Distinguishing Psychological Pain or Symptoms From Real Symptoms

[B3521]

How do you do it? All of the "pain" I've had over the last year usually went away or diminished when I stopped obsessing about it and moved onto something else. I'm now convinced I have bowel cancer with twinges and niggles over my abdomen but I've had so much false alarms I never know what is real and what isn't. How can you tell?

[Halle0587]

I started occupying my mind. I was much better when I had other things going on to distract me. The holidays stir up my anxiety and I start a spiral at the beginning of the year so it takes me a few months to get into the swing of occupying my mind. Keep yourself busy. Do things you like and put your phone down so you're not tempted to google every ache and pain. Test yourself. See if you can go a whole day, week, then two weeks, and longer without googling. Fill up that space. Adult coloring books help with anxiety. Find a genre you like to read and start reading. Stay away from news, that's depressing and it's hard with pharmaceutical commercials to not scare yourself. You're stronger than this, we all are, we just need support and techniques. ❤️