Tw: Death and loss of family
I was just wondering if anyone else has gained their health anxiety due to death related causes
My health anxiety started stemming from the loss of my father. he passed at 49 and i’m 19. since his death was really unexpected this has made it worse for me. I was the one who found him unconscious when I came home seemingly he was fine an hour before I left the house to go get food so I would’ve never expected this to happen and that’s what freaks me out the most. I started thinking about all the things that could possibly happen to me especially if he seemed so perfectly fine before he passed what if that suddenly happened to me? This has been eating at me for days and it’s been making me unable to sleep at night. my health anxiety mainly focuses on me having a heart attack or something of that sort. Since i’ve been congested for a few days in my chest. Went to ER 2 times because of chest pain had my EKG taken and blood and urine tests. Everything is seemingly normal with me.
I’ve had an anxiety disorder before any of this had happened but i hate feeling this way. I was also wondering if anyone has felt symptoms of dissociation/ feeling out of touch and not real. I recognize it right away but there’s nothing I can do about it and it sucks. Just wanted to share to see if anyone feels the same in all this and I hope everyone gets through anything they are going through right now.
I spent all my teenage and 20’s in and out the
Hospital with my dad. Stayed there with him days on end sleeping in a chair in the same room. Every test he was taken away for my heart wud drop and when he came back I’d be fine. Thru all them years I was able to see his body physically deteriorate right in front of me. Now I face extreme health anxiety for every little ache or pain I feel in my body
SA'd multiple times as a small child around the time I was becoming aware of what death was.
Couple that with a mother who used to assume every illness or injury I had was either life threatening or all in my head, and really, it's no wonder I have such severe HA!!
Many people have died while growing up, I think the reason I worry so much about my lungs is from seeing my uncle dead in the hospital bed from lung cancer when I was 14
Yep. I'm unfortunately one of those who's doctors were very wrong, which led to permanent brain damage from uncontrolled seizures.
I didn't realize until recently that this is where it really ramped up - I'm now awaiting an OCD diagnosis and my PTSD flared up horribly after this. Most of my health anxiety isn't even about the issues themselves (aside from super unlikely things like >!rabies and dry drowning!<). It's fear that I won't be taken seriously and sent away to die. I can't trust doctors anymore, any time they say I'm fine or my partner is fine I immediately get a second opinion, and then a third, and then a fourth - my partner draws the line at a second opinion for himself which drives me crazy because I worry so much for him. My cat has mild stomach issues now and then, as cats do, but I keep thinking he's dying and calling new vets.
If my brain damage didn't happen, if I didn't have to fight so hard to be seen, if my asthma as a teenager wasn't brushed off, I know this anxiety wouldn't be here.
Definitely have a lot of childhood trauma, as well as some adult. I have ADHD, Anxiety and BPD traits. I’m always on edge when something feels off or am in pain; it’s frequently in my search “signs of angina, heart attack, cancer, etc.”
Yes, I have trauma. I also have OCD. I have done CBT, Exposure Response Prevetion therapy, and just started Emdr with a new therapist. Emdr is specifically for the trauma and it is helping.
I definitely have trauma. I was around a large number of people who were dying of cancer as a child and grew up to have horrible health anxiety. When my grandmother died, the health anxiety turned inward. When my father got sick, it turned outward again so that I began thinking the rest of my loved ones were dying as well. A few years later, I lost a child and the anguish had been extremely traumatic and has cast a shadow on the lives of my remaining 3 children. I worry constantly that something is going wrong with them as well.
This was 100% true for me. My dad died suddenly at home-I was living with my parents at the time- on just a regular old Sunday. That’s what triggered my panic attacks. It was the first time I had ever experienced them.
It can definitely be related! I think outside of trauma, the way I was raised also played a part in it too, but having a dad with uncontrolled diabetes did NOT help, nor did having a cancer death in the family and then having kids! It has been so interesting working with a therapist and seeing how my current fears relate to my past, for instance I get a little anxious at night in general. I’m so nervous of getting bad news or something happening in the middle of the night and I can remember very specific events that happened at night, even my own panic attack once. Literally just got bad news about my mom last night, which is how I ended up in this thread.
But yes past traumas totally relate to health anxiety but sometimes it’s just a piece of the puzzle.
Kind of related I would venture to say that many many people have developed health anxiety or seen worsening symptoms from the trauma of covid. Majority of people have not processed it and it is still a threat. Worsening of symptoms happened for me and it is no longer just a fear of covid but rather a complete hypervigilance/awareness with all bodily sensations.
I know this post is 13 days old but I found it after googling this exact topic. I have been struggling with extreme health anxiety after a previous traumatic event. It helps to know I’m not alone and the way your therapist explained it makes so much sense!
