When did yours start????

[**whenwillthisend**]

hi everyone i am interested in how or when you became ill with anxiety and panic...what does everyone think was(if any) the trigger??
For me ,mine simply started with a dizzy feeling where i thought i was gonna faint one day (i didnt but never left the feeling alone and carried on thinking i was gonna faint only for it to spiral way out of control...resulting in how i feel 6 months later..like a wreck most days and a hypochondriac)
Looking back i realise i was completley exhausted.. i had a baby, moved house and had a pile of stress..my body was telling me to slow down.
Also with my first panic attack(which was the worst thing id experienced...even worse than labour as there, i knew what was happening to my body)i was unaware what was happening to me so i kept on thinking i must be seriously ill to feel this way....it took a while to realise i had anxiety..the doctors didnt say anything..just go home and rest..and by the time i realised i was sufferring anxiety and panic it had already got a too good a hold..and here i am today!!!!
The story goes on.....................

[hayles]

Mine was a sickness bug, as i have a fear of being sick.
It sent me into panic and from that day on i was convinced there was something really bad going to happen to me. That i was dying........and then along came the health anxiety.....
and so the story goes on x

Hay x

[reddevil]

Hi,

Mine all started from christmas eve four years ago.

I had this headache, which did not go away.

I had this headache 24/7 and lasted for 2 years.

I was afraid of the worse (tumor).
Specialist told me it was a DAILY PERSISTENT HEADACHE.

But this day onwards health anxiety appears to never leave me.

Tony

[kate]

Mine started with a panic attack in Tesco's when I was 19, I'm 43 now.

Thought I was dying etc. Anxiety was diagnosed which persisted, and then depression followed. Also had PND after the birth of my daughter who is now 14.

Kate

"Everybody's changing and I don't feel the same"

[LC05]

Mine started last summer. A few days before I went on holiday my friend kept talking about plane crashes, and i went really dizzy and thought I was gonna pass out. Since then its kept happening and thats what started the health anxiety. Anxiety runs in my family, and i think i miust have just triggered something that day.

[shell100]

Hi everyone
mine came on when i was driving home late one night,
i had worked in coronary care for about 10 years & i was convinced i had gone into some fast heart rhythm. i ended up back & forward to my own unit on heart monitors (infact i can hardly remember it it was such a blur)
within a couple of weeks i was so anxious i couldnt even get in my car & go to work. im a nurse & if i had to take a patients blood i got really anxious that i would have a panic attack in the middle of taking it, hence i would be shaking making it virtually impossible. i guess at the time that was generalised anxiety. i became obsessive with checking my pulse, i wanted it at a certain rate else i would get really upset. then i was checking what i was eating, like nothing with caffeine in, nothing with nuts, just spiraled out of control i guess :(. was going thru a relationship split with the kids dad & lots of things really just got on top of me.
7 years on i was doing really well....THIS IS JUST A BLIP THO KEEP TELLING MYSELF THAT....

[Greg1983]

Mine started with a panic attack in the cinema of Jan this year. I thought i was having a heart attack and since then i have worried about dieing and other illness since then.

It all started round about the time me and #my girlfriend bought a house.

"UNLESS YOU HAVE BREATHED ANXIETY, TASTED ANXIETY AND LIVED WITH ANXIETY YOU DONT KNOW HOW IT FEELS..
NEVER JUDGE AN ANXIOUS PERSON BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW ONE DAY YOU MAY WAKE UP WITH IT YOURSELF..... (Stolen from someone else, can't remember who, but i'm sorry - i just liked it)"

[whatisitnow]

Mine started about 14 yrs ago. My father in law died, i didnt think for a minute when he wen into hospital he would have cancer. I was a very nieve person back then. Since then i have convinced myself ive had cervical cancer, ovarian cysts/tumors, bowel cancer, throat cancer, lung cancer, necrotising faciaitus (flesh eating bug) breast cancer, Non hodgkins lymphoma, skin cancer, and the list goes on and on, some of things ive thought ive had more than once over the years. The awful thing is the episodes of attacks are getting closer together. I used to go a couple of years between, now im lucky if i get 2 months between.

[whatisitnow]

And also the times anxiety attacks come on (out of the blue) are usually when ive been stressed about something going on at the time in my life. That seems to always be the trigger. Having to move house, bad relationship, giving up smoking & stressing about my weight, major events happening in the family etc

[boy]

I had a scare down there in December 2003 that turned out to be varicose veins. I heard something about prostate cancer on the radio in Nov 2004, and after I got over that I found a boil thing on my foreskin, then a couple of weeks later a lump in the side of my head...

in fact today is a year to the day that I became a full-blown hypochondriac, coz after this it was one thing after another.