Did a specific event in your life cause your Health Anxiety to start?

[BrightPhoenix]

Wow Phill, so, so sorry to hear. You're a strong person to be able to live on through all that.

So it seems quite common that challenging pregnancies/pregnancies with problems and loved ones passing suddenly from illness (or experiencing a scary illness ourselves earlier in our childhood)

Glad to see we're all not alone. Many condolences to those who have lost loved ones.

[Loggie05]

Sorry to hear about your mum. Having that kind of trauma at a young age must've been difficult.

Mines started 13 years ago. My son was around 8 weeks old when i started getting this weird pain in my chest and back. It was so severe it made me throw up. The pain would last for around 8hrs and always through the night. I went to see the Dr and they said it was indigestion/acid reflux and gave me stomach tablets. The pain kept happening like twice a month until it started happening every other night. I went back to Dr and they put me on a different stomach tablet. Fast forward another year of pain and i went back to the Drs and they said to buy some gaviscon. The pain started happening every night and got so bad i couldn't stand straight. I drove myself to hospital at 3am on a winters night in 2012 exactly 7 years from the first time i got the pains. I had an emergency scan that showed i had a very large gallstone and a small one that was lodged into my pancreas causing pancreatitis. I had emergency surgery but completely lost all faith in my Drs. That is the root cause now of my health anxiety.

[Scass]

Sorry to hear about your mum. Having that kind of trauma at a young age must've been difficult.



Mines started 13 years ago. My son was around 8 weeks old when i started getting this weird pain in my chest and back. It was so severe it made me throw up. The pain would last for around 8hrs and always through the night. I went to see the Dr and they said it was indigestion/acid reflux and gave me stomach tablets. The pain kept happening like twice a month until it started happening every other night. I went back to Dr and they put me on a different stomach tablet. Fast forward another year of pain and i went back to the Drs and they said to buy some gaviscon. The pain started happening every night and got so bad i couldn't stand straight. I drove myself to hospital at 3am on a winters night in 2012 exactly 7 years from the first time i got the pains. I had an emergency scan that showed i had a very large gallstone and a small one that was lodged into my pancreas causing pancreatitis. I had emergency surgery but completely lost all faith in my Drs. That is the root cause now of my health anxiety.

Wow that’s crazy! As soon as I read your first sentence I thought it was your gall bladder. I am really not surprised that you developed anxiety over it. But have you received help for it?


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[breezie]

Sorry to hear about your mum. Having that kind of trauma at a young age must've been difficult.

Mines started 13 years ago. My son was around 8 weeks old when i started getting this weird pain in my chest and back. It was so severe it made me throw up. The pain would last for around 8hrs and always through the night. I went to see the Dr and they said it was indigestion/acid reflux and gave me stomach tablets. The pain kept happening like twice a month until it started happening every other night. I went back to Dr and they put me on a different stomach tablet. Fast forward another year of pain and i went back to the Drs and they said to buy some gaviscon. The pain started happening every night and got so bad i couldn't stand straight. I drove myself to hospital at 3am on a winters night in 2012 exactly 7 years from the first time i got the pains. I had an emergency scan that showed i had a very large gallstone and a small one that was lodged into my pancreas causing pancreatitis. I had emergency surgery but completely lost all faith in my Drs. That is the root cause now of my health anxiety.

My HA started as a young child when a girl at my school got a brain tumor and it was a huge deal. I also was phobic of puking early on and that caused me a lot of anxiety. Still does actually.

But this particular situation you mentioned above also happened to me and it took countless doctors and minsdiagnosises over a 4 year period for them to finally say it was my gallbladder, which I had mentioned so many times and been told NO. By the time they figured it out I was extremely sick on a daily basis and in horrific pain. I had surgery within days of the diagnosis but I ended up with a stone stuck in my bile duct and hospitalized for a while after. Had someone just listened to me or taken me serious, I could have avoided 4 years of misery and getting to the point I was. My recovery was brutal and I still suffer at times. It made me lose all faith in doctors and I always fear I’m being misdiagnosed or ignored. Thankfully that wasn’t something that killed me but what if it’s somethibg that can at some point?

[Bittersweet05]

Mine was from my dad passing 6 years ago. I had to shovel the driveway and i got a bad upper respiratory infection when i couldn't breath. So over consumed with my breathing the next day my dad died. It was the combination of both that hit me. I've had HA and GAD as well ever since.

[glassgirlw]

When I was 11, my grandfather had an aneurysm in his chest. I was in the room with him when he passed. I was very close to him, he was like my dad. Over the next several years I developed a drug addiction. Started out mild...escalated to meth. Ended up having a whopping panic attack while coming down off a high and landed in the ER. Have had HA ever since. But on a brighter note, it also got me sober.

[Meriland30]

mine is kinda a odd story. Me and my sister were watching Selena when I was about 5 years old. Toward the end, I had this sudden wave of panic wash over me. I felt as though I was dizzy and about to pass out. I sat up, looked at my sister, and then proceeded to run up the stairs hyperventilating. i ran into my moms arms who had no idea what was going on so she took me to the nearest clinic. There, they diagnosed me with a panic disorder. It's been a crappy rollercoaster ride ever since

[Phill2]

mine is kinda a odd story. Me and my sister were watching Selena when I was about 5 years old. Toward the end, I had this sudden wave of panic wash over me. I felt as though I was dizzy and about to pass out. I sat up, looked at my sister, and then proceeded to run up the stairs hyperventilating. i ran into my moms arms who had no idea what was going on so she took me to the nearest clinic. There, they diagnosed me with a panic disorder. It's been a crappy rollercoaster ride ever since

I feel for you starting so young with such a crappy disorder.

[BrightPhoenix]

Loggie05 & breezie:

This is like the "worst case situation" for us health anxiety sufferers. We are always afraid that little things go undiagnosed and then bam, something that could've been treated easily becomes a big deal. We get doctors, ones we should *trust* telling us "oh it's just anxiety" and "oh it's not a big deal" and it frustrates us. It's always the "It's most likely anxiety, BUT WHAT IF?!" that gets us.

I'm dealing with a case of it myself right now and it's driving me crazy. I've already been to the GP/PCP early this month and talked to a neuro about it in passing last week but I guess what really gets our anxiety going is the *persistence* of the symptoms we suffer. The fact that it won't "go away" makes us doubt ourselves.

Good on both of you to be able to pull through your situations.

[Worrywart84]

This is an interesting question.

I have had anxiety since childhood, but at that time, it wasn’t necessarily “health” anxiety but just a series of worries about literally everything. Some of it was worrying about the death of loved ones, but maybe because I didn’t have Google or the mental capacity to interpret symptoms and have knowledge about what they could be, I wasn’t necessarily focused on health anxiety. I also thought doctors were magical geniuses who always knew what they were doing.

I think as I got older and saw some doctors who were clueless, got access to the internet, it just transformed to health anxiety.

But I never had a traumatic experience that some describe here. Which by the way, I am very sorry for what several of you have had to go through.

---------- Post added at 23:30 ---------- Previous post was at 23:22 ----------

Oh forgot to add:

I have been told by a therapist that health anxiety can stem from a desire to control things and not necessarily about “heath”. Similar to how an eating disorder is rooted more in control than it is about food.

So I can see that for myself is that my personality wishes to have everything fully controlled, no surprises, no uncertainty. I want to know I have a full life ahead of me and I can die in my 90s. I want someone to tell me for certain that will happen. Is that so much to ask?