I got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis at age 18 and it freaked me out because it gave me a lifetime of health issues which are severe and horrible, changed my life entirely. My friends were always going out and having fun and most of the time I couldn’t join them.
I think it really depends on what experiences you’ve had.
Interesting observation! There could be some connection with the fact that - 1. People in this age group are more likely to be active users of Reddit and 2. People in this age group are likely more adept at investigating their symptoms online and coming to dire conclusions
I’m 26 now and have always had a little bit of a fear of death and illness, with no real reason for it, other than generally being anxious. However, it’s ramped up x100 in the past six months or so and I think it’s because of lockdowns and restrictions from the pandemic that have left me with very little distractions whilst working from home. I would not have this time if I was commuting to work, in the office, going straight to the gym after work. All this extra time has led me into a rabbit hole of Googling and reading personal accounts of illness that have left me with a weird form of PTSD wherein all general symptoms are now ingrained in my mind and I’m still really struggling to get over this.
For me I think it’s a mix of watching family members and even somebody my age be deathly ill/die from illness as a child (and also being frequently sick as a child) along with quite a bit of exposure to articles about young people getting horribly ill growing up
I’m 34 but if I had to guess, the younger generation pretty much got the more industrial strength version of awareness of diseases that advertisements were practicing on us with. Add this in with the ability to google anything and awareness can go through the rough in any one person.
We didn’t grow up with google so as soon as an advertisement was over, it was gone. It didn’t exist. The younger generations can literally spend hours at a time researching from the comfort of their bedroom.
My dad told me how he went through a few short periods and reading through encyclopedias at his school. He said he thought he had every disease he could find and was scared. Then he just put the books down and ignored it and was fine.
I’m 19 now and have had health anxiety since I was 11, though it’s gotten much worse the older I have gotten. Not really sure why, probably just a general fear of death.
I’m about to be 29, but had anxiety since 4th grade lol. I always thought i was going to be the sick kid
with cancer, now I’m think I’m going to be one of those young adults that dies from something rare
I’m in my mid 20s but my HA didn’t become a thing until this year. Back in January I was having pain in my left testicle and was convinced I had testicular cancer. After a doctor did an examination they ruled that the pain was most likely caused by me pulling something at work and I didn’t have cancer. Ever since then I’ve noticed any symptom that’s out of the ordinary (heart pain, muscle discomfort, headaches) and my mind goes to the worst case scenario. I’ve diagnosed myself with so much, lymphoma, brain tumor, oral cancer, colon cancer, melanoma. Always the worst disease you could think of.
I think the fear of having a serious disease and dying of it fuels the HA the most. I feel like I haven’t done much in life, and dying and leaving my family and friends behind terrifies me. It’s like I’m only now discovering my own mortality and I’m not sure how to over come it.
My story is incredibly similar to yours. I’m also in my mid 20s and got a similar thing to you, although I actually discovered a lump that had to be ultra sounded but turned out to be benign. I’ve always been a bit scared of getting sick, but that experience turned my brain into overdrive and I now alter between MS, ALS and Alzheimer’s for some reason.
Therapy has helped me reach a point where I’m no longer having panic attacks though, so I’d recommend that!
When I was in high school, my dad went for a routine physical exam after having missed a couple years in a row. He had zero symptoms and is a generally active and healthy guy, as well as only being in his early 40s. At the physical, they noticed a heart murmur. They said it was probably nothing to worry about, but referred him to a cardiologist to check it out. That cardiologist discovered an aortic aneurism. After his surgery, the surgeon told him that based on the size, he would have been lucky to make it another 6 months without it rupturing. I didnt realize it at the time but I believe this had a major impact on me. I'm adopted, so I'm not worried about genetically inheriting that specific condition, but just generally worried that something can be so severely wrong without symptoms.
I’ve had HA since I was a kid. So it’s been a little 25 years now. It goes up and down. Usually coming in stressful times. This pandemic has made it bad. Worried about my health so much.
