This week’s article is brought to you by Anxiety Guru reader Ashley. She was kind enough to share her story with us and provide a detailed glimpse into the world of health phobia and how she’s learning to cope. – Paul Dooley
I am a Christian. I have three beautiful children, a wonderful handsome husband, and a loving supportive extended family. I am a blessed girl.
I have always considered myself a worrier. But, it was more of a funny thing. Something that made me quirky. To cut right to the beginning of recent events, I’ll just start.
In the beginning…
My husband and I had some friends who were unable to conceive a child on their own. They would need a surrogate to carry their biological embryos.
We decided that I would volunteer to be their surrogate. They agreed and thus our story begins.
After about a year of contracts, lawyers and counselors, we were able to begin doctor appointments.
I began injections, pills, and patches to prepare my body to become pregnant. After a few months, we were ready to do our first transfer.
We transferred two of their embryos into me and waited.
Unfortunately, neither one took. After three months, we began the process again. More injections, patches, and pills. We transferred two more embryos.
This time, I was pregnant! We found out there was one baby with a heartbeat and we were so excited!
At around 8 weeks, we found out the baby had died. The heartbeat was gone and no longer visible on ultrasound. We were devastated. The doctor encouraged me to try to miscarry naturally. So we waited.
Three weeks later, when I began to be in a lot of pain, I went back into the doctor’s office. They did a procedure to try to help things along. This caused me to hemorrhage and I began to bleed a whole lot.
After about 30 minutes of bleeding, I began to get very lightheaded and passed out. I woke up to them calling an ambulance.
My mom was with me as well as my three year old son and my little sister. Everyone was very worried.
Once at the hospital I passed out several more times and had an emergency D & C. My husband came and by the time it was all over and I was headed home, only 8 hours had passed and I had lost 2 liters of blood.
The baby was gone and the miscarriage was over. I rested over the weekend and felt I was getting stronger. Sunday night, I had what I now know was my very first panic attack.
I was in the bathroom (of all places) and began to feel lightheaded and dizzy and my heart started to pound.
I flashed cold-sweat clammy from head to toe and began to cry.
I had no idea what was happening to me. I thought I was having some sort of complication from the surgery. I. Was. WIGGIN. My husband held me until I fell asleep.
I woke up Monday and decided that what happened to me was too scary to deal with. And that I would forget it. Literally pretend that it didn’t happen.
I showered, fixed my hair, did my make-up, got dressed all cute and then proceeded to throw away everything that reminded me of my surrogacy experience.
I threw away maternity clothes, frozen meals people had prepared for me, flowers people had sent me, cards, paperwork, everything.
People who would text me and ask how I was, I wouldn’t respond to. People who reminded me of surrogacy or pregnancy, I defriended from Facebook.
I straight pretended it didn’t happen.
And it worked! Or so I thought. I began to get stronger mentally and physically and moved on. During the next couple months, my son had his third birthday party.
My husband and I started our own business (Crazy, right?).
We began planning and paying for a once-in-a-lifetime super expensive trip to Disney World for our family. We bought a new truck.
I taught Bible study at Vacation Bible School. I started a community organization that promotes shopping locally called the cashMOB.
I planned play dates and parties and summer fun for our kids. I kept a clean house and made dinner nearly every night.
We attended church every Sunday and Wednesday.
I hung out with friends and went on dates with my husband. I was fine, I thought.
Anxiety meets the body
For about 4 weeks leading up to where the hit fit the shan, I had been having weird heart beats that felt like they were in my throat.
But, I just blew it off thinking it was maybe because of this weight loss stuff I had been taking. I stopped taking the weight loss junk, but the “weird beats” kept happening.
They would happen when I was just sitting on the couch watching TV. No exertion, no stress. I also got a fever blister, which I normally get after being stressed out.
But, I didn’t feel stressed. I just kept on truckin’.
The weekend before I broke, my kids were spending the weekend with my parents and my hubby and I were having a rare weekend to ourselves.
We went to dinner and I remember feeling not hungry (which is definitely weird for me).
I realized I hadn’t really eaten anything in a couple days and had hardly noticed. Still, I kept on being me.
We decided to redecorate our kids’ rooms while they were gone to surprise them. I never knew what was happening inside me. Never recognized the warning signs.
Everything changed on Monday, July 7. I took my kids to swimming lessons.
While waiting for a parking spot in the parking lot, someone backed into our car. It was a minor fender bender and everyone was okay.
We got it handled with the police and I got my kids all done with swimming lessons and we headed home.
In the afternoon, while my kids were watching a movie, I had another weird heartbeat, but this time, I flashed clammy-sweaty all over again, got very lightheaded, and began to freak out.
Welcome to cyberchondria
I then committed what I now know to be anxiety no-no number one. I googled my symptoms.
Panic at the disco. I have congestive heart failure. I stew and worry and stew and worry for two days.
Slowly and surely convincing myself that I have a heart problem.
On Wednesday, I went to the doctor. I marched in like one walking the green mile sure I would hear the words that would doom me to heart disease.
After all, I’d done such extensive research the last couple of days and I had every single symptom.
My doctor listened patiently and did an EKG. My heart was fine.
She said I had anxiety and gave me a script for some Zoloft and sent me home. I expected to feel relieved. But it never came.
In the past, if I’d ever freaked out about an illness or injury either for myself or my child.
Once I went to the doctor and found out that the big, scary thing I’d feared was not actually what the problem was, relief would wash over me and I would feel silly for being so irrational and emotional. Where was my relief?
I started the Zoloft, but I grew more and more anxious as the week went on. I decided I felt so bad, that if it wasn’t my heart, it MUST be something else physical.
Because no way could anxiety, a “feeling,” do so much to me. I took the Zoloft for 6 days and then stopped. I decided it was making me feel worse.
I called back into the doctor’s office, she called in something called hydroxyzine.
That did nothing but give me a wicked bad headache. So I quit taking that.
Anxiety research gone wrong
Then the cycle began. After the heart concerns, it changed to cervical or breast cancer.
After all, I’d had all those artificial hormones pumped into me and everyone knows extra hormones cause cancer.
In my Wednesday night class, we had been praying for a friend’s relative that was my age and had breast cancer.
In my head, I replaced her in the story, with myself. Taking her tragedy as my own.
As it happened, I already had my yearly visit to my ob-gyn scheduled for the next week. So I spent the days leading up to that appointment picturing my life with cancer.
Once again, googling every variation of symptoms I happened to be feeling at the moment.
I spent hours in front of the computer desperately searching for something that would convince me that I was healthy. Of course, I found the contrary.
When the day came for my appointment, I was a bundle of nerves, but yet again, resigned to what I was sure was my fate.
As my doctor, who delivered all three of my babies and I trust implicitly, assured me that I was healthy, I began to feel the relief I was waiting for.
He had examined me thoroughly and he told me I could move on from the surrogacy experience.
He said that everything looked normal and that the hormones would have no lasting effect on my body.
I went home with a blossom of hope that maybe this was over.
Nope. I began to have diarrhea frequently and noticed that due to my lack of appetite I was losing weight. For the first time in my life without trying.
It occurred to me one day that my dad’s mom died when he was 13 of colon cancer. Suddenly, I was sure I had that. More googling. More despair.
The next week, I felt something in the back of my throat. I felt it for more than three days in a row. Yep. You guessed it; I diagnosed myself with throat cancer.
My step-dad had just gone through that two years before. I actually went to the ENT over this one. Of course, I’m fine!
During all of this, I forced myself to carry on with my life. My birthday came and went and I pretended to enjoy it, for my family’s sake.
I made sure to make the last few weeks of summer memorable and full of fun for my children.
I kept going to church and visiting with friends and showering and cooking and cleaning and doing what I was supposed to do. It was and still is excruciating.
I had thrown myself into Bible study more than ever before. I read through a book called Calm my Anxious Heart, I spent hours in prayer, I started going to a group called Celebrate Recovery that is similar to AA, except for lots of other issues too.
