Hello fellow anxiety sufferers

[AnxietyGuy38]

Hello fellow anxiety sufferers,

Iam a 38 year old man with severe health anxiety for about 4 years now.

It all started when we got our first child. A lovely son.

Our son had a medical emergency when he was just 4 weeks old. He doesnt woke up and i got him in my hands and we thought the worst. I got a panick attack en could not stand on my legs anymore. Thank god everything turned out just fine. In the hospital he opened hes eyes. The docters couldnt find anything wrong. It was the scariest moment in my entire life.

Since then i got severy health anxiety.

In the last 3 or 4 years i thought i got all the cancers, cardiac failure and muscle diseases like ALS etc etc.
Always googling my symptoms and its always cancer or heart failure or any other terminal disease.

Iam also very affraid of hospitals and doctors to perform tests because of the results. When i did a simple ECG my heart pumped almost out of my chest because of fear.

Our mind is a crazy thing isnt it? lol

Anyways i hope to get relief and help other people with anxiety to calm them down.

 

[Phillies Phan]

Welcome! Wow, thank goodness it worked out well with your son. Things like that can sure trigger HA. For me it was a cancer diagnosis for my mon when I was 35. Some turbulent teen age years in a new town, away from the friends I had, all graduating HS, with me doing so 3,000 miles away with classmates who all knew each other, but I was the new guy and ignored. That likely set the stage for my anxiety and it all broke loose later on.

Great group here. Feel free to share and participate.

 

[Jonathan123]

Hello fellow anxiety sufferers,

Iam a 38 year old man with severe health anxiety for about 4 years now.

It all started when we got our first child. A lovely son.

Our son had a medical emergency when he was just 4 weeks old. He doesnt woke up and i got him in my hands and we thought the worst. I got a panick attack en could not stand on my legs anymore. Thank god everything turned out just fine. In the hospital he opened hes eyes. The docters couldnt find anything wrong. It was the scariest moment in my entire life.

Since then i got severy health anxiety.

In the last 3 or 4 years i thought i got all the cancers, cardiac failure and muscle diseases like ALS etc etc.
Always googling my symptoms and its always cancer or heart failure or any other terminal disease.

Iam also very affraid of hospitals and doctors to perform tests because of the results. When i did a simple ECG my heart pumped almost out of my chest because of fear.

Our mind is a crazy thing isnt it? lol

Anyways i hope to get relief and help other people with anxiety to calm them down.

There is no doubt about what triggered your anxiety. It would shock anyone into an anxiety episode. But normally, once the danger is past, we return to normal. But not so with anxiety sufferers. They are afraid of the symptoms of fear and so avoid anything that could trigger another episode.
I have likened this to a flock of sheep being chased by a sheep dog. They run all over the place in panic, but once the dog is gone they return to munching grass as if nothing has happened. They get that rush of adrenaline in response to danger, but settle down after the danger is past. Fear breads fear. We panic because we are panicking! Sound silly but it's true. We add fear to fear and so enter the old anxiety spiral. Fear/anxiety/fear. STOP GOOGLING! You will do yourself more harm mentally that way. Google will invariably come up with the worst possible scenario. We are not doctors so can't diagnose ourselves, although God knows we try!! Acceptance is still the answer. Don't respond in fear to any symptoms. Try and accept it all without adding fear to fear. Not easy but it can be done. Be an observer, watch it all happening as if it's a movie. It's not you but anxiety that is talking.

 

[Jonathan123]

I liked the comparison with the sheep, it's a helpful way to visualize how our minds react. That "fear of fear" cycle hits home, and I can see how it keeps everything going even when the original threat is long gone. It's tough not to spiral, especially with how easy it is to get worst-case-scenario results online. The part you mentioned about being an observer instead of getting caught up in the panic makes sense, even if it's not easy in the moment.

No, it's not by any means easy. Nothing is easy in anxiety recovery. Can you see it as a challenge? In my experience it does seem that we have to suffer to become whole again. Carl Jung called this the process of 'individuation', the coming together of all the scatters parts of ourselves. When people say in a derogatory way 'pull youiseslf together' they do have a point although they may not kmow it.
Our minds are all over the place. We develp grasshopper minds that settle nowhere. One of the Buddhist explanations of the mind is that it is like a mad monkey, swinging from tree to tree, sampling the fruits and abiding nowhere. Falling into the panic mode is easy, coming out is not. But it can be done if we stop adding fear to fear.

 

[shay1988]

I feel this so much! My health anxiety had gotten way worse the last 3 years. I've also thought I had every cancer and every muscle disease and heart problems as well as many more things. But every test I have had so far is all good. Except one which said I have fatty liver. I'm not over weight or anything so it was Definitely a shock! That itself had my anxiety going crazy. But I'm trying to pull myself together. It's very hard but we can beat this! Hope u are doing well!

 

[AnxietyGuy38]

Thanks for the reply's guys and girls!

Yeah, googling your symptoms is the worst thing you can do for your health. I still do it though because i still hope it can calm me down but its always cancer or any other disease. Google is hell on earth for some of us. Stay away from Google please!