My battle with health anxiety has been a long, exhausting one. I have always been a worrier; thinking the worst, jumping to conclusions. My anxiety was triggered when my mum passed away, very suddenly and unexpected almost two years ago now. On top of having mine and my families whole world torn to pieces, dealing with the crushing grief and missing mum more than I could possibly describe - I started to immediately panic that what had happened to her would happen to me. Within days I was on Google, researching what had happened to her. Finding out the causes, the symptoms - I was obsessed. I read horror stories, rare cases, just everything to do with how she died. I then started noticing similar symptoms in myself. My health anxiety then continued for the next year. Sporadic periods of sheer terror, followed by some weeks or days of relief, usually gained by reassurance from DR’s, friends, anyone I could talk to. All my conversations with my family and ex-boyfriend would revolve around my health. I would find ways of bringing it up as the topic of conversation. “Does your heart beat this fast?”. I would obsessively check my body for signs and symptoms, like my pulse. I even went to extent of using a tape measure to check the width of my legs - to make sure they weren’t swollen. During the year I spent mostly every day convinced I would die and that other people close to me would also die. I would wake up in the middle of night and check to see if my ex-boyfriend was still breathing. Breast cancer, brain cancer, AIDS, going blind, having a stroke, having a heart attack - you name it - I would have it (So I thought). I knew I had a problem, it was taking over my life, I sought help from DR’s, who put me on waiting lists for CBT. I was told the waiting list would take 8 months. I was devastated. No one would understand the absolute, real terror I was facing. People would laugh when I explained my fears. But all I could think was “if it happened to mum, it could happen to me”.
It turned out I actually had NONE of the things I worried about, not even one.
I bought some books on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I started a strict controlling regime with myself and set some rules.
1. Absolutely no using the internet to research illnesses, symptoms, etc.
2. Stop seeking reassurance from anyone. Asking once is the maximum allowed.
3. Stop checking body and doing tests. Allow once a day maximum.
4. Distract myself whenever thoughts come into head.
5. Don’t rush straight to DR’s when worried - if something continues for 2 weeks - go then if it is causing obvious problems.
Using all these rules I managed to stop worrying about my health. It was very, very hard.
Going from checking my pulse, legs, breasts from up to 100 times a day, to once, was a struggle. Logic helped too - I thought things over, such as; checking more than once a day won’t change what is already there. Nothing is going to have changed in the last 5 minutes.
I still have periods of time where my health anxiety comes rushing back, but using these rules REALLY, really helped.
It's so, so hard to do them.
The googling symptoms one is a MASSIVE help. Seriously, once I stopped using google my anxiety reduced by 50%.
You have to be very strict with yourself.
I even got my family members to say "no thank you" whenever I asked them for reassurance.
If anyone needs help going through HA, I can give out my email and help. It's such an awful thing to go through, I would like to help anyone I can
---------- Post added at 23:13 ---------- Previous post was at 23:09 ----------
Also something that really helped me was this man’s website: http://cognitivetherapyonline.com/cbt4panic/ - I ended up searching online as a last resort and I was sceptical at first regarding paying, even though it was a small amount, but desperation prevailed and it really, REALLY helped. He’d even reply to late night panic emails from me with words of encouragement.
CBT is extremely beneficial for any type of anxiety
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