“Hi, my name is Ashley, I’m a grateful believer in Jesus Christ and I struggle with anxiety.” The whole bit.
I got pedicures, I got a massage, I went to the chiropractor, I started essential oils for peace and tranquility, I tried to sleep longer, make myself eat better, have more sex, deep breathe, anything I could think of.
I started seeing a counselor. I went to her for three sessions. In those sessions, she told me I didn’t have an anxiety problem, I had a faith problem.
She doubted whether I’d ever been truly saved.
She said that by saying my fears out loud, I was challenging Satan to do them to me.
That by saying out loud, I’d never turn from God, I was challenging Satan to try to get me to. I quit going after that one.
She just kept quoting scripture at me. I knew the scripture, but something somewhere wasn’t lining up in my head. Did I believe that God would deliver me in His time?
Oh, yes. Did it hurt to live in it? You bet. I couldn’t, I can’t just sit in this misery.
While at a friend’s house letting our kids play, she told me all about this lady she knew who was our age who had gotten a case of strep throat and hadn’t gotten an antibiotic.
She thought she had healed on her own and carried on with her life. Turns out the infection moved to her heart and now she was in heart failure and was going to die.
She showed me a write up they had done on her in the newspaper. There she was, surrounded by her three children, in a hospital bed there with the fruit and flowers.
And, of course, I put myself in her place. And, boom, we’re back to the mother freakin’ heart concerns.
I stewed and googled on that one for a few days. And then a horrifying thought occurred to me. If there’s really nothing physically wrong with me, then I’m doing this to myself.
Am I going crazy? Like, no joke, fruit loop, for real crazy? Is this what it feels like? I then I began to picture it. My kids having to come visit me in the loony bin.
I got stuck here for a week, I think. This one was terrifying.
One evening I went to a rodeo with my family. While I was there I pointed at something with my left hand and noticed that my left hand was shaking. Like a tremor.
So I began to compare my left hand to my right in various positions.
Has my left hand always been shakier than my right? Wait, is that weakness in my left hand and arm? I spent the next couple of days looking at my hands. Comparing them to each other.
And staring at other people’s hands. Do theirs shake more than mine? Suddenly, something scary snapped into place in my brain.
Muscle twitches. I’d had them for years. I’d never really worried about them before, they were minor.
But now, combined with the tremor, that was there sometimes and not there sometimes and the dizziness that I thought I’d been feeling… I should google that. HUGE MISTAKE! I have ALS, or if I’m lucky, Parkinson’s or MS.
The more I thought about the twitches, the more I got. In new places that had never twitched before and harder, longer lasting twitches. When I focused on the twitches, they got worse.
When I focused on the tremor, it got worse. When I focused on the dizziness, it got worse.
I had a check-up appointment already scheduled with my doctor the next week. So I consumed myself in “research.”
After all, I needed to know what to expect. When the day of my appointment came, I could see a pattern developing.
I would go in expecting the worst and come out with a “you’re fine.” So I was about 50/50 hope and dread.
When I asked if the twitches, shaking hands and dizziness were normal for someone having high levels of anxiety, she replied, ‘what’s normal?’ and shrugged.
She then rolled her eyes at me, told me ‘I was on a roll today,’ and asked ‘if I’d had too much caffeine today.’
She then said she’d refer me to a neurologist. Wait. What? Do I need to go to a neurologist? If I do, then it must be BAD! Oooohhh SNAP!
I was beyond worried. When I told my mom what had happened at the appointment, she asked me to come to her house about an hour away. I went the next day and she made me an appointment with her doctor.
He was my Sunday school teacher when I was younger and I trusted him very much. She went with me to the appointment where I gave him the abridged version of my story.
He never examined me but listened patiently and suggested Buspar with Xanax for some temporary ‘band-aid’ relief.
I practically drag-raced to the pharmacy. I was so excited to get some relief even if it was temporary.
I was so disappointed. I felt nothing. I called my mom’s doctor to tell them.
They said to take two Xanax. I still felt nothing. I was so looking forward to the relief! There was none for me. I started the Buspar and was hopeful that it would work.
Though, I knew that it wouldn’t be immediate. I made an appointment with a new counselor.
During that appointment, I knew this would be a different experience than with my previous counselor. This lady seemed to have some idea of how to teach me to help myself.
But she said, that we needed to ‘get my nails out of the ceiling’ before we began to work on that.
She said the Buspar was a great idea and wanted to see me after I’d been on the Buspar for two weeks.
Once again, I was sent home still stuck in my bajiggity-ness with no way that I knew of to get out.
I was still convinced I had some horrible neuro-muscular disease. Twitching, tremors and dizziness were at fever pitch. In fact the dizziness was worse since starting the Buspar.
I read on the sheet that came with it that dizziness was a common side effect, but still I was convinced that worsening dizziness meant a progressing disease.
It was around this time that Robin Williams committed suicide. Apparently he had struggled with depression for decades. Though I’d never had suicidal thoughts at all, I imagined my life as his might have been.
Consumed with terrible thoughts in my head while forcing myself to carry on a seemingly normal life, until one day, unable to take it anymore.
The next day, I got on Facebook and up in the corner where it shows what’s trending, I read this, “Robin Williams’ wife reveals he had Parkinson’s Disease.” I. Nearly. Expire.
After I pulled myself together, I called my husband at work and asked him to change my Facebook password and not tell me what it was.
I removed the app from my phone. I also swore to myself I would never EVER google my symptoms again. But, you know what they say about best laid plans.
I joined Gold’s Gym. Maybe I’ll give working out a try. I worked out for an hour and a half 4-5 days a week. After a lot of cardio, the shaking was worse which freaked me out.
Even though I knew that in previous workout experiences, I get pretty shaky for a while afterward.
I just kept going day to day filled with worry over my health while trying to hide it and lead a normal life.
It was around this time that things began to shift ever so slightly. Remember when I said I wouldn’t google my symptoms?
Yeah, that didn’t stick for long. I typed in tremors, muscle twitches, dizziness and anxiety.
One of the things it pulled up was an article called 10 most hated anxiety symptoms. It was on a website called Anxiety Guru.
This website began to change the way I looked at what was happening to me.
I spent hours reading and listening to pod casts. I began to feel like maybe, just maybe this WAS all anxiety.
Building a solution
And I began to formulate a plan on how to dig out.
I was feeling more normal than I’d felt in so long. Not quite back to myself, but on the way maybe? I decided I was on my way out of this until Sunday at church.
I was volunteering in the nursery when my right bicep and tricep began to jump and twitch like never before.
It was visible to not only me but to other people. It was jumping hard. It lasted for nearly 8 hours. The next day the back of my right calf began to buzz on and off for two days.
Still I worked out and still I carried on with life, but more convinced than ever that there was something majorly wrong with me.
On Thursday the neurologist office called and said they had a cancelation the next day and would I like to take the spot. I agreed.
My mom came with me to the appointment. The doctor was beyond everything I had prayed for. He was paternal and understanding and very comforting.
He examined me and did a series of reflex tests and asked me to do various things like touch my nose.
He had me hold my hands out to see the tremor I was talking about and wouldn’t you know it, they were rock steady.
He assured me I did not have ALS and bet me a million dollars that I had googled it, even though I did not mention that part. I told him he was right.
He told me that next time I had the urge to google my symptoms; instead he wanted me to watch internet porn.
You should have seen my mom’s face! He said of course he was joking, but that he had gotten my attention.
And that now every time I went to search for my symptoms, I would remember when he told me to watch porn and I would remember him telling me I was just fine.
I left feeling nearly buoyant. I came home determined to tackle my anxiety problem and move on with my life.
I knew from reading on the AG site, that it wouldn’t be an easy fix, but I felt ready to get started.
I listened to some more pod casts on ways to face and accept my anxiety. I began writing this story I am typing now.
I woke up today feeling excited to begin this new chapter in my story. The healing part.
But, instead I found myself once again focused on symptoms.
Today while making cookies for my family as well as some neighborhood boys who were practicing football in our front yard, my left arm and hand began to tremor pretty bad.