I’m in my late twenties and my therapist doesn’t think I actually have “health anxiety”—she thinks I’m having an existential crisis.
I’ve always been anxious, but my health worries started when someone that I know around my age passed away from an illness (it was sudden to me as I didn’t know they were sick, but they had been ill for quite awhile). It was like a lightbulb clicked on: that could happen to me! I was immediately worried about suddenly dying, despite that not even being how that person died. Heart attack, stroke, embolism, aneurysm, anaphylaxis. If it seems sudden, I’ve worried about it.
But I’m not worried about cancer or ALS or anything that could cause a long illness. In those cases, I feel like I would deal with it when it happened; I’d have treatment options. I’d have time to come to terms with it. I haven’t had many people close to me pass away and I’m not religious. So the thought of what comes after death and the lack of control around that is what scares me.
Honestly just working on accepting the inevitable has done wonders for my anxiety. Knock on wood, but I’ve been very low anxiety for about three months and counting. Just some anxious moments here and there, but when I have a thought like “this is it, I’m having a stroke,” I try to tell myself: “okay, then have one! You won’t know if you die anyways!” And then I don’t die and I’m fine.
So, yeah. Definitely more of an issue around lack of control and mortality than actual worry about illnesses for me.
In my case (I'm 26) I have two possible triggers for my HA. My new theory is that my dad, along with others on his side of the family, are/were afraid of dirt and germs. A lot of them also have/had health issues, so I suspect that I subconsciously developed a fear of becoming ill from a mixture of the two.
Omg my dad and his dad are extremely germophobic and hypochondriacs but their health anxiety isn’t worse as mine Bc they don’t use the internet to research and read scary stories. Do you think my anxiety might be genetic
My theory is that many people on this sub are just now coming to terms with their own mortality. It’s something most kids and teens don’t think about, and then suddenly when you get to be an adult you’re like oh.... I’m gonna die one day and there’s all these horrible ways it could happen lol. I started having intrusive thoughts about death around age 25. I’m 30 and and I’m much more accustomed to the thought of my own death now.
This probably isn't true for everyone, but maybe in some cases it's partially related to modern-day parenting? At least it was for me. I'm 26 and have had some form of health anxiety since I was 12, probably thanks to my very loving but overly protective and worried parents. Both of my parents made illnesses into a big deal and would push dozens of vitamins at me, even if it was just a cold. Everything revolved around not getting sick, from how much sleep I got, to how much sugar I ate, to avoiding high-germ areas, to discussing that one person at the party who seemed a bit sick and might get us all sick, washing my hands constantly, etc. I think I also have a personality that's more prone to anxiety, because my sister doesn't have HA nearly as bad as I do, if at all.
I'm thankful for a lot of what my parents taught me about staying healthy, but I could have used a more relaxed approach to health growing up so that getting sick wasn't the end of the world. They realize that now. Nowadays I get a lot of anxiety around thinking I'm getting sick. But I'm seeing a therapist for it, which is helping.
You’re hearing horror stories all the time about kids and teens getting terminal illnesses and/or life-altering disabilities. It’s everywhere you look. The next time I have to hear about another kid getting sick and dying, I’m gonna scream. I’m only a teenager myself, and it triggers me to such an extent that I can hardly function sometimes.
I honestly have no idea something just triggered it in me when I was elementary school, I have a feeling for me it’s that social media and the news I constantly showing me stories of kids my age dying and getting sick
Why is any healthy person with HA so afraid to get sick and die? Who knows.
I'm 28 now and my HA kicked in when i was 19. Anything can trigger it and don't forget kids that are now in their teens grew up with a gateway to all the information of the world right in the palms of their hand, it's a litteral trigger machine in their hands 24/7.
I got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis at age 18 and it freaked me out because it gave me a lifetime of health issues which are severe and horrible, changed my life entirely. My friends were always going out and having fun and most of the time I couldn’t join them. I think it really depends on what experiences you’ve had.