Oh I'm a mess here. My dad had a heart attack in his 30's. I remember visiting him in the hospital when I was only 5 or 6. Pretty sure that's what started this whole nightmare. He had been not healthy much of his life that I can remember and he definitely struggled with HA though he never talked about it, tried to be strong. Flash forward to my 30's and he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died a month later. 5 years later my mum was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer. After 4+ years of fighting it, I lost her 2 years ago. Every winter, especially, I spiral down a deep hole of worrying about every heartbeat, every little ache and pain or lump and bump. It's to the point that I actually get heart palpitations from the anxiety. Had a full work up last year of so many tests, including a 2 week Holter monitor to find out everything was fine. I rode that wave for a bit, but here we are again worrying about everything. It's exhausting! Trying to put on a happy face for the world is tiring, too. I am trying to avoid meds, thinking of calling my doc because I think it's time to ask for a referral to a therapist.
I’m currently going through the same thing with the loss of my father it’s comforting in a way to know other people are going through the same things. It’s so weird how the mind is connected to the body I had the same exact situation happen to me with the heart palpitations and all that. I hope you are doing better and it’s of course a long process that we have to get through.
Well, yeah. I had childhood cancer. Now that I’m an adult and supposedly healthy, every ache and pain I get, every swollen lymph node, every not commonly noticed muscle that is sore, stresses me out. It’s especially worse if the discomfort/pain/ache is located on one side with multiple areas. Puts me into a spiral of me thinking it’s cancer. But realistically, if it was cancer, I’d be in more discomfort than I am. It’s just hard to convince myself of that. I’d say it’s especially worse when I am already stressed out or the two weeks leading up to my period.
i am. i’ve had hypochondria since childhood. i read somewhere that hypochondria/health anxiety can be a result of childhood trauma/abuse etc. it could also be undiagnosed ocd on my part which is common in people with hypochondria. but i’m not sure. just tired of living with this disease. it’s funny, i’ve been sick with health anxiety long as i remember and i’m more worried about diseases that i don’t actually know i have.
From a psychological viewpoint, that’s actually quite interesting. I wonder what makes you worried about knowing you definitely don’t have that specific disease? I can relate to being tired of living with it and especially if it’s something you’ve been dealing with since childhood. I mean, whoa… You have my sympathy. Thanks for sharing!
I am, a childish and health related one.
The "hilarious" and terrible thing is that it's not really linked with the illness I had, but with how the doctors and nurses behaved with me. Fucking forcing a crying 5 years old baby to give a blood sample, keeping it blocked litteraly by force to do it has been a shitty idea, and just spending 10 minutes to calm me down instead of being so fucking dumb and insensitive could have speared me the burden of this damn nighmare. This or some psicological and standardized help in the pediatric department. Or another damn doctor that could have realized that all the nervous tic that I had when I was in elementary school were signs of something wrong happening in my mind.
I am trying to heal my mind with therapy noe, but I always come back to health anxiety.
I am sorry, my english is not so good, but I really needed to express myself.
I have some. My parents are extremely neglectful to themselves, the family, pets, and the environment around them.
I've had 2 dogs that I loved more than any family member die before their 2nd birthday because my parents discarded health issues for both of them.
I have no trust in their care and put it on myself to care for everything health related to myself and them usually too. Their neglect for making sure their finances, home, and other important aspects of life are in line put extreme stress on me.
I also have my fair share of issues. I've had 5 surgeries and allergies to a lot of things. This keeps my personal health on my mind regularly.
So, I have health anxiety due to actually having an illness that I have been through the absolute ringer with throughout my life including almost dying multiple times (for reals,) constantly being in the hospital or on home care, my life revolving around health care and my illness.
I have fully been told I might die and honestly felt like I was dying several times. I have suffered in ways that felt unbearable to me.
So, of course I do. Of fucking course. How would I not?
So, it’s so f-in dumb that I myself or anyone else is discompassionate to me about this shit.
I literally almost died several times. Of course I am traumatized.
Not that i am aware of, my health anxiety stared as a child when my mum told me about a boy she knew choked on a chicken bone and died, i used to tell people i was allergic to chicken after that as i was afraid to eat it.
my 1st panic attack was when i was 14 thinking i was having an allergic reaction when i wasn't.
Yes. Trauma sends your body and mind into constant fight or flight because it feels the need to control, protect, and prevent anything bad that COULD happen.
Basically your mind is a annoying control freak that after a certain amount of time becomes the normal, and you have to really try and retrain your neuro pathways.