The more I focused on it and tried to make it stop, the worse it got. I started wondering if the neurologist had seen it doing what it was doing now, would he have still given me the all clear? Should I make another appointment?
Call his office? I probably do have something horrible…
I read and listened to a pod cast on the AG site about hypochondriasis. Is that what I have? What I am? If so, it sucks. Bad.
So now I’m pissed off. At myself. At everything. Will I ever be able to get past this? Will I ever stop driving myself crazy with what ifs?
Did this stem from the miscarriage experience? Is it residual post-partum hormones?
Is this something separate? I firmly believe this will not last forever. It can’t. It’s too much. I am exhausted.
I feel God drawing me closer to Him though this whole thing and for that, I am grateful.
I’m still deep in Bible study, still taking Buspar twice a day, still practicing deep breathing, still planning on meeting with the counselor, still learning about anxiety on AG.net.
I’m still twitching, still tremoring, still dizzy, still going through the motions of my life, still going to Celebrate Recovery, still using oils, still drinking calming tea, still off caffeine.
I’d do just about anything to get above this junk. Maybe naked yoga on a mountain top somewhere… we’ll see.
Do you have a story that you want to share on AG? If so, email Paul at info@anxietyguru.net.
Thank you for sharing your story Ashley. The detail you provided was really impressive. I hope it helps give people insight into what folks go through when they face a serious health phobia.
Amazingly familiar story. Please try this when you feel dizzy. It works like a charm (I forget where I learned this). Sit on the edge of the bed and throw a few pillows behind you even with where your shoulders should land. With your feet on the floor, lay back with your shoulders on the pillows and your head hanging off them. Turn your head toward the side that causes the most dizziness for a count of thirty seconds. Quickly shift to the opposite side hanging your head down from the pillows for a count of thirty seconds. The final step is to repeat the thirty second count on the first side. Then sit up. Dizziness will be gone.
BTW, Paul miss your podcasts. As Ashley can attest to, some of us need your calming voice to get through our crises days.
Hi Ashley,
I am very sorry to hear of your struggles. I myself have been suffering from health anxiety for some time since a bit of a meltdown I had following the onset of “missed” heartbeats and panic attacks – for many weeks I believed I was on the verge of a fatal heart attack. Now I am still struggling, but I am certainly I am on an upward trajectory.
I’m sure everyone’s battle with anxiety is different, and I am sure the route out is similarly unique to each person. I am not qualified to offer and advice other than as an anxiety sufferer myself, but I have found that there is a wealth of self-help information out there that can help with: understanding what is happening to you, knowing that you are not alone and that there are many others dealing with the same thing, and crucially realising that there is a road to recovery and how to start down that road. Paul recommends a number of really helpful books in his post “7 Essential Books That Will Transform Your Anxious Life”, however, I have found “Overcoming Health Anxiety”
by Rob Willson and David Veale a particularly good book for health anxiety. Based on your story I would really recommend getting a copy of this and giving it a read. There is something about opening a book like this and finding that it seems that you are reading about yourself that helps with beginning to accept your problem as health anxiety, so allowing you to make a start on overcoming it.
I hope this helps and in either case that you being to find your way to recovery soon.
Hey guys!
Thanks for reading my story. I wish I could say I’m all better now. But, the truth is I am not.
Looking forward to the day when I feel like myself again. Thanks for all the tips!
Hi Ashley! Thank you for sharing your story. I can relate to the trauma that kick started your anxiegy as mine started following near fatal anaphylaxis (I have since had to live with s life threatening allergy). If I may, I would just like to offer you a few words which I hope may help. Firstly,I think as your anxiety is fairly new (I know it doesn’t seem so, but some folk suffer for years without even realising it IS anxiety), that you will be able to make a good recovery. In order to get on the right track, I think it is very important that you lock into the right help as soon as possible, and this would be to find yourself a qualified therapist in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. This is the most proven succesful treatment for anxiety (as I am sure Paul will agree). I understand that you tried counselling with a religious focus before, but I really think this could be more unhelpful than helpful. I am glad that you have your faith as a guide and comfort, but I would advise that you keep it seperate from treating your anxiety. I am very encouraged that you are out and about and engaging with the world still – thats great even though you often have to take anxiety along for the ride. Never forget that isolation breeds anxiety – so keep on keepin’ on, don’t let it stop you from going where you want to go or doing what you want to do. Now this is not always going to be easy – but you can do it I promise and by not giving into the feelings of anxiety, that bully is pretty much going to get tired and start slinking off into the backgroung (seriously – think of anxiety as a pathetic bully – anxiety HATES this, and it helps)! My last word is on physical symptoms – oh yeah!!!! Anxiety causes some pretty freaky stuff to go on in your body to try to scare the hell out of you! Palpitations, light headedness, muscle twitches (I still get those daily), night sweats, feelings of unreality, I could go on and on. These feelings are not going to hurt you, no matter how bad they may feel. This is the kind of work that a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist will do with you to help you find coping strategies for dealing with your anxiety and how to find the way back to a happier more peaceful life without anxiety. Or – and I think you really might like this idea – why not book coaching directly with Paul? As you are in the US (I am in UK), this is a wonderful opportunity. I would have booked Paul in a heartbeat if I lived your side of the pond! Wishing you all the best, Ashley – and remember you are not alone. You can do this – you can recover. Hugs from Scotland!
MARIE! How encouraging! I so appreciate everyone who reads my story and leaves their thoughts. I think you are right. Coaching is my next step as soon as I can drum up some extra money!
It helps to know that people can relate to my story and experiences. Helps me to not feel so alone!
Hey Ashley,
What a great article! As for many that have read it- it resonates with me. I’ve been living with health anxiety after an “out of the blue” panic attack 5 months ago. Everyday I wake up thinking its my last day and every symptom is deadly. It’s exhausting, I know. Getting off caffeine, healthier diet, meditation, breathing exercises and sheer will to be around for my kids is getting me trough the day. You are definitely not alone. Please feel free to drop a line and correspond with me. I found a link to Dr. Claire Weekes audio book and it, along with Pauls podcast are my daily companions. Here it is for you and any of Paul’s readers.
https://www.junior-anxiety-depression-exchange.org.uk/relax.html
Enjoy! All the best to you
– Patrice
Thanks so much for sharing your story. I have dealt with health anxiety for probably 20 years now. I finally found a wonderful counselor who uses EFT and EMDR, and I am slowly coming out of it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t Google symptoms, or imagine the worse. It just means that I can recognize that it’s the anxiety talking. I am also working with an energy healer who is helping me recognize patterns in my life.
Don’t give up working with whoever you can find a connection with. I am off my anxiety meds for about a year.
There is light at the end of the tunnel!
Ashley,
Very familiar story. Mine started with a double blow: a work injury that I thought for sure was a heart problem (turned out to be inflammation of the joints around the rib cage), and diagnosis of Barrett’s Esophagus (low level, no pre-cancerous changes and perfectly manageable so long as reflux is manageable).
Then 2009 I had crazy chest symptoms (pain/discomfort/couldn’t breath) and a CT scan showed an aortic dissection. Needed heart surgery immediately. Except that I didn’t – there was nothing wrong, it was an “artifact” on the CT scan. They saw once they did the transesophageal ultrasound that there was no damage at all to my heart. Had a cath the next day. Stress tests, EKGs, etc. all came back fine. But do you think all that convinced me I’m fine? To this day, I still have episodes (a day, a week…) with erratic heartbeats that of course worsen when I obsess over them. Right up in my throat at times, too. Last had an EKG earlier this year that was also fine. Those PVCs, PACs, and “flutters” get me every time.
You experienced a terrible trauma and it seems like it stuck with you. I think we all might have that in common, but we can’t always pinpoint what it was. Hang in there. And remember to keep moving forward. I don’t think there is a true sense of “going back” to how we were. You can’t unsee or unfeel these things. But what we can do is go forward and become something better, and stronger, than we were before.
