Health anxiety - fear of a stroke

[MrsX]

Warning - May be triggering for some

I suffer with severe health anxiety which has manifested into an obsession with stroke. I have been to the gp probably 6 times over the last year, maybe more, sure I was having a stroke.

This particular fear began when I read an article online about a super rare case of a woman having a stroke after visiting a hairdressers. Since then I am terrified to visit hairdressers. Every time I hurt my neck (I have a touchy neck), I believe I've torn an artery and a stroke is impending.

I've had therapy, meds... nothing is working. Currently my neck is giving me grief and I have sharp head pain/ headaches on one side and pins and needles in my feet. On the stroke merry go round I go. I'm always crying because I have 2 small kids and I'm terrified of the stroke happening and killing or disabling me.

I want to go to my gp as this time, I'm sure it is a stroke as the symptoms are so real, but my husband and mum tell me this is another tales alarm. I'm worried I'm like the boy who cried wolf.

Sorry for the rant. Has anyone got any words of wisdom? Thanks.

[Croix]

Dear MrsX~

I'm sorry you have this burden to deal wiht, it can really make life pretty bad. you mention having been on medication and therapy, may I ask the disagnosis?

I have had a variety of physical symptoms, including intermittent chest pain, for a great many years. This lead me to beieve I had some form of heart disease. As you can expect I had every sort of test more than once, ecg, blood, cat, x-ray, mri and so on.

In every case they have come back negative and in every case I found it hard to accept the results. At first I dismissed them out of hand as medical science being imperfect. As time has gone on however I've accpted that they are all anxiety based.

This has been helped by a couple of things, firstly I do have some ongoing real physical ailments and they were picked up straight away -no false negatives or positives, which has given me more faith in the medical system.

The second is that incidents of the symptoms tends to coincide with periods of heightened anxiety.

So what can I say from all this? I would expect that logically you can see that this fear, starting after you read about the problem, and continuing despite not being findable in the tests is a product of anxiety.

I say logically, becuse in fact the fear may not be suseptible to logic. All I can suggest is to see if treating anxiety makes a differnece long-term.

If you search using Google the following:

health anxiety beyondblue

You will find there are many threads on this subject. Perhaps if you take some time and look though them you will find how others have coped.

Feeling like you have cried wolf will - I suspect- keep on occurring. While I would not wish to advise you on if you should see about more tests I can say continuing to work with you doctor on this is the best bet.

I do hope you come back and talk some more

Croix

[Mackenzie]

Hi MrsX,

I am in the same boat as you. I actually went and got brain scans to put my mind at ease because I was gettinf pains and headaches constantly since when I was pregnant.

Happy to say there is nothing wrong with my head which has put my stroke fears aside. Now I think about heart attacks because I also get chest pains. I am breast feeding so most of the pains are from that and the other pains are when I get panic attacks. That still doesn't matter though as I always go back to thinking there ia something wrong.

I also have 2 young kids so know how hard it is when you need to be a mother while having anxiety that you don't have control over.

I am currently taking meds as well as doing mindfulness exercises ro help combat my anxiety. I also talk with my sister who has had anxiety for a long time, and found out that her anxiety symptoms are different from mine.

I thought I was alone in having these symptoms. But I am glad that I have some that are common with others so that I don't feel so alone. It also gives me a bit of comfort knowing that my symptoms don't mean that I'm dying.

How are you going today?

From Mackenzie

[Miss_Squirrel]

Dear MrsX. How I feel your pain! I hope chatting in this forum provides some relief and reassurance that you are not going crazy and that there are others that experience health anxiety too! I've really struggled with health anxiety for a long time. Sometimes it is really severe and other times it isn't as bad. The thing is, I realise it's not logical to be so fearful but yet it doesn't stop me from being absolutely terrified. I find that so hard to deal with. I'm pretty logical most of the time but this thing has got me beat! Physical symptoms are awful, and I understand it is so hard not to come to the worst conclusion. Just on the head pains, can I ask if you clench your jaw? This can definitely cause that sort of pain, and your extreme fear/tension will be making your neck worse too. 😞 Neck tension can cause all sort of side effects, including pains in the head/headaches, dizziness, pins and needles in the extremities. If you can manage to get out to a physio, maybe a good massage might help you loosen up a bit and may give some relief? Please keep checking in on here so we know how you're doing. I hope things get better for you soon. You are not alone in this. 🙂

[CrownPrince]

This is an old post but maybe it will be helpful to people like it was to me. I can relate 100% and then some to the anxious feelings around health and death. I have cost the taxpayer thousands of dollars in blood tests, scanning and imaging, hospital ER visits all because I convince myself i am on my last legs. Definitely triggered by my dad dying from a brain aneurysm when I was 9 and getting type 1 diabetes at 10. There was a time I thought, I shouldn’t be so healthy with how I live my life, very poor attention to diabetes, fast food, smoking, drinking you name it. I feel like at 27 I’m paying the price with early stage onset of complications. I think it has a lot to do with me feeling inadequate or as if I am not making the most of life subconsciously perhaps. I live alone, I work part-time, and spend much of my spare time by myself. That’s a whole new post for that suitcase.... Maybe I need spiritual guidance or a belief system? I just don’t want to end up in a cult scrubbing floors praising an alien.... all in all my advice is get the tests, because at the height of my anxiety attacks I have to reassure myself that the tests were clear and for all accounts I have nothing to worry about day-to-day. Maybe others have coping mechanisms they can share? Or even their own health related anxiety battle? HRH

[marki]

I cannot sympathise more with your plight MrsX!

I have reoccurring anxiety attacks that I am having a stroke or that I am about to have one. My attacks normally involve physical symptoms that are somewhat similar to the warning signs of a stroke and once I realise that I’m having those sensations, my brain going into hyper drive and does everything in its power to convince me I am indeed experiencing a stroke or mini TIA- even though I am fully aware that my symptoms can also be attributed to a simple anxiety episode.. my biggest struggle is that while I know anxiety is a probable answer, there’s still a little internal voice that says “ok maybe it is just anxiety… BUT what if it’s not? What if it is Actually a stroke this time? Time is critical in stroke treatment… are you THAT confident that you’ll take the risk of missing early intervention” .. that dialogue goes on in my head for about 5-10 minutes and while I can never seem to convince myself of either possibilities and often become more concerned with each thought and every argument and counter argument I consider leads me no closer to a conclusion, I have come to use that anxiety panic and internal debate as my only comforting form of assessment - IF my thoughts are clear enough to facilitate that kind of internal debate and if I can verbally express part of my internal discussion then THERES LITTLE CHANCE THAT I AM ACTUALLY HAVING A STROKE.. 

because the kind of functions required in order to preform complex reasoning actions are the very same functions that are affected during a stroke…

I basically use the panic attack to show me that I’m able to physically articulate the anxious thoughts and mentally fluid enough to think them in the first place without becoming confused then regardless of how irrationally convincing they may seem- they’re also my greatest tool to confirm that I am indeed NOT having a stroke… 

Hopefully that silly trick might work for you too 🙂 I hope it does