Help with health anxiety

[anon234]

Hello, I'm new here and just thought this might be good for some support sometimes.

Ive dealt with anxiety especially for as long as I can remember. I have GAD, health anxiety, ocd, phobias... and it's become extremely difficult to handle.

The worst is the health anxiety, and I've been struggling to get to school and catch buses especially. I'm always thinking about what is potentially on furniture and in the air (in terms of getting sick) and have a fear of food poisoning. I keep thinking I'm falling sick, and as someone who already has OCD tendencies I'm worrying about behaviors I've started noticing (like checking my temperature hourly for a fever and refusing to touch food or furniture for example). It has become incredibly difficult to leave the house, and I have panic attacks as well.

I've just been finding it difficult to eat and sleep and dealing with constant fear of panicking or becoming sick is exhausting. I was wondering if anyone has some techniques or thoughts that can calm them down? I started therapy earlier in the year, but it seems the problem just keeps morphing.

Any response is appreciated 🙂

[blondguy]

Hello Anon234

Welcome to the forums and good on you for having the courage to post too!

You have posted a topic that many people suffer from 234. I have have manageable depression (now) and used to have anxiety too...chronic anxiety when I was in my 20's. I am not knowledgeable on OCD except that its a branch off the anxiety tree....so to speak.

I will have a reply to you (may be tomorrow) from a member that has OCD that can provide some support for you

You are amazing for already had some counseling and good on you for doing so 234 🙂

I still see my GP for my 'leftover anxiety' and depression once a month for a 'tune up'

I was 25 when I had serious trouble leaving the house with my panic attacks. The severity of the anxiety can be reduced with super regular therapy.......fortnightly is okay.....weekly is a great frequency as it helps us 'ground' ourselves and find some peace...I do understand and feel your pain....It can be a dark place to be in

A GP with a strong focus on mental health is a huge bonus.....

You are a legend for reaching out and posting on the forums 234!

You are not alone here

My kind thoughts

Paul

[geoff]

hello Anon, all that you have mentioned comes under the one heading, OCD which is caused by having anxiety, and may have begun as a bad experience you've had in the past, something you may remember or something which has eluded you, never mind having this illness can be very destructive to your daily life.
OCD maybe able to be helped by medication, which I have taken for 20 years as I've had this illness for 57 years and there seems to be a growing number of people who suffer from it as well.
What it seems to do is make one anxiety/phobia go from one to another, that's easy for this illness, but not for you, because it then starts to dominate your life in everything you want to do, and from what you have said you can see this.
It first started off by fear of catching the bus, then the furniture, food, fear of getting sick and then worrying about your temperature, so you can see that it's escalating and that's not good.
One way you can try and stop this is by starting at the end, your temperature, not at the beginning, because if you do this then it still means that from your fear of temp. is going to go on to something else.
There are a couple of ways go and see a psychologist who deals with OCD so that CBT can begin, and secondly I want you to google 'desensitisation' which you can do by yourself, but it's better if you have someone who is trained, then your concentration will be focused.
I really want you to reply because this is just the beginning. Geoff.

[anon234]

Geoff- Thank you so much for replying! I'm still a student and I really need to get my anxiety under control going into the HSC.

For some reason, I never really considered starting with the most recent symptoms. Chronologically (at least for the health anxiety) it was getting sick in general, then ocd, then viruses and furniture (and frankly a crippling fear of throwing up), then panic attacks, and then it worsened into stranger behaviors like temperature checking.

Also, I'm afraid to say that the ocd already has spilled over into other parts of my mind in the past (it started when I was 9, and has crept into other parts of my life since). Anxiety just seems to work that way, and the physical and mental responses are just so engrained into my behavior...

I googled desensitization and it sounds like exposure therapy (my psychologist was already using this to combat my fear of food poisoning). I definitely have trouble sticking to it though, and the stress just becomes too much I think to keep up consistency. For all these reasons, I have been recently considering medication to make everything a bit more manageable, and maybe make treatment a little easier too, but I still think about side affects all the time, and whether I'd stick to that either.

Still, thankyou so much for replying. It means a lot, and I don't know anyone else with the same issue as me, so if nothing I feel a little less alone. (And I've seen a few other of your posts and you're so brave! This is so difficult to write or talk about sometimes so good on you for doing it to help others aswell).