Dear Ashley, Your post was so timely as I have been going through similar experience..Came from Dr. Today and was put on Lorazapan just for a month to get me through the shaking, nausea and all the other health problems I am going through..I have made up my mind no matter how rough it gets that I continue to go to exercise class, go to church and try to be normal even though I feel as abnormal as can be.I will pray for your recovery and ask for your prayers also…Claudia Hopkins
Ashley…
Thank you so much for sharing!!! At one point I couldn’t help but think you were telling my exact story! I have had health anxiety since October 2009. I had my first panic attack (after dealing with an unbelievable amount of stress) and it has been a roller coaster ever since. I have good and bad days…and good and bad months. Being alone is hard for me. I always feel better when someone is with me; I can’t wait for the day when I can go somewhere alone and not worry about something terrible happening to me. I have tried many of the same treatments and have somehow always found myself right back in the mix of negative thoughts and self diagnosing!! I have “had” all your same illnesses…more times than once. It’s hard. It’s hard to want so bad to be “normal” again. The most frustrating thing for me is just when I realize that I am feeling good…I get smacked in the face with palpitations or hyperventilation or dizziness. If I think it…it happens. I know one day I will learn how to let it all go and will be able to come and go without the worry. Until then I pray hard and often and try to remind myself, when those awful sensations set in that they are harmless and I am stronger than they are. Best of luck to you. Praying for you!!!
YOU GUYS! I can’t tell you how encouraging you all are to me. So thankful to Paul for creating this site for us all to be able to connect.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to accept that what I have a health anxiety and not done terminal illness. I’ve done as Paul suggests and went and had a full work up. Bloodwork and tests. I’m fine! Even been told by a counselor that I do, on fact, have health anxiety.
Why then do I still not believe it? Where do the doubts come from? I’m normally pretty rational. Not anymore!!
So thankful for all of you taking the time to read my story and leave your comments!
Hi Ashley 🙂 When reading your story I found myself say “yes” to a lot of your symptoms. It is so annoying to realise that they all come from our own thoughts! I have actually been through it all and now have come out the other side. I won’t say I have recovered, I will say I am work in progress. When going through my bad days I tried everything, doctors, counsellors, psychologist, books, groups, google lol looking for a miracle cure, of course there isn’t one. I have finally realised there is only one person who can help me and that’s me! I recommend listening or reading Dr Clair Weekes, The secret, meditation and Anxiety Guru. Good luck. You can get past this xxx
Thank you so much for sharing! Other than the surrogacy (mine started after the birth of my first child) I could have written this myself! It feels terrible while you are living through it and it feels like it will last forever but things do get better!
Ashley-
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I could have written this myself. I can’t believe how similar our stories are. I had my first panic attack after my daughter was sent to the NICU (in a different city) after a problematic labor. And, other than that difference, our stories parallel each other. My symptoms (and the horrible diseases that I believed that I had) are the same. I spent way too much time with webMD. I waited almost two years before I decided that I could not deal with the situation anymore and sought counseling. Initially I was given an antidepressant to take daily and Ativan to take as needed for panic attacks. I did Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with a therapist and we also processed the trauma that occurred with the birth of my daughter. I completed therapy about a year and a half ago. The therapist promised that if I needed her I could come back and see her anytime. I haven’t been back yet!! It has taken me time and there are times when I must go back to our CBT exercises to revisit but I feel like I am finally on the other side. Sure, anxiety creeps back in, maybe for days at a time, but it doesn’t stay. I’m currently working with my doctor to wean off my antidepressant because I want to see if I can manage without medication. If I can’t, I’ll go back on. All of this to say, I’ve been there. I know it feels like it won’t end. Just keep trucking along and it will. You have to find what works for YOU. I think CBT and medication helped get me started. Now, I think yoga, meditation, exercise and NO WEBMD will keep me going. I wish you all the best in your journey to find the right mix for you. I, like you, love what Paul is doing and the community that he has built. If you ever need anything, please reach out. I would be happy to lend an ear!
Ashley,
This is the first comment I have ever left on the Internet. I thank you for sharing this and I want to say how truly I can relate.
I have had anxiety attckes off and on over the last 25 years and managed like most people do. Then in 2011 I found myself in Afghanistan working with the Marines in a combat zone. I am not in the military. I’d done all the usual signing away of liability up to and including agreeing that I’d be financially responsible for shipping my own body home if need be. (!) As a member of the media I have been in wars before but this time was much worse.every day someone would write my blood type on my body armor right on my chest as a precaution for if I was hurt. At some point during a patrol I became dehydrated and ended up in a medic tent. They told me I had very high blood pressure and should get checked out when back home. Never had high BP before.Fine. I finished my work and returned home. I did get a cardio work up and was declared fine. They said the BP was temporary and stress related but was all good now. The doc actually said “you’re a healthy guy. Go enjoy life!”
2 weeks later, the day before thanksgiving, he called me and said I needed emergency heart surgery. Apparently the apex of my heart was failing and he’d just seen it on the imagery. But I had to wait 5 days for a good surgeon. They all go away at that time of year. So with this info I silently had my whole family over for 4 days and cooked for them and never said a thing.
For the sake of brevity I’ll skip forward here since I’m sure you can imagine my anxiety level.
I had the cath procedure with no drugs at all wide awake. I’d decided I wanted to keep an eye on these guys this time. In the end…same as another commenter here…it had been an “artifact” on the image. My heart is oriented more vertically than some so it looked odd in the image. I asked…”is that more common in tall people? he said “oh yeah really normal in a tall person. I said I’m 6’4” he said oh really? I’ve never seen you standing up!
The entire medical team said they only hope they look like me on the inside. My heart was perfect. The surgeon said “whatever you have been doing keep doing it!”
Happy ending right? Nope. Here I am years later. Multiple check ups later. Always being declared healthy. But I worry about my heart always. No matter what odd sensation I feel it must be my heart. My anxiety causes chest tightness and short breath. Always has. Only change is my brain now declares it heart problems and I feel crazed.
So if you read all this I will thank you again because you have me thinking I might go ahead and see a therapist. After all I have survived in life I’m afraid of the one thing that probably won’t kill me. Anxiety is the worst.
All my best to you. Please get better soon.
Nick
Thanks so much for the comments, guys. I can’t tell you how much it helps to read them and know I’m not alone. I check back here often to see if I have any new comments!
Can we all just say, ANXIETY SUCKS!
I have been doing better then not so great and back and forth. Paul’s podcasts are always playing while I clean house or drive. They help me so much.
Megan, I appreciate your story and you sharing it with me!
I feel a kindred spirit in all of you that suffer with health anxiety like me and want you all to know I think about and pray for you often.
Nick, thanks so much for your comment. What a story you have! I can nearly feel what you must have been feeling over that thanksgiving holiday. Hosting company and trying to be normal whilst screaming on the inside. What a nightmare!!
I’m so pleased you decided to comment. And yes! I think counseling or therapy is such a great idea. This new thing Paul is starting sounds cool too! The webinar/coaching he is offering. Might be worth some investigation.
I can’t tell you what it means to me read comments like yours and know, once again, that there are people out there like me. I pray for you all every day.
Hi Ashley, I too could have written this post. My anxiety began after the birth of my third. I began having terrible twitches all over my body. I looked up my symptoms and was convinced I was dying and leaving my children without a mother. I did all the neurological testing too but that didn’t relieve my fears. I had everything to be grateful for but was so scared. Its been a long journey and I’m still working on recovering from this. Even down to the robin Williams scare, I can relate to that fear. I feel I’m fearful of everything, but mostly something going wrong with my health and not being there for my kids is my underlying fear. I’ve had quite a bit of trauma in my family that reinforces this and ptsd from it. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Its such a relief to know the details because I can relate to it so intimately and it takes some of the power away from it. My postpartum anxiety and depression started two years ago and I feel its gotten better with medication and therapy, but I’m not fully recovered. Its still a work in progress and I have flare ups where an old fear will resurface and again cause me great distress. Hang in there, we’ll keep working at this.
You constantly look for a reason why you feel like this its…it’s your adrenalin!!!!!
