Do you ever wish you had ANYTHING else to obsess over besides your current fear?

[carnelians 7]

Posting here and musing/venting to keep myself from compulsing...

I've managed to go three days without googling stuff about skin cancer, mainly health anxiety forums since I never read cancer forums, but I feel myself slipping. It almost feels like withdrawal. I feel myself getting irritable and jittery and wanting nothing more than to peruse anxiety forums for people afraid of the same thing as me. But I know the disease I'm phobic of is just a byproduct of my anxiety and not the actual issue at hand; besides, before this I was worried about lymphoma for a few weeks. Something always takes another thing's place.

I think sometimes I forget that health anxiety is OCD, which is a weird thing to forget since I've had severe OCD my whole life. What makes health anxiety more difficult than some of my other non-health obsessions is that those other obsessions weren't about things like terminal illnesses or test results or my physical body. I'd worry more about things around me, not things inside of me. I was very afraid of other people hurting me and was extremely paranoid and jumpy. And I remember how deeply terrifying those obsessions were too. 

But somehow, I notice I go through stints where I'll wish for old obsessions to come back just so I could stop obsessing over cancer. This, of course, is crazy. I was doing horribly back then and I actually think I've improved a little since then, at least in terms of not completely shutting down and still fulfilling responsibilities. Back then I couldn't even leave the house or have a job or talk to people. I existed in this constant, constant terror and dissociated for months on end. Why on earth would I rather have that than my current obsession?

I guess my whole point of this post is that I feel like I'm at the threshold of understanding something about this illness that is health anxiety. It's another facet of my OCD that just wears a different face. There's no real difference in any disease I worry about, because I follow the exact same patterns every time: notice a symptom, google, self-diagnose, panic, seek reassurance, obsess until I get bored and move on to something else. If I start seeing it like that--as a series of very unpleasant patterns that culminate in this huge, vicious anxiety--maybe I can get to the root of the problem.

And the root, I think, is really just a deep-seated fear of losing control. 

I hope maybe this resonates with someone and gives a new perspective on what we're going through as anxiety sufferers. I'm going to try and go the rest of the day without googling. It's very hard, but realizing this has sort of shone a light on what I'm really afraid of, and reminded me that googling will not help and never has.

[ZenCube 59]

I'm going to be abrupt: the day something really bad happens to a loved one, I can assure you that HA vaporizes itself away into thin air. Ive been there. Too bad we fools cant make it happen by will alone.

[Worryworm 6]

And the root, I think, is really just a deep-seated fear of losing control. 

 

This is exactly what it is....

I obsess over my health and going crazy...I am terrified I am going to lose my mind, go crazy, and end up in a mental institution. I worry I will have some terminal disease that's going to rid me of living my life and leaving my loved ones...it's such a vicious cycle. 

ZenCube-I hear you...when I had a loved one pass away suddenly 3 years ago it sent me into a HA tailspin. You would think it would make me stop and realize to live each day to the fullest. 

[carnelians 7]

One of my longest obsessions when I was 19 was that I would develop schizophrenia. I feel terrible looking back on it, because I was making generalizations about what I thought schizophrenic people were like based on stereotypes and bad horror movies. I remember how real the obsession felt at the time, and how I'd compulse in the exact same ways I do now about physical illnesses. No difference at all in googling and reassurance seeking. When I think back on it, I can't imagine why I was so afraid to begin with. I'm hoping when I look back on the cancers I'm obsessing over now, I'll wonder the same thing. Once an obsession ends it all makes more sense and we can be more rational...it's just the getting there that's the problem. 😔