Hello everybody. I've posted here a fair few times, most recently over worries about muscular/nerve diseases due to a twitching/ stiff finger, and prior to here I frequented anxiety zone when I worried.
Yesterday, I went to an amusement park. It's a fair ride (about an hour) from where I live and is a pretty big park I've visited several times in the past. All my memories of visiting there are incredibly happy ones, as are my memories of the past almost entirely. As I walk around the park, I spend half my concentration focusing on enjoying the ride and indulging my happy memories, whilst the other half is spent terrified and obsessing over my fear that i'll be incapable of moving in a few months due to some terrible disease.
Now of course, given the contrast between the two moods, of course I was pining for happier days.
Eventually, we reach an old, rather rickety roller coaster from the 50s- one of the older attractions in the park. As we queue up to ride, I notice a sign that reads something along the lines of riders needing to be in good health due to the force the ride applies to you. I distinctly remember reading that very sign every time I'd visited the park and thinking exactly what I did then- I truly hope I'm in good health, as I am terrified I am not. I've spent my whole life dying from numerous diseases I didn't have. At the age of 5 my Mum sat with me in the hospital as I had an ECG because I thought I had pains in my heart. So as much as I am still terrified at the prospects of my finger, I know I need to do something.
Therapy is the clear answer you'd think, and even in the past I've had therapy. In fact, I made good progress to the point where my therapist decided we no longer needed to meet. I had a good period of around a year before Health Anxiety reared itself again over Leukemia worries late last August. So whilst I appreciate therapy is of course a solution- what do you need to do for it to be permanent. If you're not willing to wait for months, even years on end, it is expensive- and in my case was only a temporary solution.
What the hell am I meant to do? It's so bad that even after the death of a close family member, my thoughts of course turn to the finger that started twitching. Clearly I am self obsessed, and this perhaps plays into why I have hypochondria, and perhaps if I had real problems to deal with these thoughts would never occur to me. At one time, whenever I came into some free time from school or whatever, like clockwork my worrying would begin shortly afterwards, but that hasn't been true for a few years now, I'll worry regardless of whether I have free time or not.
Should I pursue further therapy, even if it only temporarily worked last time. Do I even have any further options? I've spent approximately 75% of my life worrying about dying of some terrible disease and I am truly sick of it, but at this point is it just too ingrained in my personality?
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