What is the root your health anxiety

[Anxious_Introvert]

My health anxiety began after the death my brother. I was wondering how everyone else developed their HA?

[ell19]

mine started for such a stupid reason. one day i felt a pain in my back i looked on the internet and it says it could be a lungs cancer. since that day my life completely changed and i never stop worrying about that cancer.

[Sphincterclench]

Im not certain exactly WHAT the trigger was but I clearly remember when it stopped being an annoyance and became a significant impact on my thoughts and behaviors and that was after my last visit to my parents/grandparents

I had hard palpitations that triggered a panic attack that seemed to last for days and I had to keep it together and drive 12 hrs home.

needless to say it was top 5 worst things I have ever had to endure and it has persisted for about 2 1/2 years now.

BUT....

I am on medications now, and about to start CBT so although I have good days and bad, today being not so good, I think i have more good than bad.

[Nzxt27]

Idk what started mine I just remembered googling stuff then j started to get chest pains. And woke up with a panic attack one day and ended up in the ER for chest pains and told I had GAD. After that it's been downhill really. Going from one thing to another and trying to listen to family, friends, and DR that say I'm fine.

[Mojo61]

Menopause started mine off. Apparently it is very common to develop HA during the menopause - who knew?

[Lam123]

I don't think one particular event started my HA, but two things that come to mind, one was when I thought I was having a heart attack, I actually had trapped gas, which mimics a heart attack. The other is, I started taking a medication for Crohn's disease (I have had crohns for over 20 years), and it has a small chance of increasing risk of certain cancers (if normal risk is 1%, my risk is 2%, so not a big jump), that causes major cancer HA. So I pretty much go back and forth with heart and cancer HA, but for the last 2 years, it's mainly cancer HA. Also, becoming a mom, has made me worried I won't see my son grow up.

[Leah88]

I didn't have a particular environmental trigger but I inherited OCD and health Anxiety from my dad. He has been "dying" from a non existent brain tumour since he was 40. He's now almost 70.

[unsure_about_this]

mine media, Internet and my Dad being sent his poop testing kit for bowel cancer 5 years ago

Also getting letters in the post going for this test and that because of my NF, also now I got a letter saying I need my bloods redone

[Drisque]

My HA started when I was little, maybe 6 or 7. My family didn't have much money, and my mother often supplemented doctor visits with the information in a medical book she "borrowed" from the library. Not having the proper training caused her to overreact, which would later resonate with me, and manifest into a full blown anxiety cocktail....that is GAD, HA, OCD and now PTSD, but that's another story entirely. My HA wasn't overbearing when I was younger, like it is now. I have the Google machine and my lackof self-control to thank for that.

[GlassPinata]

Mine also started when I was very young. I believe it was due to:

1. close family members suffering from health anxiety/ possible genetic predisposition

and 2. being a precocious reader. There were medical texts kept in our home, and I read them, and subsequently developed fears about and psychosomatic symptoms of the diseases they described. My family was also partial to medical novels- I recall reading Robin Cook's "Fever" as a child (it was about a little girl just my age who had leukemia), as well as some book called "Children's Hospital", which described all sorts of diseases for me to worry about (for awhile, I was sure I had Cystic Fibrosis).

So, that's where I think my anxiety started. There were never any deaths or serious illnesses in my family, and still haven't been. For a bunch of people obsessed with diseases, we've been remarkably healthy, actually.