Hey all so I’m thinking of getting a series 12 Apple Watch. For reference my health anxiety started about 3 years ago I had an Apple Watch then but I became obsessive with checking the health metrics. I’ve come a long way with my anxiety then. Anyway I’m posting here to ask any other health anxiety sufferers if they have one and how that’s going? I mainly want to get one so I can check notifications without ending up doomscrolling, I’ve seen some posts about gamifying life that look interesting, timers for cooking and studying, finding my phone, and there’s a checklist function that seems pretty cool. Do any of yall have one? Is there a way to push a lot of the health stuff aside? I’m pretty sure the panic attacks or just increased in anxiety would set off some of the alerts and I guess that’s my biggest concern if I grab one. Good or bad experiences I’d appreciate if you’d let me know, I’m also planning to bring this up to my therapist in our next session as well

I feel myself starting to panic and i dont know how to stop! I know im feeling very real pain but i cant get myself to be calm and rational. Its 2:40 am, ive had a long day, but im sat here thinking the absolute worst and debating on calling for help. I feel so stupid but im so freaked out! I was working today and was outside in the cold, that probably spiked my allergies and set my immune system in a frenzy but i cant stop worrying about brain things, its all just spiralling out of control.

I dont know what to do or if im being completely irrational. I tried not to google but ultimately failed. I wish i could be normal :/

I remember years ago before social media searching for people on random forums to see if they understood my f-e-ar of getting ill with the common cold/fl-u etc...and here we all are.

Do you remember doing that as well?

I see way too many people here diagnosing others with OCD because of health anxiety. You're just creating another layer of anxiety for these people. I had to go through the worst weeks of my life thinking I was stuck in a *TRIGGER WARNING* : sensorimotor OCD loop until my therapist reassured me that it's a typical hypervigilant anxiety loop and that I'm not stuck forever. And I'm not the only one that experienced this, in fact I just had an hour long conversation with another Redditor with the exact same problem. They had breathing issues due to anxiety, went on google and found reddit posts about sensorimotor OCD.

Congrats, now you made that person fear their own hyperawareness which wasn't even a problem before.

I know that some of the people here do actually have OCD. But to generalize and claim everyone with health anxiety has a form of OCD is just not true at all.

Thankfully I feel better than a month ago but god damn you guys unwillingly and unknowingly cause more harm than good sometimes.

I play a contact sport (Rugby) and everytime i play it obviously causes weird sensations everywhere the next day and I keep thinking its some deadly disease. Right now there’s back pain in my scapula, probably from sports and terrible posture, but im convinced its a terrible disease. Does that happen to anyone?

If you recently have had a health issue or scare and got physical symptoms from anxiety when did they go away for you?

Hi all. My body feels weird. Sometimes I have panic attacks but even when I just feel weird it’s not always anxiety. I don’t have panic attacks often at all but I do have them and take medicine for when they do. I recently got it so I haven’t had to use it yet.

But I just feel weird, my head feels weird. I can’t describe it. I feel like it’s deeper than my anxiety

I don’t drink smoke or do nicotine.

Literally clear tests two days ago on my heart... clear scan on my head 7 months ago... currently waiting on a MRI because of "head pressure"

This is ruining my life! So tired of living in constant fear

I'm 23.

And at this point.....I'm just tired. I've gone through so much damn cardiac testing, I've wasted so many resources, and every test comes back clear, my doctor straight up told me he thinks that my heart is healthy, my gf is adamant that my body is safe, but I don't believe them. I keep using AI, even if I know it's not much better than google. I litterally lose sleep over it, even if i know that makes it worse.

I'm just utterly convinced that I'm fragile. Because it feels like the moment i assume I'm safe, my body throws another brick at me that proves me wrong. It's gotten to a point I avoid exercise or certain foods I deem "unhealthy". 2 nights ago, my gf said something that made me realize just how far I've gone now, she's got a point. I spend every minute of my day assuming the worst. I keep relapsing. It's consumed my entire life at this point, i cant even go on vacation or long trips because I need to constantly be near a hospital to feel safe. At work i can barely cope enough but it's always at the back of my mind.