Your edginess..fast thinking ..tremors…it’s adrealin…you cause it by what you say to yourself !!!
Learn to acknowledge your worry voice …it lies. ..it exaggerates. …once you know…you ..change your inner dialog..
You stop squirting adrealin..and you allow your body…to chemically balance itself..serotonin…will cone back to normal ..
Serotonin will have you relax
Remember you were born like this accept it….but remember you have a choice how to react to what if scenarios ..
It’s not easy in the beginning but you must use the tools necessary to be cured
Remember…when anxiety is gone …symptoms are gone !!!
Stop googling the Internet !!!!
Thank you so much for writing this article. I just stumbled upon this website today as I am experiencing some anxiety. I too Google search way to much about symptoms. My anxiety started back in 2013 when my husband was deployed. I was feeling weird and shaky so I went to my doctor who said my thyroid levels were too high-I have had hypothyroidism since 2005. He then told me to stop taking my synthroid and we would re-evaluate in a few weeks with blood work. Well that’s when it all started-my body was going crazy from stopping the medication-heart palpitations, racing heart, hot and cold sweats, nausea, diarrhea, lightheaded, dizziness, chest pains, ect. I felt like I was going to die! Went to the ER several times and eventually got back on my synthroid medication. After that things got a bit better but not much. I was always worrying every time I felt a small pain or weird feeling in my chest. I felt like I was always going to the doctor-I got an overwhelming feeling like I couldn’t breathe the right way. Long story short-I had multiple EKG’s, wore a holster monitor, chest xrays, cat scan of my chest, and even a brain MRI-all fine. When my husband got back home I was fine for a bit until I started getting the palpitations and chest pains again then I decided to start Paxil-I was on that for about 8 months then weaned myself off of them thinking I would be fine now that my thyroid levels were good and my husband was back home. Things weren’t ok for too long-I started getting lightheaded and palpitations again and now I’m back where I was a few years ago. I too get triggered when I am by myself with my toddler thinking whats gonna happen if I pass out? Will he know what to do? What if I’m having a heart attack? I have been to the ER twice in the past few months thinking that’s what was wrong. It seems anxiety is back to get me! My doctor has been trying acupuncture on me which seems to work a little but I’m not convinced that will be the answer. I feel helpless a lot-my husband thinks I’m crazy and he gets annoyed by hearing me complain. From what I have read on this site it seems to be helping hearing other peoples stories. I also still have my lorzepam from a few years ago I keep for times I can’t deal. Thanks to everyone who has shared their story-it’s nice to hear familiar stories.
Thank you for sharing your story. I have had the weird heartbeat in the throat, then tightness and a lump in my throat and went to the ENT (I even asked him if I had throat cancer and he laughed and said “No, you do not have throat cancer” and I STILL worried about it after that) and I’ve convinced myself I have every disease. Or that I’m losing my mind or going to have a mental break and just snap, you name it. But, as your story shows, it’s all anxiety! And that’s actually a very calming thought to me. When I ruminate on terrible thoughts, I try to catch myself and say “I just have bad anxiety. None of that is real.” And it does help. Thanks for sharing.
Id love to hear an update on Ashley!
Hey, fellow anxiety friends! Just wanted to pop in to say that I am so much better. I am writing an update to my article and hope to have it sent to Paul in the next couple weeks.
But until then, if you are reading this and you are where I was, PLEASE KNOW it can get better. I did coaching sessions with Paul and they helped immensely.
Hear my voice, anxious friends, you really are going to be okay like Paul always says.
More soon. Much love and calm thoughts for you all.
Ashley so happy to hear. Can’t wait for the update!!
Since February, I estimate I’ve seen 13 doctors. Last week, I saw two in one day. I’ve had two biopsies including one in a place where the sun don’t shine. I’ll tell you how they numb you for THAT one some day over a drink. I’ve missed work and this month, for the first time, I’m going to be late on my rent because I spent so much money on doctors.
I AM YOU.
Down to swearing up and down you’ll never, EVER Google again. I did so good with that today. Then BOOM 8 p.m. – right after meditation – “what if this infection I have doesn’t go away???”
Over the years I’ve “had” ovarian, cervical and uterine c-word; heart troubles (I wore a freakin’ holter monitor behind THAT one); melanoma of the vulva, toes, toe nails, finger nails, face, back and some other place (did I mention I’m BLACK…); herpes (I finally tested negative for both types after avoiding the test for 16 years); oral c-word; colon c-word (do NOT have an elective colonoscopy); going blind; spinal meningitis; and the piece de resistance – the time I thought I would fail a drug test because someone was smoking weed 100 feet away from me in a park. Oh and hantavirus. And rabies. I wish I was being funny.
This doesn’t include the HIV thing. That’s an entire post in itself. Let’s just say after six tests in a month, you s tart running out of test sites…
The worst part of it is when you just KNOW you beat it this time … then you give in and Google. It makes you feel like effit man – I’m always going to fail.
But my therapist says you can only fail if you tried. Keep pushing. It’s all we can do.
Ashley,
Thank you so much for your story. I got a stomach bug last weekend and am on day 7 of nausea and not feeling well. I have googled this and the Internet can be helpful but also terrifying. Reading your post was so calming to remember I am not alone, and get off google, try to rest, and let my body heal.
Sarah
Oh Goodness, there are so many others! My health anxiety started when I was very tiny. My grandmother, who I loved deeply, died from Lung cancer.
It was the custom in Waterford, (Eire) in those days to keep the deceased in the house for a viewing. My grandmother was laid on the bloody coffetable in her coffin….my Mama made me kiss her goodbye. She smelled weird. She looked weird. I still have nightmares, and I’m 50 now.
I started to worry that what happened to Grandma would happen to me. And there were so many varieties of cancer! I feel I have ‘had’ them all.
It didn’t help that I became a nurse. It was a common career choice for girls in Ireland. I didn’t know what to do, my sister was a nurse, she said she’d have a word, and got me in to start my training – it was the worst possible career choice.
So many horrors. So many names etched on my memory by their owners suffering.
I was an anxious, introverted, imaginative and very creative kid…nursing was awful for me, but I battled on with it for years.
I escaped in the end but not before dreadful psychological damage was done.
Once, I convinced myself that I had an inoperable tumor in my abdomen…(of course I’d been feeling for one) and I tensed my muscles so hard when I felt around that my whole belly felt rock hard. My mind quickly translated this into a dreadful tumor.
I’d recently been horrified by some poor soul who had been the subject of what they called an ‘open and close’.
When the patient was opened up in the OR, they were so full of cancer they could nothing, and had to be closed up with nothing to be done.
I had a field day on womens surgical….my poor breasts were black and blue from my frantic BSE’s. I’d do the exam, all good, find nothing, yay.
Only I couldn’t leave there. Had to check again. and again, and again,and again….until I found something. I would not stop until I found something. Full blown panic attack ensued. It was a rib.
I still struggle horribly with BSE. I only have to think ‘ I must do my BSE’ to have a panic attack just at the thought of it. I go to church first to plead with Our lady that it will be fine, that I will not find anything.
I can’t tell you how Ive suffered. Oh! I have never had a mamo in my life. I just don’t think my poor heart could take it.
Right now, its pancreatic cancer I’m freaking over. Ive had terrible wind for the last two weeks…I don’t know if it is because I have recently gone vegan but the wind is driving me crazy. Or is it wind? Ive noticed a backache on exertion, and funny feeling bubbling under my ribs…its skitters around, yesterday it was in my left Illiac fossa (Ovarian cancer!) today its under my ribs (Pancreatic cancer).
As I half joke around, I can hear someone telling my story in the future…..’poor woman, she had it all along…”
Oh dreadful curse is this malady!
I have never taken any drugs for it, as I have very little faith in them or Doctors in general. I find the further away I stay from anything medical, the better I feel. I don’t visit people in hospital, I never have any screening. I only have to look at a BP cuff to feel mine shooting through the roof.
I have not seen a doctor for years now… thats how I control it, by staying away. I’m not one of these people who demand lots of tests, I just avoid it all, God help me!