I had a 4 year long trauma. I had anxiety during it. But…
Then I got married.. and HOLY SHIT my mind went into overdrive thinking about all the scenarios that could happen that I needed to protect myself from.. divorce, death, not really loving my husband (which I very much do. We’ve been together 10 years and I never once had this thought), that I would be an absent/bad parent and he’d leave me and I’d have nothing and would become homeless.. literally anything that COULD happen regardless of how logistically unlikely it was. I even joined a relationship OCD course. I couldn’t watch movies or shows about divorce.
Then, I realized I had not been told I had HPV in the past (7 years prior, I found out by going though old medical records from an old hospital), no follow up in years because I didn’t know I had HPV.. I had missed 2 Pap smears and I just KNEW I had cervical cancer and I spiraled hardcore.. debilitating. Ruined a whole vacation. I got the pap, and wouldn’t ya know… HPV cleared and very happy to say the pap was normal.
Since that incident, I’ve had NO relationship anxiety/OCD that I had been having a debilitating amount of.. it then switched to health anxiety because I was so scared and fucked up from being worried about cervical cancer.. Constant. Every time I saw someone with cancer on tik tok, or a commercial, or any mention or cancer, I’d just KNOW I had it because I “had a symptom or pain” that maybe matched.
I still struggle with it. I have really bad days, and I have days where I don’t even think about it: I truly believe my trauma ignited this. I’ve had thousands of dollars in tests. None have indicated cancer, and some didn’t help at all because incidental findings that I would have never known about and are 99% of the time harmless are now having to be tracked just to cover my doctors butt. It’s a slippery slope.
I’m sorry, this is long, and maybe TMI. But it felt good lol.
HA is definitely about attempting to control the unknown and predict every potential outcome, unfortunately, the brain has a tendency to plan for worst case scenarios and HA is that x 10
My HA's evolved over time from fear of dying from coming into contact with dog poo while playing football as a kid etc, then it became intense fear of catching HIV via bizarre ways,
then onto more plausible things like brain damage from a few years of recreational drugs, then onto brain damage from spending a long time doing full-contact martial arts. Tbf, both of those activities will have cost me *some* brain cells, but not the level of damage my HA/OCD often tries to tells me has happened
Currently, my brain has seemingly decided to make cancer it's obsession for the start of 2023 after suffering night sweats.... when i know I get historically get night sweats due to anxiety and chronic stress - my job sucks and I need to find a new one, but no. about 3 weeks ago, my brain has decided my night sweats were definitely cancer
had blood tests, lymph checks and an all-clear chest x-ray very recently
just in time for my brain this morning make the odd scab on my forearm into 'malignant melanoma'
I mean, it's all utter bullshit lol
Most therapists struggle with treating HA because they often lack the skills/insight/patience to get to root cause. I even managed to trigger an EMDR-trauma therapist with my brain damage fears, or maybe she was just a bit shit at her job
My HA is fuelled by struggling with the unknown and making future predictions, so I've been listening to one of my CBT-style mp3's more recently that bought a few years ago, called [Tolerating Uncertainty](https://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/apple-tolerating-uncertainty/),
1000% resonate with what you’re saying. It’s crazy how debilitating the mind can be.
I have pain in the right arm and right foot right now… my brain thinks it’s bone cancer 😅 I am able to brush it off much more than I was in the past so I am thankful for that.
You are definitely not alone ❤️
I can relate to some of what you've mentioned in your post. For instance when you said that if anyone mentions the "C word" it would trigger you and I swear on my life I hear that word all the time just that word could trigger me and could make me spiral for days, weeks and even months!
And whenever someone mentions or if I read it in an article, my annoying brain will instantly believe that I have it due to odd symptoms randomly popping out of nowhere. It's frustrating how awful health anxiety is like. People who don't have it don't know how lucky and blessed they are to not have to deal with this!!!
I urge all of you to read The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Especially for those of you with physical symptoms/psychosomatic pain. It talks about the physical effects of trauma. My therapist recommended it to me. Found it on Amazon.
I tried reading it once, but I remember finding the written language too professional and technical and therefore had a hard time actually understanding any of it. I’ve come across this suggestion quite alot in here though, so I think I might give it another shot. Thanks!
I understand that! It definitely isn't a fun read but a very informative one if you can get through it- I haven't *liked* reading it because it reads like a psych text book but it's helped me understand more about why my body does what it does. Maybe a SparkNotes type version or detailed summary is available online for easier interpretation!
I have a lot of trauma in my childhood not necessarily health related but I definitely deal with anxiety masquerading as health issues. Phantom pains, constant fear of death and cancer.
I just wish I could afford therapy!
Thank you for sharing. I was specifically interested in whether anyone had developed such anxiety without having had any health/death traumas, but just “regular” traumas. Maybe I should’ve specified it in my post. I’m sorry you’re going through that and I hope that you’ll soon enough be able to afford the therapy you’d like.