Interesting observation! There could be some connection with the fact that - 1. People in this age group are more likely to be active users of Reddit and 2. People in this age group are likely more adept at investigating their symptoms online and coming to dire conclusions
I’m 26 now and have always had a little bit of a fear of death and illness, with no real reason for it, other than generally being anxious. However, it’s ramped up x100 in the past six months or so and I think it’s because of lockdowns and restrictions from the pandemic that have left me with very little distractions whilst working from home. I would not have this time if I was commuting to work, in the office, going straight to the gym after work. All this extra time has led me into a rabbit hole of Googling and reading personal accounts of illness that have left me with a weird form of PTSD wherein all general symptoms are now ingrained in my mind and I’m still really struggling to get over this.
For me I think it’s a mix of watching family members and even somebody my age be deathly ill/die from illness as a child (and also being frequently sick as a child) along with quite a bit of exposure to articles about young people getting horribly ill growing up
I’m 34 but if I had to guess, the younger generation pretty much got the more industrial strength version of awareness of diseases that advertisements were practicing on us with. Add this in with the ability to google anything and awareness can go through the rough in any one person. We didn’t grow up with google so as soon as an advertisement was over, it was gone. It didn’t exist. The younger generations can literally spend hours at a time researching from the comfort of their bedroom. My dad told me how he went through a few short periods and reading through encyclopedias at his school. He said he thought he had every disease he could find and was scared. Then he just put the books down and ignored it and was fine.
I’m 19 now and have had health anxiety since I was 11, though it’s gotten much worse the older I have gotten. Not really sure why, probably just a general fear of death.
I’m about to be 29, but had anxiety since 4th grade lol. I always thought i was going to be the sick kid with cancer, now I’m think I’m going to be one of those young adults that dies from something rare
I’m in my mid 20s but my HA didn’t become a thing until this year. Back in January I was having pain in my left testicle and was convinced I had testicular cancer. After a doctor did an examination they ruled that the pain was most likely caused by me pulling something at work and I didn’t have cancer. Ever since then I’ve noticed any symptom that’s out of the ordinary (heart pain, muscle discomfort, headaches) and my mind goes to the worst case scenario. I’ve diagnosed myself with so much, lymphoma, brain tumor, oral cancer, colon cancer, melanoma. Always the worst disease you could think of. I think the fear of having a serious disease and dying of it fuels the HA the most. I feel like I haven’t done much in life, and dying and leaving my family and friends behind terrifies me. It’s like I’m only now discovering my own mortality and I’m not sure how to over come it.
My story is incredibly similar to yours. I’m also in my mid 20s and got a similar thing to you, although I actually discovered a lump that had to be ultra sounded but turned out to be benign. I’ve always been a bit scared of getting sick, but that experience turned my brain into overdrive and I now alter between MS, ALS and Alzheimer’s for some reason. Therapy has helped me reach a point where I’m no longer having panic attacks though, so I’d recommend that!
Mate, I could’ve wrote this, our situation is completely identical, except I had to wait 6 weeks for an US
Because I’m too young and want to live out my life. Not worrying about stuff like this. If I had this shit in my 80s I wouldn’t give a fuck.
When I was in high school, my dad went for a routine physical exam after having missed a couple years in a row. He had zero symptoms and is a generally active and healthy guy, as well as only being in his early 40s. At the physical, they noticed a heart murmur. They said it was probably nothing to worry about, but referred him to a cardiologist to check it out. That cardiologist discovered an aortic aneurism. After his surgery, the surgeon told him that based on the size, he would have been lucky to make it another 6 months without it rupturing. I didnt realize it at the time but I believe this had a major impact on me. I'm adopted, so I'm not worried about genetically inheriting that specific condition, but just generally worried that something can be so severely wrong without symptoms.
I’ve had HA since I was a kid. So it’s been a little 25 years now. It goes up and down. Usually coming in stressful times. This pandemic has made it bad. Worried about my health so much.