God bless all of us who fight this thing.
Ashley – I’ve never commented on a blog before, but your post moved me to tears. I’ve been through EVERY experience and fear and symptom you’ve had. Every single one. Uncannily. And reassuringly, too.
Thank you for telling your story so honestly and with a great sense of wry humor!!!
This article was life changing for me. After my first baby I had some things that made me FLIP (weakness in wrist, tingling on face, crazy body shakes and tremors) but they passed and I bounced back. But THEN I had a SECOND baby. At 4 months on the dot my thyroid bottomed out and I showed signs of thyroidits. Should be encouraging even though to this day (my daughter is 18 months old) I still have symptoms that come and go, loads of paranoi and fear of diseases that you mentioned. I read this weeping and laughing intermittently. You have no idea how your story has been an eye-opener for me. I continue on my thyroid bioidentical hormone, homeopathy, loads of minerals, iodine, vitamins, good salts, etc to replete my system. I’m still nursing and I know I’m severely sleep deprived. Doesn’t change the fact that when I wake up and my hands are tingly I think it is all going to end. Thank you for your honesty. One commenter here said anxiety loves isolation and that is the best thing I have discovered for a “cure.” When I reach out to my dear friends, I always turn my day around. When I suffer through, I suffer. I have hope that I will be all the way better and you will too!
Ashley, like everyone else, reading your story really helped me out more than you know! Im two and a half months postpartum and had a bad recovery, couldn’t stand up after labor, used a walker for a week…then the anxiety and hypochondria set in. I went from blood clot, to PE to congestive heart failure, I had a catheter inserted in hospital for night since I couldn’t get up to use bathroom and I was convinced my urethra was damaged and bleeding, went to ER, nothing. I had all kinds of weird feelings after labor, tingling in legs, face, vertigo. I am going to physical therapy now for pelvic pain so doing better with that. Still get anxiety swearing something is wrong with me..yes I totally now think MS also!!! I understand this is probably all mental but I know what a struggle it is to find that peace. I pray that you and everyone on here and those who come across this site looking for comfort find it and start to win the battle with anxiety!!
Hi Ashley – It truly did me a world of good to read your story. I have suffered with health anxiety for as long as I can remember. I always tell myself that my anxiety is far worse than anyone else because my symptoms are unexplainable. The symptoms such as; trouble breathing, racing hearts, sweaty palms can all be traced to anxiety. I view my symptoms as much more scarier and therefore, should be more alarmed than the average worrier. My symptoms include itchy, burning glands, pain around my ribs, severe arm pain, etc. If I went to the doctor every time I hurt; I would go at least once a week. I used to seek reassurance a lot. Now, I understand, that complete reassurance is not possible. I need to rely on my faith. I get yearly checkups and blood work and have to trust that God will get me the help I need if something is truly wrong. I’ve tried a rainbow of meds (nothing as worked so far), I do attend counseling, and that by far, has been my biggest tool in combating this monster.
You truly encouraged me when you talked about continuing to live, such as: baking cookies, dressing cute, cooking, etc. My health anxiety puts me in a shell and it’s hard to continue with everyday life. It affects my appearance, my role as a wife and as a mother. Perhaps, I’ll learn something on this journey and find a little relief, such as your story. Thanks!! 🙂
This just helped like you would not believe.. My story is literally almost identical to this except for a few small changes.. I did hemorrhage, but it was due to my daughters birth. I had a D&C two weeks ago for a miscarriage, and i also have all of the “well i have this disease, no doctors are right, im dead no matter what”.. I hope i can atleast get to the point Ashley got to where i can atleast do things that are somewhat normal of my once normal hectic schedule.. I used to be at the park daily for example, and now i havent gone there in a year over dread of dropping dead on a trail.. I hope you (Ashley) and everyone else finds a way to overcome their issues.. Atleast were not alone though!
Sandra, today’s a bad day for me. Most days I can battle my way through this health anxiety that I have. I have learned a lot over the last two years about anxiety and have used it to walk in the general direction of being okay. Today, I let it wash over me. It’s miserable. I’ll be more positive tomorrow, but today, if I’m honest, I hate the way I am. I haven’t had a comment in quite a while, but I checked back today and I saw yours. Thank you for being brave enough to write a small bit of your story. It so helps to know we’re not alone. I’m so sorry for everything you’ve gone through.
Your story is amazing in how similar it is to myself in many respects and it definitely helped me to hear it. For me my HA started 3 years ago when a terrible bout of stomach pains and abdominal cramping that lasted for nearly 2 months had me convinced I had some kind of gastro cancer. For me colon cancer runs in my family and the fear it might be my turn basically became my trigger and I have not been the same since then. Eventually the tests cleared my colon cancer concerns and they said it was IBS, but sadly that wasn’t the end. By the end of that year I started having unusual groin pain that would sometimes switch to my tailbone for no apparent reason. They never happened at the same time, but one or the other was always present.
Eventually those pains faded but were quickly replaced by headaches, dizziness and lightheadedness. They eventually sent me to an eye doctor where it was found I needed mildly corrective glasses for my left eye, but also had pretty substantial binocular vision that they said was likely the reason for my headaches. My doctor also begrudgingly scheduled a brain MRI for me which came back completely clear. Of course, by then I’d moved on to a chronic sore throat I was convinced was throat cancer coupled with another bout of gastro issues that also gave rise to fears of colon cancer yet again. My anxiety got so severe they put me on a 72-hour hold as they feared I may be a danger to myself. I was out in 48-hours and honestly I don’t see how those holds do anyone any good ever, and as such my fears raged on. I eventually got my regular tests for throat and colon issues (since it runs in my family I’m tested every 18 months), and they came out clear again. My throat issues continued for some time, as well as some bouts of eczema, but I was really starting to improve.
Then came this summer. At the end of May I started experiencing back pains coupled with twitching. Similarly to you I’ve had twitching as long as I can remember, but I still wondered if they were related and so I made that big mistake and visited Dr.Google. Sure enough, the neurological disease fears came washing over me and I have not had a day since then where they haven’t been foremost on my mind. Even after they found some spinal problems and a C7 impingement that they said accounts for my symptoms I still can’t shake that underlying fear that it could still be something far worse and far more sinister. It doesn’t help that such an impingement is treated with time and physical therapy so my symptoms still persist as I work through the treatment, which really doesn’t help matters at all. Similar to you I notice every twitch, overanalyze every movement my body makes, every breath I take, and it is just driving me to absolute madness. The rational side of my mind knows this is all likely a result of the combination of the nerve impingement and anxiety but the reactionary side of my mind just can’t let go of the fears of what Dr.Google implanted in to my mind.
It’s great to hear that there are others out there feeling similar things and dealing with similar situations. Sometimes I feel so alone as if no one truly understand me, and frankly, I’m not sure any of them do. I don’t see how anyone who hasn’t dealt with this irrational fear for our health can ever understand the horrible things it does to us. I’m in therapy once a week, and it helps, but it just hasn’t been enough to truly help me get over my fears. It just helps to have someone really listen, but in the end listening can only do so much.