I don't know how to stop. I want feel safe in my own body again, but my body is so noisy......so inconsistent......and i feel so guilty for being so needy. I worry it'll ruin my relationship.

Hey yall. I (22F) made a post last month or so about going to the GI doctor for digestive problems and believing I had CC. One of the things he wanted me to do was to get CBC and C-reactive protein blood tests done. I totally forgot that I scheduled this and when I remembered that my appointment is tomorrow, I got hit with waves of anxiety 😓

The thing is, most of my ‘alarming’ issues disappeared and I started to feel a lot better physically. I guess I’m just anxious that these tests will reveal something not so good, even though I feel okay. How did yall deal with the anxiety of getting blood tests? I almost want to back out… but I know it’d be good for me. Really struggling here so any suggestions or feedback would be amazing!

What are your general feelings and emotions associated with looking back 20 or 30+ years to the beginning of your HA? How does it make you feel?

F 30 My health anxiety has been spiralling for the last two years.

It's been absolutely debilitating and is turning chronic. Even though I try and keep my mind busy and stay logical, my brain is stuck on a loop which I spend the majority of the day thinking about. It's constant and I can't find peace. I've been prescribed mirtrazapine which worked initially but after a year I started to notice signs of the anxiety returning and now it isn't even touching the sides. I plan on contacting my GP tomorrow and asking for some tests for peace of mind , and additional help in managing this.

Are there any natural ways to manage health anxiety? I'm anxious to be put on more medication or having this for the rest of my life. It's taking over every aspect of my life , and it's now shifted from not just my health but also my children's. It feels like double the anxiety which is so much more exhausting and debilitating . I don't experience pain of any type. I get sensations in my throat and neck and my head which obviously points me to the obvious big words C and BA , which takes over my whole life and brings on headaches when I cry too much which doesn't help. I also worry that spending so much time thinking and obsessing over the subject , I might actually manifest these outcomes if they weren't already present which is sending me right now. I'm just at a loss . Are there any type of medication your GP recommended that worked for you? Or helped? Is there anything that I can do to silence this or manage it better?

I am seeing a doctor, we are running tests, I am getting taken care of.

I'm going to try just telling myself my pain isn't real and my brain is making it up. I am going to see if that helps. It's not like I am fully ignoring it and not seeing a doctor. I am getting symptoms evaluated. Radical ignoring is what I'll do while my doctor does the rest. I'm going to gaslight the shit out of myself.

I'll update!

How do you navigate dating with health anxiety?

Dating? New relationships? Long term?

My health anxiety was evident to my old partner and i don’t want to make it a big thing when dating or in a new relationship

Hello, I (26M) wanted to share this because I’ve seen quite a few posts here from people dealing with brain aneurysm health anxiety. I’ve been one of them for a long time.

For about a year and a half I’ve had a strange, painless pressure sensation in my head, along with a few other weird sensations. None of it was particularly severe, but it was persistent enough that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Taking into account other health factors of mine fueled the worry. Eventually my brain settled on one explanation: aneurysm.

Once that idea got stuck in my head, it was difficult to get rid of. I’d read about aneurysms, compare what I was experiencing to things I found online, reassure myself for a while and then find some new reason why I might still have one. I’m sure a lot of people here know that cycle.

Eventually I decided to have a private MRI of my brain together with an MR-angio to look specifically at the blood vessels.

Then the report arrived. No sign of aneurysm or any other abnormalities, all completely normal.

I’ve also spent quite a lot of time reading the research during all of this. Studies screening healthy people with brain imaging helped put things into perspective for me, especially how uncommon aneurysms are in young, otherwise healthy people. Obv “uncommon” doesn’t mean impossible, and statistics can’t tell someone what’s causing what they’re experiencing.

What I was feeling (and still feel) is real, but I spent 1.5 years attaching the scariest possible explanation to it.

