Health anxiety causing issues again

[Lm92]

My health anxiety is raging. For the past couple of days, my upper back has been sore with movement. I don't have any shortness of breath unless I'm panicking about it. I can feel the pain when I move my neck certain ways so I know it's related, but somehow my brain has me convinced that I have blood clots in my lungs. It's making me crazy. I haven't had this much of an issue with my health anxiety flaring up in years. I went to therapy simply because I couldn't stop constantly googling symptoms. I got so much better about it, but here I am back to googling again. My therapist is out of town and not back until Monday, so I'm constantly talking to myself reminding myself that it's just a backache that everyone has from time to time, but the fear persists. Do any of you all have coping mechanisms for when you're legitimately hurting, but your health anxiety is making you think the worst?

[TrustnGod]

Hey Lm92. I’m so sorry to hear about your symptoms. Back pain is such a general symptom and can be caused by so many things so when we experience it, it can be so scary. Have you been lifting anything that you usually don’t? when I’m hurting and my anxiety is making me think it’s something fatal, I first pray, try to reason through it and then I also come on this site to see if anyone has experienced anything similar with their anxiety. It sounds like you’ve probably been carrying some tension in those areas which hasn’t helped your posture and now you’re in pain. Try to think of what you’ve been doing lately and how that may relate to your pain. If you did have blood clots, your symptoms would be far worse by now and you would’ve already have needed to be treated. Just try to logically reason through it. I’m so sorry you’re going through this.

~Lia

[jkl5500]

I strongly recommend that you NEVER Google your symptoms. If you do, your eyes will jump to the worst possible conclusion, and you won't get it out of your head! Take your health concerns to a doctor, and let him or her evaluate you. The odds are that it's much less serious than what your fears are telling you.

[lillyofthevalley37]

The thing that works for me is imagining you have the illness that you fear then try to accept it comes to terms with it see the pros and cons ?

[CatIsMyCopilot in reply to lillyofthevalley37]

Yes, I have done this before too. Of course I at some point convinced myself I had brain cancer, but then I would think that through, like "OK, you have brain cancer. What would a doctor do in that case? They'd put together a long term treatment plan. The doctor might even send you home on the first day with nothing to do yet. He might schedule a follow-up appointment for a few days away. So even in the absolute *worst* case scenario of cancer, panicking about it at 3am is not logical."

To be honest, I don't know if that in and of itself quieted my mind, but I think it did help a bit.

[micaht2013]

I also agree that googling is the worst thing to do, I used to do it all the time, google is going to tell you the worst possible outcome even though it may just be anxiety, sinuses, respiratory infection something that is so common but google ain’t going to tell you that. I hope all gets better.

[Hidden]

Are you under any new stress or is anything happening that is making you feel insecure?