Old heart fears coming back to haunt me when a famous person dies young

[Ronan23]

I used to have a really bad fear of cardiac arrest caused by heart arrhythmia to the point that even though I'm just 28, I've probably had roughly 20 ECGs done in my life. Alongside those standard ECGs I had a stress (treadmill) ECG, a holter monitor, and an echocardiogram. Nothing abnormal was ever found. I think the fear stems from the lack of control over it all; if I was to have an arrhythmia and drop dead or die in my sleep, there'd be absolutely nothing I could do about it. Getting all those tests returned a semblance of control because I could at least find out if I had a disorder that could kill me suddenly.

The cardiac arrest fear comes to me in waves and it is triggered every time someone famous dies suddenly. Just this weekend, a seemingly fit and health 49 year-old football manager died after he suffered a cardiac arrest. It's so annoying because I've been having a 24 hour panic attack ever since I read the story. I am now convincing myself that because I've felt unwell lately with left shoulder pain and some dizziness, something is wrong with my heart. It's completely delusional but I'm in that impossible to escape from stage where I feel an inescapable urge to go to ER and get an ECG done.

With the information overload in the modern world, I feel it's impossible to avoid these trigger stories. It's easy to click an article when you see someone has died and then you only found out while reading it what the cause was. And your health anxiety goes into overdrive. I'm not sure what advice I'm looking for but I need to get this stuff off my chest to people who might understand. I'm getting tired of it all, it feels like health anxiety will never go away. In fact, it'll likely get worse as I age and become closer to death.

[Kitkat99]

I had this same fear after someone I went to school with died suddenly at age 19 last year. When the cause of death was revealed as SADS it made me panic because I didn’t even know that was a thing. It went away but came back recently after I read an article about an 18 year old boy who died in his sleep. You can actually see on my profile, where I posted about it freaking out.

What you have to remember is when people die suddenly it’s often due to an hereditary problem they didn’t know they had. So if you have been checked out and they found nothing it’s unlikely.

The thought of dying in your sleep suddenly before you get to live your life is scary especially since it’s something you really can’t control. However it’s an incredibly peaceful way to die and you wouldn’t even know. It’s better than being ill for months knowing you’re going to from something like cancer. You’ve been checked out and you’re fine so there isn’t really anything you can do. All you can do now is put it out your head, hope it never happens and accept uncertainty. Do you really wanna spend your whole life worrying about this?

[Steviewoodman]

I just wanted to say, I can't offer advice but I'm in an identical position over the exact same trigger. And I do mean identical. I had to check the username to make sure I didn't write it in my sleep!