Healthy anxiety

[K25]

Hi, I am currently struggling with health anxiety, I am a mum of 2 and am constantly worried that I have some type of cancer. Around 3 months ago I had a gallstone attack, found out I had gallstones which ever since then I have been so worried about my health and thinking I have everything under the sun, I have had 2 complete blood counts done and results have been fine, i have been to the doctors 3 times and she keeps re assuring me that she thinks I am fine, but if I want testing done I can have it for my own peace of mind. I recently started anxiety medication, I just don’t know what to do and how to get over feeling like this.....

[Aaronsis]

Hi K25

Thank you for sharing your story with us and for reaching out to get some support here. I can relate to what you are saying here in that I had some pretty strong "worries" and they were taking over my day, and my night, and causing panic attacks. I sought some professional support and she introduced me to one thing I found that helped me so very much and I will share it here with you.

It is very simple and when explained it really makes so much sense. It may not work for you but I hope that you might consider this and see if it does infact help with some calming of those thoughts. See that is just what they are, thoughts and when we let our brain run away we start to smother those thoughts with a "story", we get ourselves so far down the track that we have now started to see physical responses to this worry, tears, pain maybe, trouble breathing.

She helped me to try and combat these "thoughts" with a question, "Is that true?", so when your brain delivers you an idea that you are unwell, that you are suffering a terrible illness and that you are suffering cancer, you can stop, and even say it out loud "IS THAT TRUE?". When you let your brain run off it starts providing you scenarios in which it "may" be, however you have the truth and the facts from your doctor. The answer is "NO", no it is not true.

It takes time and it takes practice, this will not just stop overnight but with some self talk right back to these thoughts that they are not true. Sure, you have had gallstones in the past and that was a true event, your doctor managed it for you and now you are back to good health. The same shall happen again if you do indeed have a pain or a significant change in your body that you need a doctor to address, they will do that and you will move on with your life.

I am so happy to hear that you have been to the GP and he/she has given you something for your anxiety, that too will take time, I hope with some brain training too you can squash these "untruths" K25, and have some inner peace.

I am not sure if this is helpful to you but I hope to chat some more to you soon.

Hugs

Sarah

[Helarctus]

Hello K25,

Before you probably felt 'normal' and were surprised, so now when you feel 'normal' you are worried that something else is wrong. Now you are living the 'new normal', you've done the right thing with follow up tests etc and if its all coming back clear it sounds like you are onto a winner with your health. (Note I am not a doctor 😛 )

I like practical ideas and actionables, sometimes with health it can be useful to have a baseline to refer back to , like when people have a personal trainer who measures all the curves etc so you can get a reference for how swole you get. Your GP can probably give you a run down on where everything is at incl height/weight etc. so you have a new benchmark.

And then have a planned check-in with your GP in a few months and unless something pops out/breaks/falls off, you probably don't need to go in. Then at the check in you can discuss an overview of how things are going.

You could also try diarise any health concerns but try to keep the notes short, at the end of the week, review and then give yourself a simple thumbs up or green/red mark. That way you can get a colour trend of how you are doing and you will have notes if needed for the GP. Hopefully you will see more and more green and be able to start stretching out the regular check-ins.

[AnxiousAussie11]

Hi K25,

What you're going through doesn't sound entirely dissimilar to what I experienced a few years ago - I was convinced there was something seriously wrong with me, I visited several different GPs over the course of a couple of weeks, got scans and all sorts - never found something wrong with me. Eventually one GP said it was all in my head, prescribed me anti anxiety medicine, and after a few weeks on those the health anxiety more or less went away.

Techniques similar to what Aaronsis mentioned above can also go a long way to aid your recovery (at least from personal experience).