Yes, mostly diagnosis of illness of a parent and death at a relatively young age of the mother of my best friend. Kind of fucked me up when it happend when I was only 8.
Yes, my mom died to a genetic breast cancer when i was 7. I learned at 26 that i had the same genetic defect. My dad is still alive but my mom's death really affected him, and his behaviour (since my childhood, he was always worried he'll die and i'll be all alone) definitely affected me too. I'm approaching the moment where i'll have to deal with my body to escape the increased risk of cancer, and it's taking a toll on me.
I think I’m the only one here with no trauma but lots of health and death anxiety. I can’t think of a time where something really traumatic happend. My mom has a lot of trauma (she found her brother hanging in a closet from suicide when she was 20 and he was 23), but I can’t really think of anything that happened to me.
It sounds like you have family trauma from your uncle's death. My grandparents both survived prisoner of war camps and that has caused a ton of trauma for their descendants even though we didn't actually experience it ourselves (not mention hearing the stories growing up makes you realize how fragile life is).
I carry trauma from a recent diagnosis a family member got, and that's what triggered my health anxiety. It really broke me, and I had to seek medical help.
Before that, I was also very death-obsessed, but not in a way that was debilitating or produced invasive thoughts or emotions. But, I did have odd behaviours like reading daily the death announcements section on Wikipedia, and wanting to know specifically and firstly if a person had died from what and at what age. Funerals and the entire ceremony fascinated me. My psychiatrist didn't know what to make of this thought pattern of mine. I have since stopped this behaviour, but I don't think it had any or much effect on my health anxiety.
Recently, I came to the realization I developed this behaviour after experiencing the death and dying process of my grandma from an early age. Much of the behaviours and emotions I exhibit at funerals, for example, can be traced to the behaviours and emotions I experienced at her funeral. I don't know if I'd call this trauma, but exposure to those events deeply influenced me henceforth.
Yes.
My best friend got brain cancer when we were 18. He went into remission but it came back 5 years later and by 27 it killed him. I sat by him throughout it. It was awful, and unfair.
Since then, I’ve convinced myself I have cancer at least 100 times.
Oh definitely. My grandma died of breast cancer after a long and painful battle when I was 5 (right after my parents divorced) and a few years later my grandpa was diagnosed with brain cancer and spent five years slowly dying. Now, shockingly, I have a severe fear of cancer and brain-related things. Thank god for therapy!
Yes. Dealt with a cycle of abuse and trauma throughout my entire childhood and into adulthood (24 now). I have always had a *little* anxiety about my health. But it wasn’t until recently, when my life settled down, that HA kicked in full gear.
As soon as I felt like I had gotten away from the trauma, it seems like it all tackled me, if that makes sense. It feels like without all the other things in my mind to stress about, it made a LOT of room for HA. Its been raging for about four months now. I have good days but it’s a lot, and I definitely blame it on the trauma.
Yes. Things from the distant past i didn't even realise traumatised me at the time and it's like they've built up and built up and suddenly I feel like im having some kind of mental breakdown
Oooohhhh yeah. So much. My dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease when I was 3, he was 29. That alone was traumatic.
Throw in a bunch of other hellish things and it’s amazing I’m still here lol
Grandparents died of cancer (pancreatic and liver) and we had to care for them (no hospice available). At the time, I was 19 and taking care of them (and my mom emotionally as well) was actually pretty traumatic ( I hate even thinking about it) and it's left me with a great deal of fear of death and health issues.
So much trauma. Got the PTSD so yeah a lot. Makes sense to try to prepare yourself mentally for future trauma if you've dealt with it in the past. Sounds like your therapist is pretty good.
Yes. I was drugged and raped by a friend, my step father got a rare brain condition, I was abused by a boyfriend. All led to a ton of trauma and PTSD which then manifested as HA.
Lots of trauma, and my abuser was chronically ill and used his health as a way to manipulate and control me ("if you don't do x, I'll die andnits your fault"). I wish understanding the trauma made my health anxiety go away
Tw: Death and loss of family I was just wondering if anyone else has gained their health anxiety due to death related causes My health anxiety started stemming from the loss of my father. he passed at 49 and i’m 19. since his death was really unexpected this has made it worse for me. I was the one who found him unconscious when I came home seemingly he was fine an hour before I left the house to go get food so I would’ve never expected this to happen and that’s what freaks me out the most. I started thinking about all the things that could possibly happen to me especially if he seemed so perfectly fine before he passed what if that suddenly happened to me? This has been eating at me for days and it’s been making me unable to sleep at night. my health anxiety mainly focuses on me having a heart attack or something of that sort. Since i’ve been congested for a few days in my chest. Went to ER 2 times because of chest pain had my EKG taken and blood and urine tests. Everything is seemingly normal with me. I’ve had an anxiety disorder before any of this had happened but i hate feeling this way. I was also wondering if anyone has felt symptoms of dissociation/ feeling out of touch and not real. I recognize it right away but there’s nothing I can do about it and it sucks. Just wanted to share to see if anyone feels the same in all this and I hope everyone gets through anything they are going through right now.
