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Thread: what triggered your health anxiety?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
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    what triggered your health anxiety?

    be interested to hear what other people feel were their triggers

    For me - always being anxious and pessimistic about future....

    Then, wife getting cancer at 43
    Reading and hearing stuff in the media....

    Triggers can come in the unlikeliest places. I've had a major lung cancer panic as somebody mentioned on Radio 3 for god sake that a composer had just died of lung cancer - at same age as me!

    I have come to realise you can't avoid triggers unless you live in a cave, not in our information obsessed society, so I guess it's about learning not to compulsively act on them

  2. #2
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    Re: what triggered your health anxiety?

    I had a muscle spasm in my chest+massive panic attack and thought it was a heart attack. I expected to wake up the next day and the pain and panic would be gone but it's stayed with me for 8 months now. ;(

    My health anxietys very heart focused, I don't worry about cancer usually. Sometimes I'll have a quick worry about it but it's usually gone by the next day but my heart worries never go. x
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  3. #3
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    Re: what triggered your health anxiety?

    same here guys i have major heart worries and Ur right when some one mentions someones had a heart attack it gets you thinking. also my son has been in hospital for 3 wks comes out this wk. but every time i go in there i get depressed i see ill people every where and i start to think is this what i have in store when i get older i cant seem to think any thing positive for the future except getting old and illness.i had cbt once he had me runing up and down the stairs listening to my heart beat. i also had to say im having a heart attack over and over again did not work though. also i think it spreads to other thinks in Ur life .

  4. #4
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    Re: what triggered your health anxiety?

    I started worrying about my heart after hearing stories in the media about SADS (Sudden Adult/Arrhythmia Death Syndrome) It kept coming into my mind on a daily basis and I kept saying to myself that I should get tested.

    I was home alone one day and got short of breath, then had ectopic beats followed by a full blown panic attack. 15 Months on and Countless trips to the hospital, 30+ ECG's, an Echo, 24hr holter, dozens of chest X-Rays, 3 Thyroid function test, numerous blood tests, and full neurological examination later... I'm still worrying I'm gonna just drop dead from a heart problem!

    Tried CBT twice. Helped but not enough!

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  5. #5
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    Re: what triggered your health anxiety?

    My daughter being ill a couple of years ago, she had a problem with her clavicle and when I took her to the docs we were told it could be cancer of the bones – untreatable. As it was it turned out to be a chronic infection that required very invasive treatment –operations, permanent lines so antibiotics could be administered intravenously over three months then a course of other intravenous drugs endless MRI’s, scans, x-ray’s etc. In all two years of treatment at Oxford mainly as an outpatient (We live in Northamptonshire), she was twelve when this kicked off.
    My psychologist also thinks my father’s illnesses played a part. Without going in to deep with family issues I was only ever called to my father when things had got bad. I had a call one night a midnight to him and when I got there was informed ‘he hasn’t done a number one for 24 hrs, turns out he had been having problems down there for months – prostrate obviously but why leave it

    Then four years ago same thing called out at some mad hour your dad can’t keep anything down been going on for weeks. Turns out in fact it started months and months back but no one told me.
    Diagnosis oesophagus cancer – he died two weeks later. He was turned eighty mind and an alcoholic who had smoked Park Drive since he was twelve so not a bad innings actually.

    So that was the combination that started my HA

  6. #6
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    Re: what triggered your health anxiety?

    Mine was from childhod trauma with illness and death so not a surprise reaction!
    Grandmother brought me up and when I was 4 she had a major stroke and I found her - I then was left with a paralysed person who had no speech for up to 4 hrs at a time and had to look after her - she then went into hospital after 6 months and I had started school and never saw her again as children not allowed to visit then she died.

    I knew even at 3 yrs old that she was a diabetic and should not eat sweets so was constantly watching her so knew she had an illness and the 4 yr old put illness and death together and thought they always followed one another.

    That was over 40 yrs ago and no amount of therapy has improved me but has made me understand why - i am about to start hypnotherapy.

  7. #7
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    Re: what triggered your health anxiety?

    ME,ME and only ME.
    Petra x

  8. #8
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    Re: what triggered your health anxiety?

    My parents have both had a very tough time oftime it and both have had mental illness. They met, married and had me - by this time my dad was abusive towards my mum, sexually, and money wise. My mum spent 5 days out of 7 in hospital for a year and i saw people doing things to her when i was a toddler that il never forget. My dad left when i was 4 after a very traumatic week, but thought he would tell me that he was leaving, before he tild my mum.. he then didnt recontact until was 17 and sent me a very traumatic email. I was also being bullied at school, sexually and emotionally, i saw a new gp around this time, for a minor issue, she commented that i had it tough , im also dyspraxic, and my sister is autistic, and it was like a can of worms was opened,?like trying to process years of hidden feelings and memories .. apparently it has all resulted in where i am today - that and just my personality in general.
    Last edited by daisycake; 23-11-10 at 22:12.
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  9. #9
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    Re: what triggered your health anxiety?

    My story is very similar to countrygirl. I was exposed to a lot of illness and death at an early age, so for me as well illness = death.

    My granddad died when I was 3, and as far as I could understand at the time, just disappeared and was never seen again. My dad developed MS when I was two; he seemed to have a rapid form of the relapsing-remitting one, and I remember seeing him collapse when I was four. He was dead by the time I was seven, and then my gran had a stroke at home when I was ten.

    This was also interspersed with various other elderly rellies dying, so I suppose this is one of the disadvantages of being the only child in an "old" family.

    Thinking about it, I've been anxious as long as I can remember. It does go away, but it's an underlying thing that is just part of me.

  10. #10
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    Aug 2010
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    Re: what triggered your health anxiety?

    I never thought i had a trigger that set my health anxiety off i always believed it was something i had developed over the years, i found this hard to deal with, but im having cbt at the moment and doing this i have realised that my health anxiety started around 6 years ago when i nearly died after a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. It started gradually with just a few problems here and there but has been pretty constant since i came of my meds for postnatal depression in january although i am getting better.
    Im a huge worrier too and i dont think this helps, i also have a very unnatural fixation on dying right to the point where i have the images in my head of my own funeral.
    I have to admit tho cbt is working wonders for my and my panic and anxiety have really reduced since i started 6 weeks ago. Ive swayed off track a few times especially when i developed gastritis after a nasty sickness bug.

    I believe i can beat this at least i hope i can!

    Sorry ive gone on a bit

    xxxxx
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