Hypochondria or something else...?

I have these episodes where I do excessive research on a mental illness and think I have one even if I have little to no symptoms. My last episode was a trip: I started taking vitamins due to the constant fatigue caused by my Depression and it made me very hyperactive but I still believed I was Manic and had bipolar disorder. I had anxiety about that then my friend told me I may have hypochondria and thought I had that for a few hours then I thought it was OCD. That night, I had extreme anxiety to the point where I felt like I was loosing control and started crying and seriously couldn't sleep at all. On top of that it was hard to eat and I had numerous bathroom trips due to anxiety-induced diarrhea, embarrassingly enough. I spoke to my psychologist about this but all he narrowed it down to was "anxiety" and that's it, never giving me a specific diagnosis but also never clarifying that I had none. Help?

 

Hello, @StruGGl3DaILY welcome to the forum. It's lovely to have you here, thanks for sharing how you feel with us.

You say that you have little or no symptoms of mental illness yet you see a therapist. I take it you have been diagnosed with depression? It seems to me by the things that you have mentioned in your post that you may well be suffering from a mental illness.

You seem to have all the classic symptoms. Anxiety being one of them. Anxiety can cause so many side effects it's unreal and can have us thinking all sorts of things are wrong with us when actually there is not.

If ever you feel like there is something wrong with you outside of a mental illness, it may be best to give it a little while. A few days at least, depending on the severity of the problem. It may be a symptom of your anxiety/depression and it may not be. If you wait a few days and see if 'it goes away naturally' and if the symptom does not go away then of course go and see your doctor.

Don't feel bad about yourself. If you have a mental illness then you are not alone. It doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you a good person because it means that you care.

 

I've been diagnosed with depression and social anxiety disorder. I know anxiety can be very severe but having another disorder attached makes it more legit for me, sadly. Unless I've been told it's anything specific like another disorder, I begin to hate myself for thinking I'm overreacting. I find comfort in labels because they give me answers, which is why I stress over them.

The symptoms have sort of gone away... or "lessened" I should say. Yesterday I ended up feeling very depressed because of the whole fiasco the previous day of not being able to find my diagnosis. I still ended up doing tons of research again but it didn't feel as compulsive as it was before, although I still felt anxiety it wasn't as severe as it was the other night.