What (do you believe) triggered your HA?

[helenhoo]

Personally it's a few things.

1) I had a Cervical cancer scare
2) someone close to me had a skin cancer removed
3) a close group of friends moved on - social life deteriorated and I had more time to worry.
4) I met my ideal man; I was happy. Now what else could I worry about?

As of last year. I'm hoping once I start therapy I can control my thought process a lot more. I'm looking at finding a hobby/going gym so I don't have time to worry. As discussed previously it's that boredom that ends some of us googling things others wouldn't.

[countrygirl]

For me severe trauma in early childhood.

My grandmother who was in effect my mother had a massive stroke when I was 4 yrs old and I found her. She was bedbound with paralysis and could not speak. I was then left with her for 3 hrs in the morning and 3 hrs in the afternoon to look after her on my own! She then went into hospital after a year and died. This was in the early 1960's when medical care was totally different to now.

So my 4yr old self came to the conclusion that if you are ill you die.

I had been told before her stroke that she could not eat my sweets ( type 2 diabetic) so I knew she was already ill.

If you add this knowledge to what then happened - bingo health anxiety in a child.

Plus no one ever explained or talked about any of it which might have helped hugely.

[helenhoo]

Nobody should ever experience that especially so young. Sorry thy happened.

How do you cope with your HA as an adult?

[countrygirl]

I am now in my 50's and compared to how I was in my 20 and 30's I am much better. A big part of my problem is that I was born with health problems. I am now partially sighted and have bad spinal problems so have had a lifetime of quite bad symptoms one way or another and this just made my ha worse. With age and experience I know what symptoms are due to my existing health problems but if I get a new symptom then ha kicks in big time.
I still need the reassurance of medical tests before I can totally believe something. I recently had shoulder problem that was probably bursitis but having had my mother die of secondary bone cancer that first manifested itself in her shoulder I could not accept the diagnosis without a scan, then I felt really bad about needing this reassurance.
Thankfully I now have a GP I can be honest with and can tell him what I fear and he does his best to explain why he thinks I am wrong. Mind you sometimes he can be too good and once I went to him with a hard lump at front/below knee and he told me what it was and said you can stop worrying about bone cancer and I genuinely had not thought of this
My fear of anything medical gets worse as I get older so my white coat syndrome is worst they have seen in a medical setting!

[Mojo61]

Last January I got crippling stomach pains just out of the blue. I've never been ill in my entire life except for the odd cold or headache. I made the fatal mistake of consulting Professor Google about my symptoms and the first hit that came up was OVARIAN CANCER. A cold rush of adrenaline coursed through my body and that was the start of my health anxiety - as simple as that.

[GingerFish]

I've had OCD from a child and I believe my OCD started my HA. Even as a child I was very aware of my health and would panic thinking I had this, that and the next thing even from the age of about 6 or 7 and I would constantly check myself to make sure I was ok and analyze every symptom. My papa was always ill as well and my gran was a worry wart with her health and that rubbed off on me too but I think my OCD was the first and biggest trigger.

[unsure_about_this]

My Dad because he reach the age of testing for bowel cancer (so he had a kit sent out to him) my parents were foolished leaving the letter which came with it laying about the house. I had abdominal pain from 2012, had a number of scans, times at the GPs, camera up the backside (which was not nice)

Articles in the paper (even though it good to make people aware of symptoms to look out for which could be a sign of the big c word)

My Granddad is diabetic, had two heart attacks (even not blood relative) it is a scare

I have been better this year, but still worried about times about my health, my checking myself is at normal rate.

[Paul84]

I've always been quite an anxious/apprehensive person. Shy as anything when I was younger, always unwilling to go out etc...

My health anxiety really kicked off about 8 years ago shortly after my step-dad was seriosuly poorly; when I found a lump 'down there' and pretty much collapsed in a heap in the shower. Convinced it was C, my mind wouldn't let any other thought in. All was fine after a Doctors visit. I've had a few flare ups since then.

