Re: Breaking the Google addiction
Hi, just checking in. Still waiting for my therapy appointment as unfortunately the one I thought I had wasn't in the computer. I've reached a strange place the past few weeks. I'm still finding things that I'm convinced are cancer every time I look in the mirror, but it's like my health anxiety has reached burn out as I panic a lot less.
I realised the other day that I've pretty much worried about every disease I could possibly get so there's no point wasting energy going over old ground when I see or find something. I've decided it's inevitable that some disease is going to happen to me in the next 10,20,30 years (I'm nearly 50) and when it does, I've already done all the research so I might as well get on with life for as long as I can.
It'll be interesting to see what my therapist thinks of this mindset. I'd love to be positive about the future and not have this constant feeling of doom, but it feels like that's never going to happen so I might as well just roll with it instead.
Re: Breaking the Google addiction
So I had my therapy appointment today and it went really well. I told him everything that's been going on and said I felt like I needed a new plan as the CBT helps when I've got specific health worries, but not with the general feeling of doom that something is wrong with me that I have most of the time. We are going to start acceptance and commitment therapy for this. He's also referring me to a colleague of his for schema therapy to address childhood trauma. I feel positive about having a new plan. Scheme therapy is new to me, but having read about them I can already identify a few I have, especially vulnerability to harm or illness. I will post more once I've had my first session.
Re: Breaking the Google addiction
Following up to say that despite my unwavering belief that some health crisis was imminent, everything has now been declared normal by qualified health professionals. My blood tests showed my liver GGT is back in the normal range. I think my blood protein might be slightly out of the normal range (saw it on the screen) but she didn't mention it and that happened last year too and it went back to normal so I'm not going back down that rabbit hole. Now I'm just focussed on therapy and learning to put HA in my past. Thanks for following along :)
Re: Breaking the Google addiction
What I do when I get any symptom that starts to worry me, is wait a week, if its still there, and i'm still really worried about it, go to my doctor and discuss it with him. 99% of the time, my symptom is gone by the end of the week and I move on to other things.
Re: Breaking the Google addiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
solrider
What I do when I get any symptom that starts to worry me, is wait a week, if its still there, and i'm still really worried about it, go to my doctor and discuss it with him. 99% of the time, my symptom is gone by the end of the week and I move on to other things.
I have so many symptoms with my fibro that if I was to see my GP after a week, I might as well send out change of address cards because I'd basically be living there.
Re: Breaking the Google addiction
Thanks for the tip solrider. I'm doing that right now. Got a pain in my groin yesterday, poked the area and it hurt. Panic flooded in as did memories of all the scary things I've Googled in the past. Today both sides are sore (probably from the bloody poking).
Deep breaths and a reminder to myself that the only thing I know for certain is that I have health anxiety.
Already have a scheduled GP appointment week after next so will bring it up with her then if it's still there. Reminder also to myself that this time last week I was panicking about 3 other things that aren't worrying me now.
Lately I've caught myself thinking that I'll probably get some cancer or terminal illness now because I'm making headway with my health anxiety in therapy.
Self-sabotage at its most predictable!