Health Anxiety, required reading

[JOYCICLE 654]

Every time I see the amount of posts on the Health Anxiety forum vs. ALL the other forums combined, I can see that health anxiety is at epidemic proportions.  There are 45k posts on this forum. The next closest runner up is GAD forum with a mere 8k TOTAL.  

This is a forum for helping us all get through the rough days. Coming here to talk about a symptom and seeking constant reassurance does not help anyone.  What it does is lead to a dependency of sorts. If  3 or 5 or 11 people say that I'm ok, maybe I'm ok until the next sensation comes.  We are not doctors. When in doubt, go to a doctor to know why that headache , that rash, that tingling in the throat , ear, chest or eye is happening. We cannot tell you. I would recommend re reading every single morning the ' 100 symptoms of anxiety' post at the top of the forum. It's posted several places so it can be easily found.  

When someone tells me daily the same symptom and what if it's XYZ disease ( that they've been cleared for by doctors numerous times) , my response is ' what are you doing ABOUT it? '  If the only thing you are doing is rehashing google ' facts' and in a constant mode of needing daily or hourly reassurances that you don't have XYZ disease, then you, my friend, are not getting better and in fact may be getting worse. This is not a HEALTH forum.  This is a MENTAL HEALTH forum. The very reason you're posting on this particular site is because you must KNOW your problems are mental and not physical. So that being said, what are you doing about it? Are you seeking HELP for your thinking problem ? Or are you merely seeking assurance that you don't have a physical problem? You cannot make positive steps to improve your mental health while constantly focusing on the physical body.  

And if you want to debate me and say ' if  I only had this mri or that blood test or this one thing would go away or one doctor would tell me I don't have xyz disease', I have news for you.  That will never happen. I have seen time and time again the long awaited Test results come back fine and the very next DAY the person then moves on to a new disease with a different body part and starts to focus on that one instead OR they don't believe the test is accurate or the doctor is knowledgeable. It's a loop.  It's a never ending loop. You cannot have enough clear tests to relieve your mind.  

Another thing is the fear of afterlife may be where the problem is. If you fear a big , gloomy, scary afterlife then figure out WHY you fear that. What in your belief system makes you think that after life , we have a worse fate awaiting?  Coming to terms with the circle of life and all it entails may bring you more peace than that MRI, colonoscopy, ekg, etc. 

[Matty_G 18]

Well written Joy 

[BejeweledMexican 32]

Agreed! This was very well written. For me my big fear is actually going to the doctor. I DON'T want the tests because I'm scared to death of their results. I'd rather just die one day then know I'm dying a slow and painful death....and yet I come here everyday because I'm scared. Nobody else understands, not even my therapist. One time a doctor told me after I visited them and warned them of my mental illness, 'Well you know what a hypochondriac is, they always think they're dying of a disease.' Yes sweetie, that's right, you just have never seen me before because I'm terrified of YOU! lol I always says there's two kinds of hypo's....one that runs straight to the doctor for every symptom and want that is so terrified of the doctor that they never go. 

One thing I noticed is that during the down time the site had the past few days...I was anxious but instead of running straight to this site I started doing other things and that helped. It was frustrating, for sure, but knowing that I couldn't run straight here was actually helpful in the end. 

[JOYCICLE 654]

5 minutes ago, BejeweledMexican said:

Agreed! This was very well written. For me my big fear is actually going to the doctor. I DON'T want the tests because I'm scared to death of their results. I'd rather just die one day then know I'm dying a slow and painful death....and yet I come here everyday because I'm scared. Nobody else understands, not even my therapist. One time a doctor told me after I visited them and warned them of my mental illness, 'Well you know what a hypochondriac is, they always think they're dying of a disease.' Yes sweetie, that's right, you just have never seen me before because I'm terrified of YOU! lol I always says there's two kinds of hypo's....one that runs straight to the doctor for every symptom and want that is so terrified of the doctor that they never go. 

One thing I noticed is that during the down time the site had the past few days...I was anxious but instead of running straight to this site I started doing other things and that helped. It was frustrating, for sure, but knowing that I couldn't run straight here was actually helpful in the end. 

EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Go do other things. If you're doing anything besides focusing on it, reading about it, talking about it and googling about it , you'll find you're actually living life instead of figuring out how quickly to die. 

[jartist 1]

Thank you. I really needed to read this.

[Sumotherguy 56]

For me, I know I mostly post about the same issue. But it’s not for help with diagnosis it’s more about me just needed to share my struggles with someone. 

But it is a cycle of reassurance to some degree. 

[ZenCube 59]

I don't really think it's reassurance folks are seeking here. It cannot be, because after doctors have failed to provide reassurance, how on earth could we achieve what the experts in the field couldn't?

I believe people who come to post and rant about their health fears, just want to feel and experience that they are not alone in this horrible state of mind, that there are peeps out there willing enough to spend time listening to them, peeps who KNOW exactly what they are going through. How I see it, it's more about brotherhood than it is about informational relief regarding their very symptoms.

