Do you remember the moment your health anxiety started?

[Kiko22]

Same. It all started when my grandpa died of a very aggressive form of lung cancer that devoured him in months. He was like the only member of my family who understood me completely. He was so strong and whatching him die consumed by that horrible disease shocked me to the core. My HA started righ after his funeral.

[Pamplemousse]

Yep - aged about nine or ten, when play-fighting with my cousin and he said "careful, if you break your neck you'll die".

Then I developed a fear of Black Widow spiders and would search my bed every night for them, followed by the outbreak of Lassa Fever in Africa.

Also anxiety developed from not fully understanding an incident in Malta in the 1970s when the-then premier Dom Mintoff wanted all the British troops out of Malta; I thought he wanted all the British out of Britain and got very upset.

And I've been stuffed by all that ever since. I imagine that I will die with all these issues, I believe it is so much part of my psyche that I cannot ever be 'cured'. Which in turn leads me to think "what a wasted life".

[glassgirlw]

There’s differing opinions on when mine started. The few therapists I’ve been to seem to think it started when I was in my grandpas hospital room and watched him pass away from an aneurysm following pneumonia. I was around 10 I think.

I don’t agree. It was definitely a traumatic thing to witness especially for someone so young. But I don’t remember having anxiety after that, it was more sadness/depression. My first true panic attack didn’t hit until I was about 18. I was a heavy, heavy drug user. Nasty drugs. Mainly methamphetamine. And I remember I’d been up for about 2-3 days, ended up coming down and crashing for about 15 hours straight. I woke up with racing, pounding heart, chest pain, the whole 9 yards. Went to the ER and they ran all sorts of tests, determined I was fine and it was a panic attack. That was the last time I touched drugs. The subsequent withdrawals was a whole different fight, and left me as a pharmaphobe. That’s stuck with me to today (I’m 40). But the panic attacks went away until about 6-7 years ago when I had a vertigo attack (diagnosed at ER with BPPV). That too went away, but my HA has been going strong ever since. Most of mine is tied to heart (chest sensations and Heart rates), but that’s been better lately. Now whenever I get sick (cold, flu, etc) it seems to send me into a spiral and I’m back to fighting my way out.

I miss the days when I didn’t worry over every little twinge!!