I uploaded a blog post the other week all about my mental health and where I am at now. I shared about how I am coping and I thought that for today’s blog post I would delve a little deeper. One of the mental health conditions which I suffer from is health anxiety and I want people to know more.

This is going to be a blog post all about my struggles with health anxiety, which was formally known as hypochondria. I am sure that at some point in your life you have been speaking to somebody and used the phrase “Stop being a hypochondriac”. Trust me when I say that if you actually have health anxiety, it would be absolutely amazing just to switch off the feelings and stop blowing things out of proportion. Sadly for me with having OCD and an obsessive nature, that is simply not possible.

 

 

When I first realised.

I realised that I really worried about my own health was when I was around 14 years old. My nan had just been diagnosed with skin cancer for the first time because of a bad mole. Within an instant, I began analysing all of my moles (and I am a very moley person). I came to the conclusion that I too had cancer and that I was going to die. Every single one of my moles was ‘abnormal’ and that sent me into a frenzy. In my head, I thought that I was just losing my mind. For many years I did not say anything about the negative thoughts that I was having.

 

Opening up. 

It wasn’t until many years later when I was laid in bed with my now husband. I finally mentioned how I feel about my moles and how concerned I was with them. Not only did I tell him how I was feeling, but I was also sobbing uncontrollably. I thought I was going to die. I can just remember seeing his startled expression and he forced me to book an appointment at the doctor. To me, going to the doctor is the most terrifying experience. I just think that they are going to tell me that my time is numbered and that is why I simply do not go.

 

Going to the doctors.

I can remember walking into the doctor’s office, speaking to him about my moles, showing him, getting emotional and he took my hands and told me not to worry. Some people are simply prone to have ‘irregular’ looking moles, which is not a worry unless they change drastically. This should have been like a weight off my shoulders, but in my head, it just made me feel like a ticking time bomb and it didn’t help my anxiety at all.

But during that appointment, he saw something about my breakdown which wasn’t exactly ‘normal’. I then began speaking to him about some of my other health fears and worries. I told him that when I hear about somebody having breast cancer that I get phantom pains. That if I get a headache I fear I have a tumour. All of these things that I know I am crazy for thinking, but the thoughts don’t dissipate, no matter how much I try to rationalise my thoughts. That was when we had a proper conversation about health anxiety and all of the worries that I had felt for years seemed to gradually settle.

 

Breaking point.

I guess the health anxiety reached breaking point for me only a couple of years back. I was sat with my fiancé at the time and we had a couple of drinks. We were talking about our future whilst in the midst of planning our wedding. I can remember talking about starting a family. I then made a very cold statement saying, “There is no point in me having children because I will just get into my mid-thirties and get breast cancer and die anyway”. The look on my then fiancés face was just anger because he didn’t want me thinking that way. But he also understood that my head was going to that place because my nan and her sister had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. But I didn’t realise until I vocalised that statement how much I had been putting off those next stages of my life because of these deep routed fears which may never happen.

 

My counsellor.

Following that, I decided that it was time to speak to my councillor. It is incredibly tiring to think like this all of the time and try to get through your day. To say that these thoughts sank me into a depression would be putting it lightly. Truly you do not see the point in going on with your life because you think that it is going to be tragically cut short. For example, I know that at the end of the year when the Stand Up to Cancer Bake Off is on TV. I will watch it and get panic attacks because of every single condition and story that they show. I will adapt to my own life and see the symptoms in myself.

 

When it comes to speaking about OCD and depression, I am an open book. However, discussing health anxiety is something completely new for me. There is such a stigma about people that are deemed a hypochondriac and I was so ashamed the first time the doctor mentioned it to me. Just as I have mentioned with other mental health-related posts, I hope by speaking about it, other people who may be struggling with health anxiety may feel confident enough to speak about their own experience.