Anyone else has health anxiety?

[Kimlett]

Among other things, I struggle with health anxiety or hypochondria. Mostly related to stuff that appears in my skin. But its not like I'm afraid I have a severe illness that would kill me (that would be cool lol). I'm afraid of contagious stuff like viruses, fungus and bacteria. I have the irrational fear that it will spread to other parts of my body, it will stay in the sheets or in the clothes, and I will be reinfecting myself and dealing with that for months. And I have the fear of infecting my partner, my friends, my family... I tend to have obsessive thoughts and that is definitely part of it.

Just curious if anyone else struggles with this stuff.

 

[hail]

dude thank you so much for making this thread today, i'm SEVERELY going through a huge amount of health anxiety right as im typing this out, i fucking hate this condition and the worst of it is no one understands or even tries to help, your just called an attention seeker and are seen as a burden.

 

[4g1vvvven]

I fixate on everything feeling degenerative.

We're all aging, we're all approaching death, I'm very low at the moment and don't take very good care of myself.

I worry about the long term effects this is having on my brain, how poor hygiene may lead to serious problems with my skin, mouth, gums, etc.

I worry too about getting additional diseases because I'm inept with managing the ones I already have.

I can relate to what you say about sheets, I wrap up and think it must be disgusting because I do it so much

 

[ThymeToLeave]

Yes, entirely centered on my heart. I know it's irrational because I've been checked out but whenever my heartbeat is noticeable or fast (palpitations) it sets off major anxiety.

 

[EmmaM]

I have hypochondria, so completely understand. One thing that stopped me was stopping looking up symptoms. You can go to the doctor and it's best to if you are really concerned, however, it's not healthy to keep looking at symptoms because a lot of symptoms of illness are general and non-specific.

 

[Lookingtoflyfree]

Health anything is awful. I need to see my primary care person who I don't like, but don't have the energy to find someone better. I have a few other ones I need to arrange and have been feeling constant autistic meltdowns but there's nobody to see about it.

 

[Kimlett]

dude thank you so much for making this thread today, i'm SEVERELY going through a huge amount of health anxiety right as im typing this out, i fucking hate this condition and the worst of it is no one understands or even tries to help, your just called an attention seeker and are seen as a burden.

So glad I can help somehow. I hope you feel better soon.

I have hypochondria, so completely understand. One thing that stopped me was stopping looking up symptoms. You can go to the doctor and it's best to if you are really concerned, however, it's not healthy to keep looking at symptoms because a lot of symptoms of illness are general and non-specific.

Yeah, definitely. Google is not your friend. I try to avoid that.

 

[Joker2003]

I have extreme health anxiety.

I worry about getting ALS, dementia, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and basically anything under the sun. One of my worst fears is becoming impaired physically or mentally.

I recently had an MRI scan and discovered that I have multiple brain lesions. I am meeting with a neurologist next month to see if I have a demyelinating disease.

Since discovering that my brain may be deteriorating- I have been even more worried about my health. Human life is so fragile and it feels like anything could kill me.

Sometimes, I feel like I should just take myself out before an illness can.

 

[hail]

bumping this thread, anyone else struggling right now?

 

[astonishedturnip]

I used to have TERRIBLE health anxiety. Just a single spot I didn't recognize (that always ended up going away after a few days) would send me on an anxiety death spiral of doomscrolling and doomgoogling. I once got a bug bite that made a black spot and I was so convinced I had melanoma that I sobbed all these apologies to my mom about being a terrible daughter lol.

Being suicidal erased my health anxiety practically overnight. I do still fear the suffering that might come with an illness, but I no longer fear it as I know I could just blow my head off if I were faced with some sort of awful or terminal disease. (Hopefully my state gets MAID soon so I can take a less grisly approach) However in exchange I now have extreme health anxiety when it comes to my loved ones. Every time I hear about a certain illness, cancer, mental problem, etc. I fear it happening to my parents, siblings, or niece. It freaks me out to know how tenuous life is and I get a panic attack any time someone offhandedly mentions a loved one dying. Because I then HAVE to know how it happened so I can freak out about it happening to one of my loved ones.

 

[xinino]

No

 

[EvisceratedJester]

Can't relate, but my GLE teacher in grade 12 talked about how her one of daughters suffers health anxiety. We also got to meet on her video call.

 

[ham and potatoes]

Man, i have really bad health anxiety. Basically always convinced that every ache or pain is some awful disease or ailment that is going to painfully kill me.
Its so ironic, paranoid about my health, yet here i am on a forum about killing yourself.....
Yould think a hypochondriac would be the last type of person yould expect to see here, but its the hypochondria, and constant fear, anxiety, and mental exhaustion that goes along with it, has driven me to consider ending it