Does being sick make your anxiety flare? (not health anxiety)

[Tigerfloat]

I haven't been on here in a while as I've started therapy a few months ago and while things are by no means perfect and I still overthink stuff and question myself costantly, I've reached a point where I can mostly manage daily life. However, I was sick with a stomach bug these past few days and my anxiety spiked, I started overthinking again stuff I had 'archived' and doubled down on current worries.
I'm putting it down to the increased loss of control sickness entails and the inability to think straight due to fever, headhache and nausea.
As things are slowly getting back to normal, I can rationalize things much better now.

Has this ever happened to you?

 

[Cuchculan]

I'm like a big baby when sick. Not a good patient at all. My anxiety would spike. Only with various forms of illnesses. One was always throwing up. Even though I had not done that in over 20 years. This year I was very sick a number of times. Throwing up happened a lot. I handled better than I thought I would. Had no choice really. But I hated every moment of it.

 

[Tigerfloat]

I'm also emetophobic so having a stomach bug was not easy. I deal with other stuff much better, but this really knocked me down.

 

[Georgiia]

Yes! I had a bug and a nasty eater infection over 3 weeks ago and I’m still a mess

 

[E.B]

It causes me health anxiety. I used to think i was alone with dealing with health anxiety during a cold/flu.

 

[bin_tenn]

I'm also emetophobic so having a stomach bug was not easy. I deal with other stuff much better, but this really knocked me down.

Emetophobic here as well. My cousin is, too. A couple people in my household had a stomach bug almost a month ago. I ended up with it as well. However, my fiancee had some medication for the nausea (Zofran) from her doc. Once she felt better and I started feeling sick, I took a few Zofran over the course of about 24hrs and luckily avoided any vomiting. Still had the fever, chills, body aches and feeling like crap for 24hrs though.

 

[Hurt&Hopeful]

Definitely makes my anxiety spike! Especially a stomach bug. Your whole body chemistry is off when you have that, so it's normal. I also can't keep meds down, so that plays a part. It usually gets better for me after a week or so.

So good to hear that you are doing better in general with therapy! Don't let this little bump in the road discourage you - it will get better.