Tjb113… I’m so sorry for everything you’re going through! I’ve had a lot of people say that all our stories are so similar. In learning about anxiety, I think that’s because we all basically do the same thing. Just different variations. Different diseases we worry about at different times. They just cycle through. Even though we know what’s happening, in the moment we’re so scared and nothing makes sense. Paul has SO MUCH helpful information. He has a podcast about how we tend to favor early information, like stuff we may read on Google. He also has one about rational/emotional disconnect that makes so much sense. And please read or listen to everything he’s written on hypochondriasis and cyberchondria. When I was reading all that and learning, I found that I was basically checking off step-by-step boxes of like “how to be a hypochondriac.” Haha! I’m like basically a text book case. And if all of you are similar to me, then you are too. I find that comforting. To know exactly what I’ve been through, and am going through, is what people with hypochondriasis go through. It’s a real problem. And, for me, what helps most is reminding myself that I have HA and when I’m experiencing it, I blow everything way out of proportion. I remind myself that I’ve been here before and it passes, it might be days weeks months but it does. And then eventually I’ll worry about some other symptom. Something I’ve done that helps too is something Paul recommended. I write myself an email as if I’m writing to a friend. I tell my “friend” all about what I’m experiencing in detail and why I’m worried about it. I write about what I think it means and why I think that. Get it all out. Then I wait a couple hours and write back to myself defending why all those fears are unlikely. Really dissect piece by piece about how anxiety can cause each symptom. Put my fears and worries on trial, is what Paul says. If you’ve ever had a friend come to you with worries and you did your best to reassure them, please, do it for yourself! We tend to get down on ourselves. Everything is so highly sensitized, we’re so hyper vigilant looking for something even slightly out of the ordinary. We’re exhausted! Tired of feeling so crappy all the time. We’ve got to accept ourselves and love ourselves and try to heal. The truth is, no one knows what will happen in the future. And, like Paul says, it’s that fear of uncertainty we’ve got to try to accept. To try to learn to go into an ambiguous future confidently – like pioneers, I think he says. lol! It seems so hard, near impossible at times. But what is the alternative? To feel horrible awful all the time? I don’t know… No one can know how miserable hypochondria is unless they’ve been through it. Believe me friends, I know EXACTLY how you feel and you ARE NOT alone.
Hope you’re doing better Ashley. I stumbled onto your story. Could easily be mine.
For me….
A married 41 year old male with a wonderful wife and 3 year old daughter. Overall good health, active, but a history of OCD/health anxiety.
January 2016, a finger starts twitching after any exertion. A trip to Google tells me Parkinson’s. January and February become predisposed with a moderate level of fixation on the disease and accompanying worry.
Finger continues it’s weirdness (intermittently) through April while I could tell my nervous system was steadily getting overcharged for reasons I couldn’t pin point (likely a combination of everything that has to do with work, parenting, life in general).
Come beginning of May, my arms start twitching. Left bicep and right tricep. Annoying at first and I attribute it to working out as it would let up a day or two after the gym visit. However middle may the left bicep goes nuts after a gym visit and heavy yard work that weekend. Another trip to Google the morning after it kept up all night one Saturday. Web suggestion door #1 – an ALS story. Heart sinks and anxiety is at full throttle.
Twitching subsides again in a day or two but the preoccupation is in full throttle. Checking arms constantly, strength testing, etc. This in light of the twitching subsiding in a day or two.
At the same, more trips to Google told me calves twitching is a thing too, so the last week in May I decide to take a look and presto, both calves going to town. Now I’m truly fearing the end. I even said to myself quietly “well, this is going to take months to get over”.
From there, things shortly went body wide. Arms, legs, back, face, everywhere. One trip to my family doc, a requested but unadvised referral to a Neuro who told me it was benign fasciculations. Sent me out the door with a slap on the back saying “if things progress, come back”. Very reassuring.
That was middle June and here we are at the end of September. Still fighting anxiety but battling through it as best I can. Common sense wants to tell me this stuff doesn’t jump around all over and be gone one day or week only to reappear the next and still be of any concern. But once fear takes hold the feedback loop is established and it’s a tough one to break.
Thank you for sharing your story!
My health anxiety started when I was a kid. I was convinced I had cancer. My mother took me to the doctor twice to convince me otherwise. I eventually got over that when school was back in session. I always worried throughout my teen years and young adulthood, but it got really bad about 3years ago. I started getting migraines and was convinced I had a brain tumor. I had 2 ct scans and was seeing a nuero who put me on meds. I wasn’t convinced I was okay. Google told me ct scans miss brain tumors so one day when I was feeling dizzy I went to the er they performed an MRI to check for ms and said I was fine. I was okay for about a week until I was convincing myself my husband cheated and I had HIV. I got over that only when I got pregnant last year and they did blood work. I was okay during my pregnancy until I had my son this February… Since then I have convinced myself I have breast cancer, heart disease, lymphoma, another brain tumor, pituitary disease, Addison’s disease, ms, and now I’m on to AlS. My friend posted a link to an ALS site so I decided to Google what ALS was, and lo and behold I have every symptom. I have been checking my body and I have twicthes all over I didn’t eat all day yesterday because I have been so worried. I have been in counseling since last month I’m hoping I can get through this my kids need me to be healthy, mentally and physically. This is not something I would wish on anybody, I just pray we can all get through it!
Hi all,
I have had hypochondria since childhood and I am now 30. For around the last 23 years, I have been constantly diagnosing myself with every illness under the sun – cancer, MS, ME, HIV – you name it. I would convince myself I had was ill and would soon be about to die. It was both emotionally and physically exhausting.
I thought that I was doomed to live my life this way until I recently came across inner child therapy and EFT Tapping. I cannot tell you how much these have helped me. Through my research into inner child therapy, I was able to link my health anxiety to my grandparent falling ill with lung cancer and dying when I was just 8 years old. My hypochondria started after seeing my Gran so ill and I have been anxious about anything to do with health ever since. I hadn’t realised how much of a trauma that was for me to go through at the time and these emotions became stuck in my body. My hypochondria started after seeing my Gran so ill and I have been anxious about anything to do with health ever since.
As soon as I found the root cause of my anxiety, made the link between the two and released the emotions, I am free of the constant worry about my health. The real key to getting over this is to find the root cause and shift it, anything else will be a temporary band-aid. As my trauma happened in my childhood, inner child was great for me but EFT may be better if you link your anxiety to a later event in your life.
It has been life-changing for me and I hope it can help you all too.
Here are a few links which may help:
https://www.thetappingsolution.com/what-is-eft-tapping/
https://www.healyourinnerchild.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3V_Gtfr_YA
Rachel x
I could have written this post myself… except about the starting to feel better part. My anxiety developed after my husband was nearly murdered by a close relative. Just worse and worse and worse because none of my family took it as seriously as I did so I can’t seem to get rid of this person! Then, I had two miscarriages in six months and I’m just a wreck! I finally went to the doctor and began taking Buspar, but he’s like your doctor and wants to rule out any other health issues, so I’m sitting here for the last week freaking out that there’s something seriously wrong with my heart because why else would a 31 year old have to go get a stress test and an echocardiogram. I still have the rest of this week to go and I’m sitting on the front porch desperately pouring through this website which I, thankfully, just found by googling “anxiety and rapid heartbeat”. *sigh*
Thank you so much for sharing your story! It’s amazing to hear that I’m not the only one who’s going through this without the negative connotation of being “crazy” along with it.
For me it started when I was seven. I’d never had a close relative get any illness or die, and my parents were pretty chill about health and doctors and everything. I’d never been sick or had to go to the hospital, although I’m told that I may have had the H1N1 fever when I was five (don’t remember at all), so there’s really nothing that could’ve triggered any anxiety.
When I was seven, my best friend told me a story about her cousin who’d had a hole in her heart, and then I remember reading a girl’s school notebook and she’d written a thing about a baby with the same problem, and I freaked out. I started having weird chest pains that could’ve easily been sore back muscles, and I remember they came randomly and I got so scared that I jumped into my dad’s lap and told him to put his hand there to make the pain go away, because he always did that with stomachaches. I don’t think I even told him what was really wrong in fear that he’d take me to the doctor and I’d have to have surgery. But that went away on its own.
Then in third grade something happened with my arm (we still don’t know what it was) and it started hurting and I couldn’t bend it because it would hurt, and my dad took me to the doctor and we did an x-ray and an ultrasound and nothing was wrong, so we put some ice on it and stuff, and eventually that went away too. Then for some reason I got scared because I thought there was something weird going on with my bladder, even though it felt completely fine and worked perfectly, so my dad took me to the doctor and we tested for any infection and (wow) there was nothing. So that went away too.
THEN for some reason I got really scared about getting my period (???) and that freaked me out for about a week and then when my grandma assured me that 8-year-olds rarely get their periods, the fear lessened and I just carried that in the back of my mind until I actually got it five years later. Like I couldn’t even sit though health class when they talked about puberty because I got scared. But it was also really interesting. ???
