What are you doing to address the issue of your hypochondria?

[Fraser]

I've had this plaguing my life on and off for about two decades and I'm sick of it. It's time for a change for me. The problem has been that when I'm in the throes of an episode, it feels like the issue at hand (dying of cancer) takes priority over actually getting my anxiety under control, and when I'm not in the throes of an attack, my fears seem absurd so it's easy to not do anything about it... until the next attack.

Now, more than ever, I am trying to pivot from "this is a symptom of [insert deadly disease here]" to "my reaction to this symptom is the result of my hypochondria." To do this I am keeping a daily journal where I assess my fears in the abstract, not allowing myself to google symptoms no matter how badly I want to, stopping myself from seeking reassurance from loved ones, trying to limit my body scanning as much as possible, and, in place of the aforementioned symptoms google, reading about ways of addressing hypochondria in place of medical journals about cancer statistics and then doing math to determine the probability that I have any given cancer based on my age, gender and race.

To that end, I'd love to hear what resources you are using to combat your own hypochondria and to share anything that I come across as well.
Aaaaaand I posted this in the wrong forum. Oh god, I must have dementia!

 

[EMJ]

I hear you loud and clear....Health anxiety is a plague....I have struggled since I was 20 (now 65)....and I have been in and out of that anxiety zone for all those years ....some good years...many actually, and then some trigger sends me down that road and I fall into the obvious hole. I have my logical side that tells me all the CBT rules (and I know them well since I am a licensed therapist) and then I have my health anxiety side of the brain that lives in fear and worry with my OCD traits, my ruminating thoughts and my checking checking checking...my pulse...my BP...my oxygen level...my blood sugar....over and over and over again. My Dr.'s are great ...they see me coming and they are so reassuring.....but it always comes down to ANXIETY......damn...damn...damn anxiety. I am in the middle of a bad place now with heart concerns.....skipped beats....palpitations...I have been a runner for 50 years....I have low resting rate of 50 or below....now all of a sudden I am worried about that and about my skipped beats ...of which I feel every one (had those for years and not too concerned until a month ago) ....so I am checking pulse...checking and FEELING the skipped beats and then my back muscles tighten and I skip more beats.....****. So I made an appointment with my therapist and hopefully he can help me get back on the track and back on the right road.

 

[The Worried Well]

Fraser, I could have written your post :-( especially checking medical journals for stats (age-specific incidence, epidemiology, well, you know). Like yourself, when I'm in an episode, I'm sadly laser-focused on the checking, etc. When I'm finally in a calm period, I want nothing to do with thoughts of health issues and my anxiety. I just want to enjoy the peace.

I've been through (some) CBT and several anti-depressants over the years. I sent an email to my GP yesterday suggesting he prescribe amitriptyline, which I've read good things about. I haven't found the magic bullet yet. Depending on what I'm stressing about at the time, I may talk with or see my doctor, who like EMJ sees me coming, and can frequently calm me down. But if I fear seeing him will maybe end up with a specialist referral, I just wont talk with him so I suffer alone, needing to get out of it on my own which of course is a nightmare. I can't deal with the wait for a referral appointment, and the fear of being told to have any testing.

I'm (hopefully) coming out of an episode where I could see an ENT but I've been suffering in silence. Like almost always, I know it's nothing serious, but the anxiety runs rampant.

 

[EMJ]

I woke this morning with overwhelming hopelessness.... I am so weary dealing with this condition..... my heart is skipping beats and I am falling falling falling again into that hole .... I want to try medication again but I am scared to death of medications and the possible negative effects .... I. Just. Want. To. Feel. Well. Please oh please God let me feel well .....

 

[Bobnnat]

EMJ - I’m actually Worried Well, my at the office ID. Perhaps you and I can gain strength from each other. As I noted, I believe the ultimate answer for me is the right med. Like yourself, I frequently gave up due to side effects, as well as having the patience to titer down and start a different one.

I‘m speaking with my GP tomorrow. Are you willing to also have that conversation with yours? We can then compare our progress on finding the right Rx for us.

 

[EMJ]

Yes yes yes .... I am willing to talk with Dr. I in fact called this morning and talked about meds .... I am terrified but so need to do something more. I will let you know my progress! Thanks so much for your response!