[mersault22]

Always been worried about my health, ever since I was a kid.

grew up in a house with my grandparents, mom, and brother. Never knew my dad. Mom was always fighting with my grandparents, which I eventually figured out was due to her being a drug addict and my gps getting angry when she would use.

She died of a drug overdose when I was 17.

A few years ago I watched my grandmother die of cancer. And shortly thereafter, my brother admitted that he had a drug and alcohol addiction. He went to rehab, but relapsed around xmas time. He is better for now but always waiting for that to change.

Around the same tie as my brother was relapsing, I was hospitalized with a major infection from a minor surgery. Haven't really been the same since.

[lilitu]

It's been a series of things.

First, I grew up with an abusive hypochondriac mother who tried to convince everyone I was allergic to basically all food on earth (I have no food allergies). Probably didn't help. But I didn't have HA in childhood. I think this just set the stage.

In my teens, I developed a type of large ovarian cyst called a cystadenoma, which is very rare, and benign. But, on an ultrasound, sometimes it looks like cancer. That's what it looked like with mine. So, while I waited for the CA125 test, I spent some time thinking I was dying of end stage ovarian cancer at the age of 15. And even though it wasn't cancer, I still wound up losing the entire ovary.

A couple years later, I was drugged and assaulted by a sociopath who called me a few months later to tell me he had chlamydia. But he didn't have all his tests back yet, since HIV takes months to show up accurately and he slept around a lot, to put it mildly. So after that, even though I tested negative for everything, I developed STD fears and thought I was dying of HIV for years despite immaculate condom practices and regular testing.

Then a few years later my father died in a horrific and gruesome fashion less than a month after diagnosis, from oesophageal cancer. I was his only living relative, so I was totally alone, in my mid-20's, watching my only remaining family member die. I'm basically a total adult orphan now. I have no remaining family of any kind, either because they're dead or because they're abusive and I've had to cut contact. I don't know anyone else as young as me who has lived through this. I know they're out there, but in my own life, I'm alone.

I think, for me, the development of HA wasn't just about my experiences with health, whether they were scares or actual illnesses. I think my HA is more about the fact that all of these events were accompanied by severe trauma.

My mother wasn't just a somewhat edgy new mom. She was delusional and abusive, and her projected hypochondria was a way of trying to control me.

I didn't just have an ovarian cyst. I spent a while thinking -- with understandable reason! -- that I was going to die before I was even old enough to drive, and even though I didn't, I still ultimately lost a body organ.

I didn't just have an STD scare. I had it after being attacked and assaulted.

I didn't just lose my father. I lost my only remaining family, with no support, and very suddenly.

So I'm afraid of a lot of things -- men, being happy for 30 seconds, investing my feelings in anyone. But there's nothing I'm more scared of than the inside of my own body, which feels more like an evil villain plotting my execution than something I live inside of and rely on to continue living.

A pretty big chunk of my most major traumas have, in some way, had some connection to physical illness (or at least the potential for it). So I think of illnesses as abusers and attackers that come from nowhere and destroy everything that makes me feel safe or happy.

And tellingly, my HA -- and my anxiety more broadly -- is at its worst when my life is at its best. I don't believe I'm allowed to ever be happy. I'm just cosmically mandated to be as miserable as possible at all times, or else the universe will put me back in my place. So the more happy I allow myself to be, the more likely it is that I or someone I love will imminently be killed by one of these biological attackers.

Weirdly enough, I sort of subconsciously believe my misery is the only thing keeping me alive. It's hard to let go of my anxiety, because some part of me believes that letting go of it and being happy is exactly what will trigger something to kill me or someone I love.

I don't literally believe that, but some part of my lizard brain does. Why? Because that's what keeps happening to me. Life seems to be looking up for once, I start relaxing and thinking maybe I can be happy now, and then something horrible happens and destroys everything.

The safest thing to do seems to be as unhappy and isolated as possible. And I don't totally give in to that. But every time I push against it, I brace myself to be killed for it. Because I still haven't entirely been convinced that it's not true. Almost 27 years of experience tells me it is.