Health Anxiety - Share your story

Uggh, health anxiety. It's a source of major anxiety & panic for a lot of us among our other triggers/issues.

Trusting doctors & medical professionals is the challenge with this problem, it can be nearly impossible to believe them when they tell us we are fine in the face of the pains, feelings, sickness, and malaise we are experiencing.

We battle the overanalysis, fixation, and preoccupation with ourselves daily. In another sense it might sound like we are self-absorbed or narcissists by the amount of self-focused time we spend just dwelling and ruminating incessantly... like health vanity or an excessive belief in our malaise/ill health...wow sounds weird just typing that.

There is definitely a very interesting psychoanalysis or predisposition for this specific form of anxiety, I need to read some more on predisposing factors and triggers.

For me, my anxiety/panic did not originate as health anxiety. I actually started with some social/performance anxiety after a series of difficult events & major family/life changes as a teen. I was told that I most likely suffered from PTSD before the onset of my issues in high school, which I find interesting considering the timeline. The anxiety/panic definitely came from unresolved fear and living in a heightened/hyper vigilant state for some time. However, the actual health anxiety didn't start for years later and disappeared for 7-8 years before returning briefly for a summer and went away for years again only to resurface in a mild form a few years ago and kick in more recently. I would have years where I didn't see a doctor beyond basic checkups or no ER visits at all even with health insurance, etc.

I have verifiable health issues like blood pressure, back/nerve pain, muscular/tendon issues from injury...and I don't fixate on these things. They are established and concrete issues, however, its all the unknown and unsubstantiated feelings, pains, aches, or whatever that make my health anxiety kick in...I find that interesting. Seeing my blood pressure reading as elevated won't send me in a tizzy, but feeling flutters or perceived palps or pvcs will make me go nuts & run to seek medical assistance.

How does your health anxiety manifest? And, when did it first present itself???? It's great to find community with others who understand and possibly share similar experiences.


-MindFULL

Hi MindFULL - i had some anxiety as a kid, sometimes would get nervous talking in class, that sort of thing. had major anxiety after a major car accident. it was a very traumatic , life threatening event . i was diagnosed with ptsd then, had the hypervigilance, etc. but dont remember having what i would call a panic attack.

but, for example, when i went into labor with my daughter, i had to be almost forced to go to the hospital. i put it off until the last minute and could barely make myself go thru the doors. i was so anxious i refused to lay down in the bed until they made me - i think that was because my first experience with being in the hospital after the accident was so bad. the feeling of loss of control.

funny, because before the accident i was interested in medicine. i even worked as a candy striper and considered becoming a nurse or a doctor.

then, after a while, no more anxiety - until it struck in the form of a panic attack on the way to work one morning years later. i guess part of the health anxiety now is that i think the worst case scenario about all symptoms. i am guilty of googling. maybe in a way this, too, is a form of hypervigilance really. if we can catch any sign of "danger " then we can save ourselves or exert some control over it.