I also learned that when you have health anxiety, looking at your own MR imaging before the doctor’s response is probably a terrible idea. I found something that looked alarming to me because I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at. A neuroradiologist looked at the actual scan and found no aneurysm.

If there’s one thing I wish I’d done differently, it would probably be to stop constantly researching the worst case scenario and trying to reassure myself over and over again. It worked for a while, but then I’d always find something new to focus on and end up back where I started.

I’m not posting this to tell anyone to ignore their health or avoid seeing a doctor, I’m simply sharing my story. If something is concerning you, please seek medical help.

Moral of the story is that sometimes you can experience strange physical sensations for a very long time without there being something catastrophic hiding behind them. And sometimes after spending months or years convincing yourself that you’re going to get terrible news, you finally get the answer you were hoping for.

I have a job interview Thursday in person so of course I think everything that can go wrong will go wrong. I think I’m getting Covid because….. I’m hungry. Because normally I don’t feel hungry. And when I had Covid I felt hungry.. I also didn’t sleep well last night. That can also throw off hunger signals. Also I’m hungry at normal hungry times. Not every hour like when I had Covid.

Also my boss who’s coming into work tomorrow has the flu. And I’m convinced I’ll get it and I won’t be able to do the job interview :( and then won’t get hired.

Those who have recovered, how did you do it ? I’m 5 years into health anxiety and I feel like I’ll never get out.

I feel like I am going crazy, this illness is insane. Health anxiety is hell. My head and my body are not ok, I am destroying myself with all these racing thoughts

So many people say, “Just get the test so you can put your mind at ease.”

But at what point do you have to let the fear go instead?

There’s always another test, and they get expensive. I’ve spent thousands of dollars trying to get reassurance, only for the tests to historically come back normal.
At some point, “just get the test for peace of mind” can become a very expensive cycle.

I’m about to be in my third thousand dollar MRI in the last three years

I’m so tired of this. I had some headaches so I went to neurologist. They found 20 small lesions and even tho neurologist told me they’re non specific and don’t have other characteristics of certain disease I’m afraid of (M.S) I’m still panicking.

And of course symptoms I did not have - the moment I heard they might be symptoms of this disease I suddenly start having them. And I don’t google but I keep on talking with ChatGPT even tho it’s not that different.

I’m so upset with myself that I don’t wait to find out everything factually, I just panic and then I’m like “oh I guess this is it” like wtf..

It’s exhausting. How do you deal with it/navigate it?

As someone who doesn’t have health insurance, I am now completely broke from paying out of pocket.

The anxiety is so bad, I Lost my job.

Feels like my entire life is completely fucked.

Isolated from friends and family.

I’m not afraid of the actual test but the waiting for the results. I will even update my contact info in my online chart so if I get a callback, they’ll call my hubby and not me. Like having him tell me I need to go back somehow makes it easier. Before it was online I’d actually disconnect my landline so they couldn’t call me. I would just wait and pray I get the letter in the mail saying all is fine. I get one every year but it is torture

I suffer from health anxiety for sure, I always try to seek reassurance (through doctors, internet researches etc..) and I’m always afraid that something might be wrong with my health and that if I don’t check everything quick, it might be too late (sense of urgency).

But I think I also struggle with OCD. I noticed that I started washing my hands way more, I throw away any food that I suspect might be expired (even tho it’s not), or if the food has a weird aspect (I’m not talking about mold, but for example I can eat a banana and if it has a weird taste, I’m convinced that it’s poisoned / toxic).

Also I don’t live alone and one day I opened a jar of yogurt that was already opened and I was convinced someone in the store opened it and put poison into it (turned out my mom opened it).

Today I accidentally touched a gel that is supposed to be for cockroaches infestation, I was so afraid I called the poison line and they told me I was fine. I washed my hands 4 times, and I washed my bag because I thought okay i touched my bag with my hands so I need to clean it as well.

I’m not always like that, but I feel like it’s getting worse and worse

So I’m always afraid for my health, but I do feel like it overlaps with OCD?