there’s one user in particular who keeps triggering my eye anxiety. Mainly because her eye anxiety is probably even worse than mine. She seems even more neurotic me. So she kind of “infects” my brain. One person on that site also told me I probably have glaucoma. Thankfully I don’t have anxiety about my eye health and I just laughed it off.
Those forums are not tailored for anxiety sufferers so responses are going to be challenging as you may find people are less restrained as would be on here. So, it can be a negative environment for the HAers.
If you can brush it off, that's a good thing but if you think it's getting too much perhaps you need a break? Ideally in beating anxiety you want to be able to not find such things triggering for you but that takes a load of work and it's not a failure if you need to have a temporary strategy to protect yourself until you are stronger & ready to challenge things.
Oooh, an eye forum. Which one?
Lol Mel,my eyes a blurred from laughing,just seen something funny at work.:roflmao:
Yeah. Those forums are hard. A bunch of seemingly random stuff can trigger my anxiety. I don’t even know if I’m technically suffering from HA. I think I’m just an anxiety sufferer who happens to suffer from eye problems. One thing I’m happy about is that my new eye doctor can handle me. He can deal with my anxiety without believing my eye problems are in my head.Quote:
Originally Posted by MyNameIsTerry
That's good, an open minded medical professional is always a good person to have as they will be open in their responses and convey more trust.Quote:
Originally Posted by Weebo
I think to be fair to those forums they don't expect us to be on there and they probably expect it to be all people with those problems. They may be heavy on pushing for tests to rule stuff out but they don't attach any other meaning to it as people on here do.
It's very possible, you don't have to be a HAer to find your anxiety increases due to a potential health issue. GADers can have HA issues but they don't have all the obsessive-compulsive cycles that go with it. (I'm not saying you are a GADer, it's just an example).
Even if you had OCD you could have themes that don't touch on health. None of my themes have been about health so what those on this board struggle with is something I find as easy/hard as a non anxiety sufferer. But if something real happens, like when my mum was ill, that doesn't mean I don't find an increase in my anxiety but also it doesn't mean I sink into the patterns of thinking about health that a HAer would.
Interesting. My current optometrist isn’t very confident and sure of things. That kind of triggers my anxiety, but he knows how to calm me down and counteract that. He has more of a wait and see approach. Which is a good thing for complicated cases like mine, but it also triggers my OCD that wants to be sure of everything.Quote:
Originally Posted by MyNameIsTerry
The thing with the eye forum is that I actually do have those problems. I just have some wonderful OCD symptoms to go along with it. So I kind of confuse people. They don’t understand why I have so much anxiety. Some people end up believing it’s all in my head.
I do have many OCD obsessions that have nothing to do with health. I mainly have eye anxiety because my eyes are just so complicated to test. Is there any difference between how an OCD sufferer vs. HAer would real with health themes? I find a lot of my eye anxiety themes are related to people not taking me seriously and worrying things are in my head.
I guess for them on the other forum there is a limit to how anxiety has affected them. So, the irrational thought patterns and negative behaviours we engage in seem a bit OTT. Those that have learnt about mental health issues or been affected in some way will understand more but you can never really understand how it feels unless you go through it like many experiences in life.
Maybe there is the option to use both forums? Them for their support & knowledge on your eyes and us for thought patterns & behaviours? Many HAers, in my opinion, would really struggle with the line there so it depends heavily on you and how your anxiety works. I expect others on here will be able to offer advice on this from their experiences too which will obviously be worth hearing.
The thing about HA is - it's not a medical term. It's a sufferers term just as in OCD you have HOCD, TOCD, POCD, ROCD, etc. Medical manuals don't go that far into categorising them so they will have supporting documentation that covers known themes.
Under this sufferer's term of "HA" some OCD can be found. But the person could have a mixture that is seen as more "OCD related" (so in here you would find them posting about that more on the OCD board) but the underlying drivers and patterns that the professional uses to determine the name of the disorder isn't affected by this. Therefore, it's perfectly possible for any OCDer to have any theme including the ones that fall into this HA bucket.
For me, I don't. But there are plenty who are like me, only have a very limited number of themes, some who have tons of themes that jump around, and some that seem more related to health but are OCD sufferers.
Some "HA" can fall under GAD or the Somatoform Disorders. The latter have a lot of common aspects seen in OCD too. I think GAD tends to stick out as there is a lack of the obsessive-compulsive cycle but some can still have OCD "traits" that mean it's not enough to be diagnosed as OCD yet it still manifests in making them fall into the same traps to some extent.
Complicated stuff! But yes, it's perfectly reasonable to not have HA elements yet still experience anxiety over real health issues. When you see your OCD behaviours becoming involved, it's becoming a theme in your OCD. If you can identify cycles that are expected as OCD, then you will know. But some elements of OCD can be seen in any disorder too, such as trying to work out the difference between compulsion & safety behaviours.
Are you engaging in compulsions about your health?
When it comes to HA I only really have anxiety and OCD about my eyes. I don’t tend to obsess too much about my health other than that. I do suspect Lyme disease or something autoimmune, but I’ve never really obsessed about it. I feel like I have eye anxiety because it involves a lot of emotions. Other health conditions don’t quite have those emotions attached. I notice my non eye related obsessions involve those emotions as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by MyNameIsTerry
One example is not feeling legitimate. I’ve struggled with not feeling legitimate because I’m white passing. So I don’t quite feel like I fit in with white people, but people call me white because of my skin color. When I was nine I noticed I struggled to see distant objects and the computer screen. When I was told I don’t need glasses I panicked. I thought I was going crazy and having vision problems due to that. So I was terrified of having somatoform disorder before I even knew it was a thing.
Two years later I learned that I do in fact need glasses, but only my left eye is bad. That explained my poor depth perception. Before that I thought my depth perception problems were there because I was labeled autistic. I didn’t want to seem autistic to people, so I never mentioned my depth perception issues. Autism is a whole other OCD obsession for me I’ll get back to later.
Right now I’m pretty sure none of my eyes are great, but since my right eye prescription is very low at the moment while my left eye prescription is thick. I have anxiety about my right eye prescription being too low to be taken seriously. I sometimes feel dumb for wearing glasses all the time because it’s so low. One ophthalmologist didn’t take my vision problems seriously because their crappy autorefractor(machine for estimating glasses prescription) said my right eye had pretty much zero prescription and I could see 20/20 WITH my glasses on. They just assumed my glasses had zero prescription in my right eye even though that’s not the case. I know I cannot see 20/20 without glasses even though the prescription is low.
Another thing that fuels my eye anxiety is that I can’t escape my situation. Eye strain bothers me, but what bothers me more is the idea that it will never go away since my glasses keep straining my eyes. My eyes are very hard to test, so I can’t just walk in and expect them to solve my vision problems right away. I also find people get distracted by my bad left eye. People mention it even though I’m complaining about general eye strain rather than how well my left eye can see. I think it sees fine with glasses and I don’t really care if it ocassionally sees one line worse than my right eye at times. That isn’t my complaint. But people don’t just listen and they go with unhelpful first impressions as well.
I got triggered again. She probably thinks she’s helping me, but she’s actually more neurotic than I am. So I just end up getting more anxious than I was before. She had a bunch of anxiety about her very minor eye problems while I know I have real ones. Time to stop visiting those forums. Or at least I’ll ignore her posts. Maybe she’ll get the message. She claims she’s being blunt with me. I want to be blunt with her, but I’ve just been too polite.