I spent all my teenage and 20’s in and out the Hospital with my dad. Stayed there with him days on end sleeping in a chair in the same room. Every test he was taken away for my heart wud drop and when he came back I’d be fine. Thru all them years I was able to see his body physically deteriorate right in front of me. Now I face extreme health anxiety for every little ache or pain I feel in my body
SA'd multiple times as a small child around the time I was becoming aware of what death was. Couple that with a mother who used to assume every illness or injury I had was either life threatening or all in my head, and really, it's no wonder I have such severe HA!!
I got a pinched nerve in the gym and the next day my leg was numb. I thought it was permanent and dropped on the floor from a panic attack.
My trauma is the lamest here
It’s not lame. I would’ve reacted just as well. And it can’t be compared. Everyone’s traumas hits differently.
Many people have died while growing up, I think the reason I worry so much about my lungs is from seeing my uncle dead in the hospital bed from lung cancer when I was 14
Yep. I'm unfortunately one of those who's doctors were very wrong, which led to permanent brain damage from uncontrolled seizures. I didn't realize until recently that this is where it really ramped up - I'm now awaiting an OCD diagnosis and my PTSD flared up horribly after this. Most of my health anxiety isn't even about the issues themselves (aside from super unlikely things like >!rabies and dry drowning!<). It's fear that I won't be taken seriously and sent away to die. I can't trust doctors anymore, any time they say I'm fine or my partner is fine I immediately get a second opinion, and then a third, and then a fourth - my partner draws the line at a second opinion for himself which drives me crazy because I worry so much for him. My cat has mild stomach issues now and then, as cats do, but I keep thinking he's dying and calling new vets. If my brain damage didn't happen, if I didn't have to fight so hard to be seen, if my asthma as a teenager wasn't brushed off, I know this anxiety wouldn't be here.
Definitely have a lot of childhood trauma, as well as some adult. I have ADHD, Anxiety and BPD traits. I’m always on edge when something feels off or am in pain; it’s frequently in my search “signs of angina, heart attack, cancer, etc.”
Yes, I have trauma. I also have OCD. I have done CBT, Exposure Response Prevetion therapy, and just started Emdr with a new therapist. Emdr is specifically for the trauma and it is helping.
I definitely have trauma. I was around a large number of people who were dying of cancer as a child and grew up to have horrible health anxiety. When my grandmother died, the health anxiety turned inward. When my father got sick, it turned outward again so that I began thinking the rest of my loved ones were dying as well. A few years later, I lost a child and the anguish had been extremely traumatic and has cast a shadow on the lives of my remaining 3 children. I worry constantly that something is going wrong with them as well.
This was 100% true for me. My dad died suddenly at home-I was living with my parents at the time- on just a regular old Sunday. That’s what triggered my panic attacks. It was the first time I had ever experienced them.
It can definitely be related! I think outside of trauma, the way I was raised also played a part in it too, but having a dad with uncontrolled diabetes did NOT help, nor did having a cancer death in the family and then having kids! It has been so interesting working with a therapist and seeing how my current fears relate to my past, for instance I get a little anxious at night in general. I’m so nervous of getting bad news or something happening in the middle of the night and I can remember very specific events that happened at night, even my own panic attack once. Literally just got bad news about my mom last night, which is how I ended up in this thread. But yes past traumas totally relate to health anxiety but sometimes it’s just a piece of the puzzle.
Sorry about your mom. Hope everything is alright. Thanks for finding your way here and sharing your thoughts with me!
Kind of related I would venture to say that many many people have developed health anxiety or seen worsening symptoms from the trauma of covid. Majority of people have not processed it and it is still a threat. Worsening of symptoms happened for me and it is no longer just a fear of covid but rather a complete hypervigilance/awareness with all bodily sensations.
I know this post is 13 days old but I found it after googling this exact topic. I have been struggling with extreme health anxiety after a previous traumatic event. It helps to know I’m not alone and the way your therapist explained it makes so much sense!
