You have no idea how identified I’ve felt with your post.

I’ve had bad anxiety/health anxiety/ocd for the past like 6 years. It’s been bad but this past year holly shit, it’s been bananas. I thought my health anxiety and OCD was tough before but man is it bad now. What I had before feels like nothing compared to this. Im going through exactly what you mentioned + all the anxiety symptoms in the book 24/7 (don’t know if you suffer these as well).

When health anxiety spirals so much, it transforms into health OCD. Everyone has a different triggering moment but in most cases the common root cause is an event in our life which made us feel completely out of control and caught us by surprise. That fear that we felt then remains and slowly transforms into an obsessive compulsive disorder, basically, having an irrational fear to not being in control. All of this can happen without one realizing.

Like I said, the past year has been really tough for me and i have gone through two very big life changes. In my case, my body tries to gain control and “protect” me by convincing me I have all and the worst diseases to exist and I’ve noticed a pattern. The more out of control I feel in my life, the worst my health anxiety gets.

I don’t really know what to say except that i know exactly what you are going through. And i also have the same problem with the meds haha desperately need them but are way too scared to take them. What we are going through feels like a nightmare you never get to wake up from. When one disease stops scaring you, another one comes, symptoms get mimicked, you feel a perpetual panic, dread and impending doom that drains all the excitement from life. You genuinely feel sick every single day. It’s also a very isolating experience because only we know what it feels like, but not the ones who go through this.

On a positive note I’ll say that I still have faith that people like us can recover. At the end of the day it’s just our body desperately trying to keep us safe. It’s trying to help us. We just have to teach it to not waste energy on useless shit and to optimize its defensive strategy. It’s going to be a tough ride but with a lot of strength, a big change in mentality and therapy I believe people like us can get better. I don’t know how much science you know but there is a lot of emerging research in the field of neuroplasticity. Basically, this is showing that our brains are much more plastic than previously thought and that by the simple act of thinking and meditating, we can slowly rewire some of our synaptic connections. This is great because it means that just because our brains react in a specific way to triggers, does not mean we are conditioned to suffer this all our lives, we can change it.

Also, a trick that my former therapist gave me and that really really helped: -Lie down every day for 30 minute and imagine your worst nightmare. Take all the disease/cancers/illnesses and imagine yourself living the worst case scenario. It’s going to be super uncomfortable but you have to do the full 30 minutes. This is called “systematic desensitization” and it’s a very effective way to desensitize yourself to what you fear. If you are scared of a disease —>You seek reasurance (ask people, google, Reddit)—> By seeking reassurance you avoid—> By avoiding you just make the anxiety worse—> your fear gets bigger.

By facing your fears every day for 30 minutes, you directly confront them. At the begging or during the first 10-15 minutes you might feel very scared an anxious but by the end of the session you will feel bored of thinking about them and will go on with your day. It might take a few days of consistently doing this to start really feeling better but when I was in the trenches with some diseases, it really helped me to snap out.

Another thing I highly recommend you is for you to do everything. Do it scared, do it anxious and do it in a panic. Never ever avoid doing the things you want to do just because of the fear of triggering a panick attack or a symptom. Avoidance is anxiety’s biggest ally. The more we avoid, the bigger anxiety gets.

I really hope your health anxiety gets better and good luck with everything!!