[BrightPhoenix 78]

I think it's perfectly rational to fear the unknown, dying horribly from something is pretty up there, especially if you had a loved one who passed away from something.  My health anxiety started because my mom had unchecked, untreated Hepatitis B that basically did a number to her liver; she was able to get a donor transplant liver, but her body rejected it and she passed away from complications of it just a couple days after the surgery was successful.

My HA started from that over 14 years ago and it has been like that ever since.

While I understand your frustration, you must also understand your frustration also stems from you being a moderator.  *Every* forum I've been to the mods eventually hit this hill where they get so tired of seeing the same thing over and over again and they make posts where they rant about their frustrations, or they make rules attempting to curb the repeated posts they see and/or the repeated behavior they see, and all it manages to do is cause conflicts with the established userbase.  Remember, us posters don't see what you see - to you you see dozens of posts with the same thing happening over and over again, but to the random person who's scared that it may be (insert scary condition here), it's their first time.  It's a lot of people's first time, so you may end up getting the sense that no one is reading the rules or is listening to you.  This is why I always suggest people going to a therapist after they get their clear diagnosis (or a diagnosis that isn't as scary).  We don't have the know-how to help deal with what is essentially a form of OCD, professionals out there are better equipped for that.

Just remember, your frustrations about these posters' behavior is the way the HA pattern behavior is.  The lopsided numbers are reflected on NMP too - their two biggest sub-forums is the "Symptoms" forum and their "Health Anxiety" forum, and the same thing happened at AZ when it was still around. That should tell you health anxiety is a very common mental state because - well - I'm fairly sure most humans haven't learned how to cope with the end, especially those in their teens to 30's.  Most folks learn to slowly get used to it as they age but the sheer amount of media and info that is related to health can be overwhelming to those who don't have the tools or coping mechanisms to deal with it.  It's a lazy intellectual copout, but I really do blame the news for creating so many scares that play upon our fear of our mortality.   Remember the ebola scare from several years ago?

Anyway, I do understand your frustration though.  If you help just one person with your message I'd say it's worth making this post.

[JOYCICLE 654]

'' It's a lazy intellectual copout, but I really do blame the news for creating so many scares that play upon our fear of our mortality.   Remember the ebola scare from several years ago?'''

I agree with this 100% and have felt this way for years. Every news cast, every commercial break, every page you look at has something to scare you. You cannot even check email or sign on to a device without seeing  headlines like '' 10 hidden symptoms of XYZ '' or ''  could you have C and not know it'' .  It's  a plague and $$ driven because every article or story on the  news related to health ends with 'see your doctor to be sure'. So the doctors and pharmicists are making bank on this. 

 

[BrightPhoenix 78]

On 3/30/2019 at 7:54 AM, JOYCICLE said:

I agree with this 100% and have felt this way for years. Every news cast, every commercial break, every page you look at has something to scare you. You cannot even check email or sign on to a device without seeing  headlines like '' 10 hidden symptoms of XYZ '' or ''  could you have C and not know it'' .  It's  a plague and $$ driven because every article or story on the  news related to health ends with 'see your doctor to be sure'. So the doctors and pharmicists are making bank on this. 

 

 

Yep, or they go "this single study shows that people of this age or group" are more likely to develop this or that.

Note: a single *study*, not a meta-analysis (a study of several studies that tries to come to a consistent conclusion), but a SINGLE study, and that SINGLE study is put onto the news to let you know HEY, did you know doing x causes y without any thought to the panic it creates.

That's why Dr. Google is such a damn mess.  There's sites that try to help you out by saying (If you have this, you should have it checked) but they don't try to tell you how rare it is, how rare to a certain age group or demographic it is, or what the odds are of getting it.  They don't tell you that you most likely *don't* have it, just that you can have it.  There's that disclaimer on the bottom that says these websites shouldn't be used as a replacement for medical advice but that disclaimer should be modified to say "PLEASE DO NOT ASSUME THE WORST, MORE LIKELY THAN NOT THE CONDITION YOU HAVE IS SOMETHING BENIGN, TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR AND STOP SEARCHING US" or something to that aspect.

Of course, if they did that, they wouldn't be able to make the money off all that clickbait to scare the heck out of us, right?

[enidoreilley 83]

I do appreciate this reminder, but I for one can say that sharing my irrational fears here has inarguably helped me through very tough times, and not because people helped me diagnose an illness or lack thereof but because I got to be honest in a safe space about everything that is going through my mind. 

You're right, that we should definitely be working on our anxiety separate of this forum, but I do appreciate being able to come here.

[jonathan123 2367]

It's not just where you are Joy. We get the same thing. All over the walls of doctors surgeries are posters like " have you got this and that". But here there's no profit for them because they all get paid whatever they do.  I think it's a general kind of health anxiety that affects the whole world. Of course, and we know from Google, that there are big bucks to be made out of sick people. I couldn't agree more about what you say in regard to Google. There should be a poster on Google. " Googling symptoms is bad for your heath". But those who run the show have no idea of the panic and upset they can cause.

But I think sites like this are so useful. We can't judge why so many come on here because although reassurance is almost always the case, there can be many other reasons. I agree that once having got the fundamentals of some sort of management or even recovery, then everyone should take steps to do something about it. It's hard but unless some action like therapy of some such thing is undertaken, then posting can go on for ever with the temporary relief it gives.