Then I think I was fine until about a year ago, I felt something, like a tenderness, under my right ribcage and I though something was wrong with my liver, and I literally carried that around in my mind up until two months ago, when I just stopped worrying because GUESS WHAT I’d found a line on my left thumbnail. I didn’t even procrastinate on googling it, and found out that I probably had subungual melanoma. The same night I went running to my parents and told them I had cancer, and they laughed it off and told me to calm down. And I know most people get frustrated when people say that, but I actually calmed down and laughed it off myself because I knew I was being silly. But then the next day I started worrying again and started checking it every thirty seconds (no jokes) in different lighting and holding it at different angles.
That fear went away (not entirely) after I saw some brown dots on my wrist. I didn’t really worry about that because I figured they were sun spots or something, and everyone had them, but then I remembered reading about a model who had white patches on her skin (vitiligo) and searched my whole body for that. I found some (oh no) but they were literally smaller than a tictac (one on my right hip and a really faint one on my forehead) and I freaked out because I was absolutely sure I had vitiligo. Then I spent the next week staring at people’s faces and any exposed skin (that’s weird lol) to see if they had it too, and to assure myself that maybe I was getting worked up for no reason, and a lot of people had them. BUT THEN (does it end?) I thought that other people probably spend a lot of time in the sun and that’s why they have it, and I don’t, and my right hip has never seen the light of day except maybe the five or six times I wore a swimsuit. I found another one, fainter but a bit bigger, on my right torso, and I legit started sobbing cuz I thought it was the end of the world (I am a teenager, so) and I dimly wondered if my parents would pay for the treatment and then I took a shower and scolded myself for being so pathetic and told myself to be grateful nothing worse is wrong with me. That was two weeks ago. Then last week there was kind of a dull ache but not the hurty kind y’know, in my leg, like an artery was being compressed or something (i actually don’t know where I’m getting my medical info) so I moved around and it didn’t get better. It stayed like that for a day until I took a shower and then it stopped (I think) and it was fine for a couple days and then me and my family went on a trip and at night in the hotel, I couldn’t sleep and my left hand started feeling prickly or tingly (I don’t know the difference help) and then that got me worked up for the whole night until finally at four in the morning I told myself to calm the hell down and go to sleep, and I did exactly that. The next morning (two hours after) it had gone away. We went to water park and then afterwards my fingers were kind of, how do you say it, maybe numb (but I could feel them perfectly), but almost like buzzing. It’s weird because when I recall it I imagine a pale blue tinge in the tips of my fingers fading down to my knuckles. That’s what it felt like. I felt like the sensation was familiar, and that it had happened before, after I’d swam, but I didn’t actually remember. I complained to my dad and he said it’s okay. It didn’t go away for a couple hours.
After that, all hell broke loose. (not really.) I kept feeling random pricks all over me, just coming for two seconds and going, literally anywhere on my body, and my left arm got that same pressed artery thing as my leg, and my upper lip felt weird (there is no other way to describe it, it didn’t hurt or tingle or prickle or anything, I was just aware of it. It was really frustrating. I made the mistake of looking the symptoms up, because I had read a story about a man with a neurological disorder or something who died in six weeks ( I stopped reading that immediately because I was already aware that it would trigger me). Anyway, I learned that I had either ALS, MS, or there was something wrong with my veins. So now I swear I keep imagining the other symptoms of those things, like shaky hands, weird eyesight, and weak muscles, and I’m really making them happen. SO I don’t know if I’m imagining things or actually dying. The only comfort is that I feel great. I’m not tired at all, no nausea, no headaches, so I can convince myself that I’m okay. Hopefully I am.
That’s when I realized that I was actually really paranoid and I looked up ‘fear of disease’ and learned what hypochondria was. I literally visited every page I could find on it, and it helped me immensely. I never really understood how comforting it is when other people feel the same way as you.
My mom says just do some yoga and everything will be resolved. That’s her solution, just like how my grandmother’s is ‘drink more water’. Bad circulation? Do yoga. Pain in neck? Yoga. Murderer trying to kill you? Engage them in some downward dog.
But my dad is so much more comforting when it comes to health anxiety. I don’t know why I feel more at ease going to the doctor with him than anyone else. Maybe because I’ve always gone with him in the past when I thought something was wrong. I don’t know. But my mom’s easy-goingness helps a lot as well. I guess I need a combination of both. I guess that’s why we have two parents.
Anyway, it does get really annoying when you’re hyper-aware of every bloody thing that happens in your body, but I don’t really mind as long as there’s nothing physically wrong with me. But I’m young, and I’m sure it will get more bothersome when I’m older and have an actual life I have to attend to. Oh well, I guess we’ll see.
SORRY THAT WAS SO LONG I just felt like I had to let it all out. Thanks for reading!
Hopefully everything we’re all feeling is just anxiety and nothing more. Stay healthy! (But not too healthy because then that’ll feel suspicious.)
;D
hey ashley how r u doing? sorry if i misspell some words- english is not my native language. just wanted to tell you i felt like i was reading my own story. the similarities are unbelievable. i guess hypochondriac minds think the same. i now consumed with my old friend- the Als phobia. this time the twitching doesnt seem to go away and its freaking me out. last month it was colon cancer- got a colonoscopy and it was all good. then ovarian cancer worries consumed me for over 2 weeks. tests were fine. dont know why my mind dosent leave me alone and let me live a simple, healthy life with my beautiful Daughter and husband. feel for you girl
I’m going through the parkinsons neurological anxiety now. I’m 38 years old and coach my 4 year old kids soccer team and I swear I almost passed out from anxiety during practice. I basically was having full body tremors so bad my teeth were numb. I had a tremor in my hand about 3 weeks ago. Hit the google machine diagnosed myself with Parkinsons and here I am at 3 am typing on your site. I am freaking out about how my family will get by if I do have disease (making tremors worse). I picture my kids being embarrassed by me and I’m basically a total mess. It’s nice to feel I’m not alone. I have a doctors appointment next Friday. I expect to be referred to a neurologist even though deep down I feel like this whole thing is anxiety related. Unfortunately I have already googled everything on parkinsons and I’m pretty sure I can make myself have all the symptoms even though I didn’t have any a month ago. Basically I’m a total mess right now full of depression and anxiety. I’ve gone over finances with my wife to start preparing for a diagnosis. I’m a mess. Again even though I know that this whole thing is probably anxiety. So anyways thank you for your post and I hope you and pray life is good to you.
This was such a depressing article because there was no resolution in the end. I identified with everything she experienced; almost exactly, I felt like I was reading my own journals. Unfortunately, after dealing with crippling hypochondria/health anxiety/panic attacks for the last 7 years, I still have not found an effective treatment. I consistently search online for treatments and stories of victory, and its really depressing that all of them, including this one, never end with the individual overcoming it.
Hi Ashley,
Coming across your post has brought me to tears. I have the twitches, the weakness. I’ve been to my gp and a neurologist, both of whom have reassured me no neurological issues. Yet, I’m still not satisfied. Everyday, maybe “this twitch” will be the “one” that indicates something bad. I feel so badly that my family has to deal with my mood swings. I spend almost every second of the day worrying and hyper focused—kindof makes it hard to enjoy my child growing up. This anxiety is bringing me to my knees. It’s so reassuring to hear someone has gone through something similar—thank you so much for sharing. You have no idea. I hope to be able to enjoy life like I used to before the day I googled.
How is everybody doing?? I am still alive. Came back to read this because my whole body has been weak lately. I went to a dōTERRA convention and they had a lady there with ALS. It sent me into a tizzy.
Also I was hanging out with a friend for a while and his leg was giving him trouble. Painful, numb, tingly, I was FREAKED. Wouldn’t you know as soon as he left my leg started being weird and still hasn’t stopped. Nothing that extreme but I wake up worried about my limbs moving.
How’s everybody else?
Hey Betsy! I completely understand where you’re coming from! I do the same exact thing! You’re not alone!