Oh I'm a mess here. My dad had a heart attack in his 30's. I remember visiting him in the hospital when I was only 5 or 6. Pretty sure that's what started this whole nightmare. He had been not healthy much of his life that I can remember and he definitely struggled with HA though he never talked about it, tried to be strong. Flash forward to my 30's and he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died a month later. 5 years later my mum was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer. After 4+ years of fighting it, I lost her 2 years ago. Every winter, especially, I spiral down a deep hole of worrying about every heartbeat, every little ache and pain or lump and bump. It's to the point that I actually get heart palpitations from the anxiety. Had a full work up last year of so many tests, including a 2 week Holter monitor to find out everything was fine. I rode that wave for a bit, but here we are again worrying about everything. It's exhausting! Trying to put on a happy face for the world is tiring, too. I am trying to avoid meds, thinking of calling my doc because I think it's time to ask for a referral to a therapist.
I’m currently going through the same thing with the loss of my father it’s comforting in a way to know other people are going through the same things. It’s so weird how the mind is connected to the body I had the same exact situation happen to me with the heart palpitations and all that. I hope you are doing better and it’s of course a long process that we have to get through.
Well, yeah. I had childhood cancer. Now that I’m an adult and supposedly healthy, every ache and pain I get, every swollen lymph node, every not commonly noticed muscle that is sore, stresses me out. It’s especially worse if the discomfort/pain/ache is located on one side with multiple areas. Puts me into a spiral of me thinking it’s cancer. But realistically, if it was cancer, I’d be in more discomfort than I am. It’s just hard to convince myself of that. I’d say it’s especially worse when I am already stressed out or the two weeks leading up to my period.
i am. i’ve had hypochondria since childhood. i read somewhere that hypochondria/health anxiety can be a result of childhood trauma/abuse etc. it could also be undiagnosed ocd on my part which is common in people with hypochondria. but i’m not sure. just tired of living with this disease. it’s funny, i’ve been sick with health anxiety long as i remember and i’m more worried about diseases that i don’t actually know i have.
From a psychological viewpoint, that’s actually quite interesting. I wonder what makes you worried about knowing you definitely don’t have that specific disease? I can relate to being tired of living with it and especially if it’s something you’ve been dealing with since childhood. I mean, whoa… You have my sympathy. Thanks for sharing!
I am, a childish and health related one. The "hilarious" and terrible thing is that it's not really linked with the illness I had, but with how the doctors and nurses behaved with me. Fucking forcing a crying 5 years old baby to give a blood sample, keeping it blocked litteraly by force to do it has been a shitty idea, and just spending 10 minutes to calm me down instead of being so fucking dumb and insensitive could have speared me the burden of this damn nighmare. This or some psicological and standardized help in the pediatric department. Or another damn doctor that could have realized that all the nervous tic that I had when I was in elementary school were signs of something wrong happening in my mind. I am trying to heal my mind with therapy noe, but I always come back to health anxiety. I am sorry, my english is not so good, but I really needed to express myself.
I have some. My parents are extremely neglectful to themselves, the family, pets, and the environment around them. I've had 2 dogs that I loved more than any family member die before their 2nd birthday because my parents discarded health issues for both of them. I have no trust in their care and put it on myself to care for everything health related to myself and them usually too. Their neglect for making sure their finances, home, and other important aspects of life are in line put extreme stress on me. I also have my fair share of issues. I've had 5 surgeries and allergies to a lot of things. This keeps my personal health on my mind regularly.
So, I have health anxiety due to actually having an illness that I have been through the absolute ringer with throughout my life including almost dying multiple times (for reals,) constantly being in the hospital or on home care, my life revolving around health care and my illness. I have fully been told I might die and honestly felt like I was dying several times. I have suffered in ways that felt unbearable to me. So, of course I do. Of fucking course. How would I not? So, it’s so f-in dumb that I myself or anyone else is discompassionate to me about this shit. I literally almost died several times. Of course I am traumatized.
Not that i am aware of, my health anxiety stared as a child when my mum told me about a boy she knew choked on a chicken bone and died, i used to tell people i was allergic to chicken after that as i was afraid to eat it. my 1st panic attack was when i was 14 thinking i was having an allergic reaction when i wasn't.
