Hi all. Figured I'd start a discussion with everyone that isn't us worrying about our symptoms (don't worry, I have another post queued up in the future for that).
So for some of us, it may be that we just suddenly started having it, but did any of you start getting Health Anxiety because of a specific event in your life or something happening to "trigger" it?
To ensure that we don't freak each other out, I'll be as generic as possible for me.
Up until I hit 21 I was generally okay. I was a bit of a worrywart but I generally was able to deal with it fine. However, my mother, who was still very young (in her 50s), fell ill with something. Apparently it was something that she got decades ago but decided to rear its ugly head all of a sudden. Our family, not familiar with the way things works, and also without a form of stable insurance (thanks America!) chalked it up to my mother just overworking herself - none of us knew better.
A month later, she ends up going to the doctor because she got worse, and then we learned what it was. Several months of struggle to take care of her and eventually she passes.
During this period I suffer my first panic attack, while also worrying about possibly having all sorts of ailments, but all related to being stressed 100% of the time about my mom's health and my own. My panic attack was so bad I rushed myself to the ER and that was when I was referred to a therapist.
After my mom passed I've been in a constant state of "Could we have done something? Could we have known? How could we have known?" sorta deal - what if we had it checked out earlier?
Ever since then, I had an unreasonable fear of getting some sort of undiagnosed ailment and suffering from it. I was a thorn in my side to my doctors repeatedly and have gone through the whole gamut of worrying about if I had this ailment, or that ailment, or this disease, or that disease. I would find myself constantly going to the doctor and spending entire months to two months worrying about all sorts of conditions. If my doctor told me "Hey, this looks kind of funny, eh, not a big deal" I would end up internalizing it and remembering it for *weeks*.
My current doctor understands my health anxiety and sometimes has to remind me that my HA is making me worry too much, but she does try to accommodate me if I have enough of a concern about something.
What about the rest of you? Did something happen that may have "turned on" the health anxiety switch?
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Originally Posted by jojo2316
