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Fucking Hypochondria.
Do you have it? It's bullshit. Your life becomes a miserable quest for reassurance. It never stops.
Once upon a time I had an irrational fear of HIV - stupidly irrational. I started making up scenarios in my head: that time I had a lip wound I washed my hands at the gym. What if someone lost some blood on the faucet and it went to my mouth? This kind of stuff it's nightmare fuel because anything can make you panic. I postponed a test for years, then I had to due it for immigration. When the result came clear, it was one of the happiest moment of my life. Even if I KNEW it was clear. It had to be - I always had safe sex with girls I knew, no hookers, no needle drugs.
Last issue happened yesterday. I have this small lump where the trap muscle joints to the neck. As far as I remember, I've always been having it. I don't remember if I had it checked in the past and the doctor said it was just how my body was. Dunno what happened, yesterday I randomly touched it and I started to panic. This led to a rabbit-hole of google symptoms which basically lead to cancer or lymphona. Fuck off. I know that the first rule is don't google symptoms because even weezing means you have lung cancer.
This lump never gave me any problems - any at all. No pain, no discomfort, no problems in lifting and doing sports, no fever, blood exams, chest x-ray two years ago and everything is fine. I called the doctor but he won't be free until Tuesday morning. Now imagine what happened - I've been touching it non stop for a day and the area is now red. Which makes you google other symptoms. FUCK. Now I feel my neck is strange...I know that it's anxiety/Self-awareness but I cannot rationalize it.
I hope you never feel this.
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if you become HIV+ just avoid AZT at all cost and you should be fine.
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Yep. I know this feeling.
Started for me back in last August. Was about to enter my most stressful year of a very important year for school. Hammered a hard 4 hour group ride the night before, then went to sleep. Nightime panic attack, don't even know what it was that woke me up but I woke up worried something was wrong with my heart, then had a bunch of panic attack symptoms and freaking out skyrocketing my heart rate from it's usual 40 to over 150. Felt like it would explode and I was dying. I didn't. Eventually went back to sleep a couple hours later when I decided I wasn't, in fact, dying.
Combine that panic attack stress with large exercise stress with life stress and I was ripe. Woke up next morning with consistent PVCs. If you don't know what those are they are where you're getting some unexpected electrical signals in the heart and it causes premature beats. It's usually a missed/small beat, followed by a very powerful beat. You notice them big time. I was having like 2 or 3 a minute. Started googling wtf was going on and eventually figured out it was PVCs, which are almost always benign, but the feeling was just so wrong; and I was reading about all kinds of other not so benign heart conditions that can cause PVCs.
Worked myself into a state where I was more or less constantly anxious I was going to have a lethal arrhythmia and die. Combine that with a few more panic attacks were I was truly scared I was having a runaway heart and I got myself into a state of constant worry. I could sorta block when I had shit to do, but most anytime I was still I was anxious and stressed. Like large adrenaline surges through my body every few seconds.
I got a little more used to it, and combined with checking with the doctors and having some screening became pretty certain I wasn't going to die. Hadn't fully accepted it yet...but it was now manageable. PVC frequency went down quite a bit. But of course I was always scanning my body for when that next PVC was coming and being anxious about it.
Sometime in March I started to truly accept I wasn't going to die from an arrhythmia. I'd be stressed for so long though and developed such bad thought habits that I had basically given myself GAD. Combine that with this new healthy fascination and every time I got a new anxiety symptom I was running to google to see what I was dealing with; I remember wondering if I might have diabetes, cancer, thyroid/adrenal disorder of some sort, fucking ALS, etc. Pretty bad cycle. The worry about diseases was annoying, but the constantly super tightly wound existence, combined with frequently being aware of my heart beat in weird places or just of it pounding, combined with these near constant adrenaline surges was a pretty annoying way to live. Luckily it would generally only both me when I was fairly still and in my head. I could still escape a bit with social outlets, exercise, video games etc. Lot's of nights where it took fucking forever to fall asleep though which adds to feeling like shit.
Finally in May the straw pretty much snapped. I'd decided I'd have enough of this shit and was done worrying. Told myself that no matter what I feel or experience I'm chalking it up to anxiety and if I have some ridiculously rare 1,000,000 to 1 condition and I don't get it treated as fast it's whatever. Made my peace with that and that's largely silenced the is something wrong with me worries.
Still working on clearing up the GAD though. I'm so conditioned now to look for things wrong with my body that when I'm still and relaxed my body wants to be nervous because that's what it used to. I don't get the absolute huge adrenal surges, but I get enough that plenty of time I'm still a little on edge and can feel those adrenal butterflies in the chest or a little surge through my head. I *think* it will go away with continued acceptance and practice, but it's been an annoying journey for about 10 months.
Biggest takeway for me is I had to be absolutely ready to trust that it was anxiety such that I'd die if I was wrong. For mindstate I realized I needed to not fight the anxiety and try to make it stop. It's fight or flight kicking in, and fighting just reinforces that something is wrong. I'm working to just say "hey, I'm getting this adrenal surges making me feel wierd and anxious, but it's okay". I'm letting the anxiety wash over me while telling myself the feeling isn't dangerous or bad. It's made a TREMENDOUS difference.
Having dealt with this now, it's really easy to see how people get stuck in the anxiety trap and struggle with this their entire lives. Very lucky that even at the height of mine, it was still relatively mild and I was a functioning person.
Tl;dr - Yea I can sympathize with the feeling. It sucks. You can beat it though with good mindset work.
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it's an annoying disorder indeed (mine is fairly mild)
is it bad enough that it'd be worth taking meds/doing therapy for?
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A tumor under your skin doesn't strictly mean you have cancer.
And being afraid of HIV is a healthy thing, read on italian news that some hiv+ dudes basically made it a sport out of infecting women.
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Thanks everyone for your answer! I also went to the doctor between patients and he said not to worry, everything's ok.
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EPT
