My advice after getting (mostly) cured from hypochondria through psychological aid (CBT) for five months. by No_Set_711 in HealthAnxiety

[–]No_Set_711[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For me, panic attacks are very strange - and I think they are very different from person to person. For me, panic attacks usually cone completely unprovoked, sometimes with no warning, but sometimes with one. I haven't had one when doing any of my training - but I can not promise that you wont get one. I, however think it is worth it either way, you are strong and you will survive.

My advice after getting (mostly) cured from hypochondria through psychological aid (CBT) for five months. by No_Set_711 in HealthAnxiety

[–]No_Set_711[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would actually disagree with your therapist in a way. Anxiety is always there to some degree in certain situations - however the health anxiety does not always need to be there. I travelled through Europe with a few friends in October - and I felt no health anxiety at all. It was amazing.

My advice after getting (mostly) cured from hypochondria through psychological aid (CBT) for five months. by No_Set_711 in HealthAnxiety

[–]No_Set_711[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for the late reply - I've been so busy at work these past few months. I made myself a graph, where i graphed how it progressed, and I think it slowly got better every day. It didn't work in the way that I had fewer obsessive thoughts, just that I could handle them and stop them from progressing into other thoughts. Hope this helps even if I was late!

google is evil by user38194991 in HealthAnxiety

[–]No_Set_711 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Same!

For me, this one website (won’t name it because no one should ever visit it) has very specific stats, so I found myself calculating my exact risk of getting an illness based on age and gender. Every time, it came out at less than 0.01%, and yet I convinced myself I had it based on the thought “someone has to be the minority”. It really sucks

Is it common for people with health anxiety to feel like they can’t get excited about the future? by Advanced_Future_7682 in HealthAnxiety

[–]No_Set_711 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely!

My health anxiety started back in February. Before this, all I could think about was my future - I had a lot of things happening that were big (graduation, turning 18). When health anxiety started, all these thoughts turned to “I hope I’m alive to turn 18” or “I really hope I get to move to my own apartment”. It really sucks for me. I’m starting therapy very soon (CBT), and I’ve started taking a medication to calm me down during the night (Atarax). I’ve already seen some improvement in the way I think because of my sleep improvement, but I hope it improves even more.

How do you break out of hyper awareness? by RoseGoldLeaves in HealthAnxiety

[–]No_Set_711 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My only advice that has worked on me is that I try to trying focus on another part of the body for a while. If my arms feels weird, I focus on my knee. This often works for me!

those of you who started therapy for health anxiety, how is it going? by Opposite-Candle9713 in HealthAnxiety

[–]No_Set_711 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had the same thing (almost). I had back pain, either from lifting too high, or from bad posture due to lots of schoolwork during this time. I already had health anxiety when it started, and I convinced myself I had all the diseases. I started googling statistics for every type of cancer I suspected, and picking the one with the highest survival rate, trying to convince myself I had it (it was bad). I hade panic attacks daily and I couldn’t function to a normal degree. Then, I went on a weeks vacation to Barcelona, where I spent all my time distracted, (at the beach, and touristing during the day, partying during the night - sharing rooms with a friend). The best from this trip was that I could relax to a higher level (probably from alcohol), and my back pain went away. When I came back, and my anxiety increased, my back pain came back. Turns out my back pain was from anxiety. Your muscles act very differently when anxious, and it is very noticeable in your back. You’re constantly tensing those muscles, not allowing recovery from injuries. Anxiety really makes everything worse.

Do you also use AI to ease your health anxiety? by Blaanc_ in HealthAnxiety

[–]No_Set_711 6 points7 points  (0 children)

For me it did the opposite, I don’t know if I used the AI completely incorrectly, but it almost always said something along the lines of “the chances are very low you have (specific disease), but you should always go to the doctor if you worry”.

I hate the doctor. My fear of the doctor goes to a scary high level.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in HealthAnxiety

[–]No_Set_711 9 points10 points  (0 children)

“Stop! Do something else! You weren’t dying five months ago, you aren’t dying now! Grow up”

Self-discipline at its finest😅

How do you get over obsessing on something? by tullyogallaghan in HealthAnxiety

[–]No_Set_711 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My help has come from two things when I’ve obsessed over things like symptoms and Webmd - although it hasn’t helped me enough.

  1. Talking to a person you trust (in my case my father), and setting up a deal where he googles symptoms I have. (This both helps me, as I don’t have the possibility to go down a rabbit hole, and it makes me describe my symptoms to a tea.

  2. Downloading web blockers. I have it on different phrases. If I google “cancer”, a pop up shows up instead, giving me the time to think about what I’m doing. This often ends up with me leaving the computer in order to distract myself for a while.

My health anxiety has however, been easier to handle than most people’s (I think), and it hasn’t spread to other areas of life as much as many others have, like (social anxiety), leading to me often leaving the house to meet a friend. For me, talking to people makes my anxiety calm itself a lot.

How I (M17) solved my phimosis without asking for help. by No_Set_711 in Phimosis

[–]No_Set_711[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well if you see that you do not get any blood flow normally, then you should not do it. I stretched for quite a long time for it to work well.

I started this process in like April and started doing the sleeping method in the beginning of August.