The Story of my Life

[UB2019]

Hi All,

I have suffered from anxiety for years now. I was doing fine and all of a sudden it just came back! I'm a hypochondriac so every time I have an anxiety attack I feel like i'm dying like im either having a stroke or an aneurysm and I google my symptoms like a crazy person and I start feeling more symptoms it's a bad cycle, and i'm just so tired of feeling like something is wrong and i'm dying

[Jeff1943]

You don't have to put up with these bad feelings: you can control your anxiety and eventually recover from your anxiety disorder.

Anxiety is fuelled by fear of the unknown, that which we do not understand leads us to expect the worst case scenario. Understanding and reassurance go a long way to seeing your anxiety in perspective.

What you call hypochondria (lovely old word) is today called Health Anxiety and is part of general anxiety disorder.

Everybody has anxiety but when it reaches a certain level we experience a kind of anxiety overload and our nervous system becomes sensitised.

When this happens small worries and concerns become exaggerated out of all proportion. A headache must mean a tumour, missed heart beats must mean a heart attack is imminent, breathlessness must mean we're about to die. The list of symptoms of health anxiety is endless but they all have one thing in common: they are false.

Sensitised nerves caused by anxiety disorder can make you feel really bad but in fact their power is limited. On its own, health anxiety can't kill you, it can't disable you and it certainly can't send you crazy. It does not have the power to do that but we still go on frightening ourselves half to death ably assisted by Doctor Google who can be relied upon to confirm all our worst fears.

So be reassured that you are in no danger, your death is not imminent and all these worries are caused by the effect too much stress, overwork, loss, disappointment etc is having on your nervous system which is thoroughly exhausted.

Knowing all this may not bring immediate recovery but the reassurance helps you keep a sense of proportion. So next time you Google some symptom don't look for the bit that says "this can be a symptom of serious illness" instead look for the part that says "although this could be serious it's far more likely to be something simple and easily dealt with."

If you haven't already you're strongly advised to talk to your doctor about your worries: in a rare number of cases your anxiety can be due to, say, a thyroid imbalance that can be easily treated with medication. But you can be almost certain that the result of your doctor's scans and blood tests will be that nothing bad was found. It's important to fully accept these diagnosis and the reassurance this brings rather than to go on worrying that "the doctor must have missed something". Do be aware that anxiety is very, very good at imitating real physical illness.

So your undertaker can stand down, arrangements for your funeral are many decades premature. Concentrate your efforts on overcoming the things in your life that are causing you and your nerves so much stress - not constantly scaring yourself about illnesses you dont have. If you stop bombarding your nerves with fear they will in time recover and you will no longer find it necessary to exaggerate small worries into anxiety attacks.