What triggered your anxiety in the first place?

[lass]

Sorry, I do go on a bit, this is likely to be very long! I just feel I need to let it all out tonight and I've offloaded to my friends a bit too much lately, and I think they will get sick of me soon, so I thought I'd post on here instead!

I've been reading loads of posts and lots of people seem able to identify what triggered their anxiety in the first place - things like losing a loved one to an illness, or other stressful changes in their life.

I really can't say what has started me off. I've always been a cautious type of person, a bit of a worrier, but not how I am now. I used to be able to ignore any health issues for a few days before considering consulting a doctor - whereas now the slightest thing sets me off in a right old state.

I have been thinking about it a lot and I think maybe mine started when I cam I came back from a holiday at Disneyland Paris in February, and a friend of mine who has terminal cancer had been in hospital while I was away, and was very poorly. She had been diagnosed a year previously so I knew she was ill and that they could not cure her; however that was the first time she had been hospitalised and was very ill.

I saw her about a week later when she was back at home and she did look very ill, much worse than when I'd seen her last, and I think we all wondered then if "this was it".

A couple of days after seeing her, I then got a pain in my abdomen which came and went, but wasn't like a normal tummy pain; in fact I wondered if I'd pulled something or had a hernia as it was a very tight kind of feeling. I went to the doctor and she said I was constipated, and suggested some treatment and so on. I was fine for a couple of weeks until I read an article on bowel cancer and realised I had a change in bowel movements and my symptoms sounded the same as the girl in this article (by this time, I was fluctuating between constipation and diarrhorea). Since this point I've been a regular at the GP and I've been obsessed about my bowels.

The more I thought about it, the more I've convinced myself it could be something serious - my dad has bowel disease (colitis) and also bowel polyps which they remove, and I discussed this with my GP and polyps can be hereditary (left alone, polyps can turn cancerous).

My GP has been excellent and told me she thinks it's IBS but realises I won't relax until that's proven, so I've had blood tests (all normal) and am now having a sigmoidoscopy on Friday.

I'm also now due to have counselling soon (God help the poor counsellor, she'll have earache after me, you have probably realised by now that I do like to talk about it!).

I've tried 2 types of anti depressant but I've come to the conclusion that this isn't for me, and that I need to work through why I'm feeling like this and learn to deal with it. I do take St Johns Wort, some other herbal stuff and vitamins and minerals, and I do feel these help (more so than the anti depressents, but to be fair I haven't stuck with the meds for long).

I just think that lots of people have real, understandable, valid reasons for why their anxiety started; whereas I can only guess at mine by looking back to what happened around that time.

I can cope with most of my symptoms and accept them for what they are - anxiety. Since this started I've had pins and needles in my arms, hands, legs and feet (lasted for well over a week), tummy pains, terrible back aches, muscle aches, a kind of tension in my abdomen, shaking, dizziness, nausea, insomnia and most recently palpitations. However I am still not believing that my bowel problems aren't something more serious, and I worry that even after my sigmoidoscopy (which hopefully will be ok), I will still feel something is wrong and they've missed something, and I'll never get rid of this anxiety.

I really don't know where all this is coming from, except that I remember being so shocked when my friend was diagnosed as her symptoms were very minor and it took a long while before they discovered the problem - and when they eventually did, her ca

[anxious]

Hiya ckirby,

you do sound very much like me. I have always been a worrier and had ocd when i was young (i spent hours checking things were locked or turned off). My parents didn't know how to deal with me so just tended to laugh. I suppose as i grew older i got embarrassed at how i was so started constant checking but bodily - hence the health anxiety. Sometimes i wish i could go back to plain old ocd (not to make light of anyone who has it).
I lived with someone who died of cancer, for a time it made me think 'just get on with it and live for the day' but then the old me crept in with the added fear that young people 'like us' actually die.
I've had some strange symptoms that doctors can only put down to stress/anxiety. Pain in the eye, pain in tongue and lower jaw, IBS type symptoms etc. Some come and go, others look like they are here to stay. I have has jaw pain for 5 years but have learnt how to manage it (at least it stopped me smoking). The eye pain has come back after being away for nearly 5 years and i'm finding that harder to cope with. Just keep telling myself it went away before so it will this time.
I take evening primrose and vit b complex but i am also on citroplam at the moment. Like you i keep stop starting as im not sure if they work. I'm also waiting for CBT.
When you get your clear results from your tests, hold that thought and try not to think to deeply. I'm sure thats a problem with ha. We also look to hard.
Sorry for long reply (my counceller is in for it to lol).

You are not alone,
anx xx

Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects

[juju]

this is also familiar to me to,
i also have always been a worrier even as a child and i remember having ocd behaviour when i was younger also.i put mine down to stress and not letting my feelings vent as they should and generally just putting up with life in general, i think i was depressed and prob didnt know it. then like you i started worrying severely about major illnesses and the what ifs etc. my cbt is great though it really challenges you to answer your neg thoughts with pos ones and it does work but you really have to be consistent ,some days i am exc at this others dont know what day of the week it is im that anxious but as ive been told it takes a long time coming and a long time to change your brain pattern of thinking. dont examine just accept-anylyse-parilyse

[Dave]

For me it's a little different. I always used to be very laid back about things (still try to be where possible). However, during 2nd year at uni studying nursing I began to suffer from painful unexplained headaches which I'd never had before and it was making me worry. I searched on the internet for explanations and you can guess what it came up with. I went to the doctor's and eventually had a scan which came back normal but from this time onwards I started noticing every change in my body and panicked about things, I must've gone to the doctor's 4 times within a few months. I remember one morning I woke with a dead arm (because I'd lay on it) but I was convinced there was something badly wrong and I'd lost the use of it altogether. I continued to look up symptoms on the internet which wasn't helping things at all. Later on it started to affect me at uni and after qualifying, at work and I was getting stressed and panicky more easily. That's basically how the anxiety started for me. I'm managing to keep it under fairly good control at the moment and I've realised that certain things such as caffeine and alcohol make it worse.