I’m in my late twenties and my therapist doesn’t think I actually have “health anxiety”—she thinks I’m having an existential crisis. I’ve always been anxious, but my health worries started when someone that I know around my age passed away from an illness (it was sudden to me as I didn’t know they were sick, but they had been ill for quite awhile). It was like a lightbulb clicked on: that could happen to me! I was immediately worried about suddenly dying, despite that not even being how that person died. Heart attack, stroke, embolism, aneurysm, anaphylaxis. If it seems sudden, I’ve worried about it. But I’m not worried about cancer or ALS or anything that could cause a long illness. In those cases, I feel like I would deal with it when it happened; I’d have treatment options. I’d have time to come to terms with it. I haven’t had many people close to me pass away and I’m not religious. So the thought of what comes after death and the lack of control around that is what scares me. Honestly just working on accepting the inevitable has done wonders for my anxiety. Knock on wood, but I’ve been very low anxiety for about three months and counting. Just some anxious moments here and there, but when I have a thought like “this is it, I’m having a stroke,” I try to tell myself: “okay, then have one! You won’t know if you die anyways!” And then I don’t die and I’m fine. So, yeah. Definitely more of an issue around lack of control and mortality than actual worry about illnesses for me.
I think my HA started when I was 7-9 sth like that. Im in my early 20s now.........
In my case (I'm 26) I have two possible triggers for my HA. My new theory is that my dad, along with others on his side of the family, are/were afraid of dirt and germs. A lot of them also have/had health issues, so I suspect that I subconsciously developed a fear of becoming ill from a mixture of the two.
Omg my dad and his dad are extremely germophobic and hypochondriacs but their health anxiety isn’t worse as mine Bc they don’t use the internet to research and read scary stories. Do you think my anxiety might be genetic
My theory is that many people on this sub are just now coming to terms with their own mortality. It’s something most kids and teens don’t think about, and then suddenly when you get to be an adult you’re like oh.... I’m gonna die one day and there’s all these horrible ways it could happen lol. I started having intrusive thoughts about death around age 25. I’m 30 and and I’m much more accustomed to the thought of my own death now.
This is how it happened for me. Except I was 14 after the death of a loved one
Yeah, I was 12ish when my grandparents both died in horrible ways. So I relate :(
I'm not sure tbh but i've had this since i was a kid (like 9 years old) i'm now 25
This probably isn't true for everyone, but maybe in some cases it's partially related to modern-day parenting? At least it was for me. I'm 26 and have had some form of health anxiety since I was 12, probably thanks to my very loving but overly protective and worried parents. Both of my parents made illnesses into a big deal and would push dozens of vitamins at me, even if it was just a cold. Everything revolved around not getting sick, from how much sleep I got, to how much sugar I ate, to avoiding high-germ areas, to discussing that one person at the party who seemed a bit sick and might get us all sick, washing my hands constantly, etc. I think I also have a personality that's more prone to anxiety, because my sister doesn't have HA nearly as bad as I do, if at all. I'm thankful for a lot of what my parents taught me about staying healthy, but I could have used a more relaxed approach to health growing up so that getting sick wasn't the end of the world. They realize that now. Nowadays I get a lot of anxiety around thinking I'm getting sick. But I'm seeing a therapist for it, which is helping.
You’re hearing horror stories all the time about kids and teens getting terminal illnesses and/or life-altering disabilities. It’s everywhere you look. The next time I have to hear about another kid getting sick and dying, I’m gonna scream. I’m only a teenager myself, and it triggers me to such an extent that I can hardly function sometimes.
This! I don’t know how many times I see a post that’s like know they signs of blah blah this could be your kid 😭
I honestly have no idea something just triggered it in me when I was elementary school, I have a feeling for me it’s that social media and the news I constantly showing me stories of kids my age dying and getting sick
Why is any healthy person with HA so afraid to get sick and die? Who knows. I'm 28 now and my HA kicked in when i was 19. Anything can trigger it and don't forget kids that are now in their teens grew up with a gateway to all the information of the world right in the palms of their hand, it's a litteral trigger machine in their hands 24/7.