 

[Bobnnat]

It’s a deal

Yes yes yes .... I am willing to talk with Dr. I in fact called this morning and talked about meds .... I am terrified but so need to do something more. I will let you know my progress! Thanks so much for your response!

it’s a deal

 

[suzzeeb]

EMJ and Bobnnat, have either of you started any medications yet? Contemplating trying something myself and wondering how you two are doing if you have started anything.

 

[EMJ]

Hi suzzeeb, well I started taking a very small dose of Effexor but my symptoms quickly became worse.... so I stopped taking .... I can’t manage to understand the thing about “symptoms getting worse before they get better” scenario.... my anxiety has been causing many physical symptoms ( of course everyone on this forum understands the physical symptoms being our major trigger for a high anxiety episode). I have been having lots of heart palpitations and skipped beats so my Cardiologist put me on a very low dose Beta Blocker to see if it can help calm my heart .... I have been taking that for a week .... time will tell

 

[suzzeeb]

Sorry to hear about your symptoms getting worse. That's how I've been on everything I have tried too. I can usually deal with the starting dose for a while,but my doctor is always in such a hurry to raise my dose that I wind up quitting because it's too much. I talked to a psychologist once who told me that people with anxiety are so worried about any uncomfortable feelings with antidepressants that they don't stay on them long enough to start feeling better. I guess that might be true, but it's hard when someone deals with anxiety daily and then to have it go up even more is sometimes just too hard. From what I understand, once someone starts an SSRI, the brain gets flooded with serotonin which causes all the symptoms, and then after a while it forms new connections that can use the serotonin more efficiently - not sure if I got that 100% correct but something like that.

I also have the skipped beats (PVCs), especially when my anxiety is bad. They aren't as bad as before I had an ablation to get rid of some of them, but I still get them, and I know how distressing that is. I tried beta blockers before I had my ablation but they slowed my heart rate down too low and didn't help mine at all. I hope they help yours. My husband will go into bigeminy (every other beat is a PVC or skipped beat) and as soon as he takes a beta blocker it stops. I wish mine would have done that. I had thousands of them every day and that's what started my anxiety spiral, which I am still fighting (almost a year now).

Anyway, I hope things start getting better for you. I'm constantly hoping to talk to someone who has gotten relief from SSRIs or anything for that matter. I'm always looking for hope out there but never seem to find much. Just have to push through I guess.

 

[Bobnnat]

So much for my “great” idea. I was put on Luvox 4 days ago, and quickly got many of the gastro related side effects. Nausea, appetite loss, rumbling stomach, a bit of dizziness. I just can’t deal with it and I’m going to be stopping it now. Of course my mind starts asking whether these symptoms were related to the Luvox or mean something sinister, even though they all began after I started taking it. Guess I’m just destined to be miserable for the rest of my life.

 

[EMJ]

My Dr. suggested I go through the genetic testing to see which antidepressants would work best for me .... I think I might try this to get a better direction

 

[bigjetplane6]

I hear you loud and clear....Health anxiety is a plague....I have struggled since I was 20 (now 65)....and I have been in and out of that anxiety zone for all those years ....some good years...many actually, and then some trigger sends me down that road and I fall into the obvious hole. I have my logical side that tells me all the CBT rules (and I know them well since I am a licensed therapist) and then I have my health anxiety side of the brain that lives in fear and worry with my OCD traits, my ruminating thoughts and my checking checking checking...my pulse...my BP...my oxygen level...my blood sugar....over and over and over again. My Dr.'s are great ...they see me coming and they are so reassuring.....but it always comes down to ANXIETY......damn...damn...damn anxiety. I am in the middle of a bad place now with heart concerns.....skipped beats....palpitations...I have been a runner for 50 years....I have low resting rate of 50 or below....now all of a sudden I am worried about that and about my skipped beats ...of which I feel every one (had those for years and not too concerned until a month ago) ....so I am checking pulse...checking and FEELING the skipped beats and then my back muscles tighten and I skip more beats.....****. So I made an appointment with my therapist and hopefully he can help me get back on the track and back on the right road.

Struggling for as long as you had, can you share with us all of the illness/diseases you thought you had and why you thought that but in the end it was just a HA episode?
Thanks. I’m sure it’ll calm a lot of people down.
You should put this post in the Hypocondriac forum as it would help a lot more people relate and also share their stories!

 

[suzzeeb]

My Dr. suggested I go through the genetic testing to see which antidepressants would work best for me .... I think I might try this to get a better direction
[/QU

I had the genetic testing done (mouth swab). I have been put on several that were on the list of medications that I should have done well on, and I had the same reaction to all of them. I am not impressed with the accuracy of that test.