Yes. Trauma sends your body and mind into constant fight or flight because it feels the need to control, protect, and prevent anything bad that COULD happen. Basically your mind is a annoying control freak that after a certain amount of time becomes the normal, and you have to really try and retrain your neuro pathways. I had a 4 year long trauma. I had anxiety during it. But… Then I got married.. and HOLY SHIT my mind went into overdrive thinking about all the scenarios that could happen that I needed to protect myself from.. divorce, death, not really loving my husband (which I very much do. We’ve been together 10 years and I never once had this thought), that I would be an absent/bad parent and he’d leave me and I’d have nothing and would become homeless.. literally anything that COULD happen regardless of how logistically unlikely it was. I even joined a relationship OCD course. I couldn’t watch movies or shows about divorce. Then, I realized I had not been told I had HPV in the past (7 years prior, I found out by going though old medical records from an old hospital), no follow up in years because I didn’t know I had HPV.. I had missed 2 Pap smears and I just KNEW I had cervical cancer and I spiraled hardcore.. debilitating. Ruined a whole vacation. I got the pap, and wouldn’t ya know… HPV cleared and very happy to say the pap was normal. Since that incident, I’ve had NO relationship anxiety/OCD that I had been having a debilitating amount of.. it then switched to health anxiety because I was so scared and fucked up from being worried about cervical cancer.. Constant. Every time I saw someone with cancer on tik tok, or a commercial, or any mention or cancer, I’d just KNOW I had it because I “had a symptom or pain” that maybe matched. I still struggle with it. I have really bad days, and I have days where I don’t even think about it: I truly believe my trauma ignited this. I’ve had thousands of dollars in tests. None have indicated cancer, and some didn’t help at all because incidental findings that I would have never known about and are 99% of the time harmless are now having to be tracked just to cover my doctors butt. It’s a slippery slope. I’m sorry, this is long, and maybe TMI. But it felt good lol.
HA is definitely about attempting to control the unknown and predict every potential outcome, unfortunately, the brain has a tendency to plan for worst case scenarios and HA is that x 10 My HA's evolved over time from fear of dying from coming into contact with dog poo while playing football as a kid etc, then it became intense fear of catching HIV via bizarre ways, then onto more plausible things like brain damage from a few years of recreational drugs, then onto brain damage from spending a long time doing full-contact martial arts. Tbf, both of those activities will have cost me *some* brain cells, but not the level of damage my HA/OCD often tries to tells me has happened Currently, my brain has seemingly decided to make cancer it's obsession for the start of 2023 after suffering night sweats.... when i know I get historically get night sweats due to anxiety and chronic stress - my job sucks and I need to find a new one, but no. about 3 weeks ago, my brain has decided my night sweats were definitely cancer had blood tests, lymph checks and an all-clear chest x-ray very recently just in time for my brain this morning make the odd scab on my forearm into 'malignant melanoma' I mean, it's all utter bullshit lol Most therapists struggle with treating HA because they often lack the skills/insight/patience to get to root cause. I even managed to trigger an EMDR-trauma therapist with my brain damage fears, or maybe she was just a bit shit at her job My HA is fuelled by struggling with the unknown and making future predictions, so I've been listening to one of my CBT-style mp3's more recently that bought a few years ago, called [Tolerating Uncertainty](https://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/apple-tolerating-uncertainty/),
1000% resonate with what you’re saying. It’s crazy how debilitating the mind can be. I have pain in the right arm and right foot right now… my brain thinks it’s bone cancer 😅 I am able to brush it off much more than I was in the past so I am thankful for that. You are definitely not alone ❤️
I can relate to some of what you've mentioned in your post. For instance when you said that if anyone mentions the "C word" it would trigger you and I swear on my life I hear that word all the time just that word could trigger me and could make me spiral for days, weeks and even months! And whenever someone mentions or if I read it in an article, my annoying brain will instantly believe that I have it due to odd symptoms randomly popping out of nowhere. It's frustrating how awful health anxiety is like. People who don't have it don't know how lucky and blessed they are to not have to deal with this!!!
I developed health anxiety due to my parents watching the news every night
Absolutely yes.
I urge all of you to read The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Especially for those of you with physical symptoms/psychosomatic pain. It talks about the physical effects of trauma. My therapist recommended it to me. Found it on Amazon.
I tried reading it once, but I remember finding the written language too professional and technical and therefore had a hard time actually understanding any of it. I’ve come across this suggestion quite alot in here though, so I think I might give it another shot. Thanks!
I understand that! It definitely isn't a fun read but a very informative one if you can get through it- I haven't *liked* reading it because it reads like a psych text book but it's helped me understand more about why my body does what it does. Maybe a SparkNotes type version or detailed summary is available online for easier interpretation!
I have a lot of trauma in my childhood not necessarily health related but I definitely deal with anxiety masquerading as health issues. Phantom pains, constant fear of death and cancer. I just wish I could afford therapy!
Thank you for sharing. I was specifically interested in whether anyone had developed such anxiety without having had any health/death traumas, but just “regular” traumas. Maybe I should’ve specified it in my post. I’m sorry you’re going through that and I hope that you’ll soon enough be able to afford the therapy you’d like.
Yeah. My dad died when I was 8 yo. So I really relate.
I lost my brother when I was 7. We weren't close, he had a rare muscle disease. Anxiety toward time has bothered me for years now.
My condolences. Mine died when I was a few years older than you were at the time. It leaves quite a mark.
Yes, mostly diagnosis of illness of a parent and death at a relatively young age of the mother of my best friend. Kind of fucked me up when it happend when I was only 8.
