I wasn't quite sure where to post this- I guess it's mostly health anxiety related but there's also general anxiety and some O.C.D mixed in. What a jumble. Hopefully this is in the right place!
So, I'm massively anxious and a bit Obsessive Compulsive as well. I worry about my health a lot. A couple of months ago I found this weird mole on me and convinced myself I had cancer, so I went to the doctor and it turned out... I didn't have cancer. But I became completely obsessed with it for a while, and would Google skin cancer endlessly, and one of the things I found out was that if you have any kind of abnormal mole, lots of doctors recommend you keep a photo diary of it and measure it once every month or two, so if it changes at all, a real warning sign for Cancer, you can catch it early. I happened to notice my brother has what would officially be called an 'abnormal' mole on the back of his neck, and while trying to reassure me about my one that I thought was cancerous, my Mum told me she had one as well.
So, for the last couple of months, I've been feeling like I really need to warn my Mum and my brother that they both need to photograph and measure their moles regularly. At the same time, I've been extremely nervous to do this. Not being as anxious as I am, neither of them are that concerned about getting cancer any time soon, and so if I tell them to be more vigilant I reckon they'd be a bit baffled and think I'm paranoid and over-reacting. I don't want to appear daft to them. Even if they don't think that, I still think they'll take some convincing to do it, and I'd have to argue with them and persuade them, and I'm terrible at those kind of things, I get all flustered and trip over my words so easily. The idea of having this conversation fills me with dread, honestly. Just the thought of it stresses me out.
At the same time, the thought of not having it makes me feel awful as well, because I feel like if the worst happened and they got cancer, I'd have done nothing to help. I'd have just sat by and let it happen, and that would make me an atrocious human being. Yet, when I talk about it with my counsellor, she doesn't seem to think it's that big a deal? Which really confuses me, since it so obviously is in my head. The fact that somebody else could be so relaxed about it makes me wonder if I'm just getting panicked over nothing, but I don't know. Every way I look at it, it seems like my moral responsibility. So, I was hoping somebody else might have some thoughts on this. I'm sorry this is so lengthy and rambling, but I just needed to get quite a bit off my chest!
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