 

[Fraser]

Struggling for as long as you had, can you share with us all of the illness/diseases you thought you had and why you thought that but in the end it was just a HA episode?
Thanks. I’m sure it’ll calm a lot of people down.
You should put this post in the Hypocondriac forum as it would help a lot more people relate and also share their stories!

I actually meant to post this thread in that forum. Is there a way to get this moved there?

 

[EMJ]

My HA was triggered initially I believe by a Dr. telling me I could possibly have pancreatic cancer I ended up at University of Michigan Hospital where Dr.s told me I should see a psychotherapist..... I had been so sick terrible back ache, no appetite, weight loss .... after my stay at U of M ... I came home and seemed to snap out of my HA .... very quickly .... over the next few years I seemed to hold my own but in 2007 became convinced I had some terrible thing going on in my body .... I ended up having my Gallbladder removed ( for really no reason) had an abscesses tooth infection that same summer and finally had a breakdown where I was hospitalized a week in a mental health unit . It was a slow climb out of that hole and trying to maintain my everyday life .... during the next few years I have thought I had a brain tumor, heart problem, spine tumor, stomach cancer, esophageal cancer, low back tumors/cancer. Always went through the despair of thinking I had disease, Dr. reports said I was ok .... then s-l-o-w-l-y I climbed out of hole. But I have to say it is like a mine field as I look ahead .... always trying to maneuver around those mines that lead to me falling in that friggin anxiety hole.

 

[Fraser]

My HA was triggered initially I believe by a Dr. telling me I could possibly have pancreatic cancer I ended up at University of Michigan Hospital where Dr.s told me I should see a psychotherapist..... I had been so sick terrible back ache, no appetite, weight loss .... after my stay at U of M ... I came home and seemed to snap out of my HA .... very quickly .... over the next few years I seemed to hold my own but in 2007 became convinced I had some terrible thing going on in my body .... I ended up having my Gallbladder removed ( for really no reason) had an abscesses tooth infection that same summer and finally had a breakdown where I was hospitalized a week in a mental health unit . It was a slow climb out of that hole and trying to maintain my everyday life .... during the next few years I have thought I had a brain tumor, heart problem, spine tumor, stomach cancer, esophageal cancer, low back tumors/cancer. Always went through the despair of thinking I had disease, Dr. reports said I was ok .... then s-l-o-w-l-y I climbed out of hole. But I have to say it is like a mine field as I look ahead .... always trying to maneuver around those mines that lead to me falling in that friggin anxiety hole.

Knowing that another episode is always going to come, what strategies have you adopted to try to deal with these issues when they arise? For instance, I fill out one of these sheets every day when I'm going through an episode (see attached file) and another thing I do is list all the times I was SURE I had a lethal illness (usually cancer) and was wrong. A third thing I do is, instead of googling my symptoms constantly, I make an appointment with a doctor and from then on instead of googling my symptoms i google ways of coping with health anxiety.

Things I have been worried about:

Brain tumors when I was 18 [actually headaches]
Testicular cancer as a teenager [actually a small skin cyst]
Appendicitis, multiple times [seriously, just an upset stomach/bloating]
"White flashes" in my vision (brain tumor) when I was 24 [stress] - CAT scan. Nothing.
Double vision (brain tumor) at 26 [dry eyes] - I had an MRI for this one. I think about this sometimes and how I held up the line for an MRI for people that really needed one.
Herpes - Multiple times [insect bite once, heat rash another time] - While herpes in not a fatal illness or even that big a deal, this one caused me maybe the most anxiety!
Tonsil and/or nasopharyngeal cancer - For years in my late 30s. So far it has been... nothing.

Currently: I have had persistent tailbone pain for about a year. I have tingling in my left foot. Therefore, I must have a sacral chordoma. Riiiight.

 

[EMJ]

I see a Therapist.... I am a therapist so I believe talk therapy and CBT are fundamental in the healing process .... when things are going well human nature sometime leads us to think we don’t need therapy as a means of getting by .... but I say this honestly.... you DO need the support.

 

[Izthewiz]

Best thing I have done is not dig into it by searching online symptoms.
I accept that if I die not a big issue, as I lived a good life and my family is on the other side so if I die I'll be at home with the Lord.
Death isn't scary last only a few moments.
Enjoy life while you have it.
Don't be a slave to health Anxiety or any other worry.