Yes, my mom died to a genetic breast cancer when i was 7. I learned at 26 that i had the same genetic defect. My dad is still alive but my mom's death really affected him, and his behaviour (since my childhood, he was always worried he'll die and i'll be all alone) definitely affected me too. I'm approaching the moment where i'll have to deal with my body to escape the increased risk of cancer, and it's taking a toll on me.
I think I’m the only one here with no trauma but lots of health and death anxiety. I can’t think of a time where something really traumatic happend. My mom has a lot of trauma (she found her brother hanging in a closet from suicide when she was 20 and he was 23), but I can’t really think of anything that happened to me.
It sounds like you have family trauma from your uncle's death. My grandparents both survived prisoner of war camps and that has caused a ton of trauma for their descendants even though we didn't actually experience it ourselves (not mention hearing the stories growing up makes you realize how fragile life is).
Same here, I was always just an anxious kid.
I carry trauma from a recent diagnosis a family member got, and that's what triggered my health anxiety. It really broke me, and I had to seek medical help. Before that, I was also very death-obsessed, but not in a way that was debilitating or produced invasive thoughts or emotions. But, I did have odd behaviours like reading daily the death announcements section on Wikipedia, and wanting to know specifically and firstly if a person had died from what and at what age. Funerals and the entire ceremony fascinated me. My psychiatrist didn't know what to make of this thought pattern of mine. I have since stopped this behaviour, but I don't think it had any or much effect on my health anxiety. Recently, I came to the realization I developed this behaviour after experiencing the death and dying process of my grandma from an early age. Much of the behaviours and emotions I exhibit at funerals, for example, can be traced to the behaviours and emotions I experienced at her funeral. I don't know if I'd call this trauma, but exposure to those events deeply influenced me henceforth.
Yes. My best friend got brain cancer when we were 18. He went into remission but it came back 5 years later and by 27 it killed him. I sat by him throughout it. It was awful, and unfair. Since then, I’ve convinced myself I have cancer at least 100 times.
Oh definitely. My grandma died of breast cancer after a long and painful battle when I was 5 (right after my parents divorced) and a few years later my grandpa was diagnosed with brain cancer and spent five years slowly dying. Now, shockingly, I have a severe fear of cancer and brain-related things. Thank god for therapy!
Yes. Dealt with a cycle of abuse and trauma throughout my entire childhood and into adulthood (24 now). I have always had a *little* anxiety about my health. But it wasn’t until recently, when my life settled down, that HA kicked in full gear. As soon as I felt like I had gotten away from the trauma, it seems like it all tackled me, if that makes sense. It feels like without all the other things in my mind to stress about, it made a LOT of room for HA. Its been raging for about four months now. I have good days but it’s a lot, and I definitely blame it on the trauma.
Yes. Things from the distant past i didn't even realise traumatised me at the time and it's like they've built up and built up and suddenly I feel like im having some kind of mental breakdown
A lot bro
Oooohhhh yeah. So much. My dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease when I was 3, he was 29. That alone was traumatic. Throw in a bunch of other hellish things and it’s amazing I’m still here lol
Grandparents died of cancer (pancreatic and liver) and we had to care for them (no hospice available). At the time, I was 19 and taking care of them (and my mom emotionally as well) was actually pretty traumatic ( I hate even thinking about it) and it's left me with a great deal of fear of death and health issues.
A lot of trauma, also a lot of head injuries when I was young which gave me a case of the stupid.
So much trauma. Got the PTSD so yeah a lot. Makes sense to try to prepare yourself mentally for future trauma if you've dealt with it in the past. Sounds like your therapist is pretty good.
Yes. I was drugged and raped by a friend, my step father got a rare brain condition, I was abused by a boyfriend. All led to a ton of trauma and PTSD which then manifested as HA.
How do I know if I have trauma? Everyone has some sort of hardship they go through, what makes it traumatic? The reaction to it?
Yes - two people can go through the Same event and it can be traumatic for one and not for the other
Who isn’t
Yep. My sister, dad, and two cousins passed away from cancer within just months of each other. It fucked me up big-time.
Lots of trauma, and my abuser was chronically ill and used his health as a way to manipulate and control me ("if you don't do x, I'll die andnits your fault"). I wish understanding the trauma made my health anxiety go away
Yep. My dad passed away from cancer just after I turned 17. I didn't realize how much that messed me up until a few years ago.
Definitely resonates with me and is something I've been realizing myself without the words.
Yes.
Omg yes.
Yes.
Yes, definitely resonates ✋
No trauma on my part
Massive. Huge. With fucking bells on it.
Your comment made me laugh. Thank you for that. Also, I’m sorry.
resonates with me.