Health Anxiety/OCD

I’ve been struggling with OCD since middle school. Over the years I’ve had many different obsessions such as POCD, Harm OCD, and now Health Concern OCD. For the last 6 months my newest obsession has been thinking that I am having a heart attack. I constantly body check, google symptoms, ask others for reassurance. I live at my university which is a little bit far from home. This causes me to have to call my mom in the middle of the night every time I have a panic attack over this. My roommates a nursing major so she always offers to take my blood pressure which helps, but still I don’t enjoy living like this. I always feel bad bothering others, and constantly feel like a nuisance. If anyone else with these worries and obsessions can let me know new ways to cope with it that would be amazing:) I just started my switch from lexapro to prozac for my OCD and I’m hopefully starting ERP/CBT soon but any tips on how to help this would be amazing.

Health Concern OCD

Username: divyDdivyD

Date posted: 1y ago

I relate to this. First up, stop googling! Secondly, try not to ask for reassurance that you’re not having a heart attack. Your roomie checking your blood pressure is in fact strengthening your fears. If you need to body check, check yourself in terms of how you are feeling emotionally and where you feel that in your body. For example, anxiety can feel like tightness in your diaphragm, heart beating faster, sweating, I feel scared, I feel worried. This is about observing how you feel, not check to see if you’re having a heart attack. Your roomie and your mum would be best to support you by encouraging you to talk about how you feel as noted above, that’s it’s ok to feel negative thoughts, let the thoughts buzz about, encourage you to carry on with what you were doing before feeling triggered, try to distract you a little if appropriate, help you remember how far you’ve come on your mental health journey, help you recollect what happened the last time you felt this way and what the outcome of it was (obv u didn’t have a heart attack). Start doing you’re erp and cbt as soon as possible.

Username: Graciegirl Graciegirl

Date posted: 1y ago

@divyD this was really helpful! I definitely am going to try to stop googling as much.

Username: OCDMMOCDMM

Date posted: 1y ago

I’m sorry you’re struggling with this. I have health anxiety, too. Mine revolves around infections becoming sepsis. I just scratched my throat with a pill I had to cut in half and ruminating now about it getting infected. Also splashed water in my eye earlier and scared that will become an infection. I am also in the process of switching from Lexapro to Prozac but only a week in. How is your switch going?

Username: Graciegirl Graciegirl

Date posted: 1y ago

@OCDMM i’m about a week in too! it’s going good so far, but it’s also a worry for me because I really hope it goes well but there’s always those what if’s. I’m sorry your struggling too lately, I hope you start to feel better soon!

Username: peacensubspeacensubs

Date posted: 1y ago

I relate to this as I am still struggling with this. One thing which has helped me is to write down my thoughts and asking myself to my revisit them later. Sometimes when I revisit them, the stress might have died down and then I would be able to take a logical decision.

Username: OCDMMOCDMM

Date posted: 1y ago

@peacensubs That’s what my therapist has me do. Write them down or type them in my notes on my phone. It definitely helps!

Username: peacensubspeacensubs

Date posted: 1y ago

@OCDMM The flip side is that I have started taking it as a compulsion. I am noting down even the minutest thing.

Username: OCDMMOCDMM

Date posted: 1y ago

@peacensubs It’s so hard not to turn anything to a compulsion when you have OCD 😢

Username: peacensubspeacensubs

Date posted: 1y ago

@OCDMM So hard it is. We get confused whether to do it or not.

Username: Graciegirl Graciegirl

Date posted: 1y ago

@peacensubs i’m def going to try this out, thanks for the tip:)

Username: paylo28

Date posted: 1y ago

Health Anxiety/OCD

7 years ago I was a raging drug addict. I took any and all kinds of drugs without second thought of consequences. When I had my first child it’s like a switch flipped in my brain. Within her first 6 months of life I had over 12 visits to the ER. I was (still am) constantly afraid of developing a life threatening disease / illness or having a sudden health event (stroke / heart attack / heart failure / brain tumor / cancer ) develop. I’ve seen over 10 Specialist from autoimmune, heart, eyes, neurology , stomach , skin, etc. I’ve got a seemingly well bill of health but I become so hyper aware of every small change within my body. It’s. Constant state of fear and anxiety. Headache = likely tumor / aneurysm , small pain in chest or arm = heart problems , mild cold = covid or some rare disease , etc. Lately, my heart has been my fixation. I was having tachycardia going to the ER 2x a week. EKGs normal, 24hr monitor normal, X-RAY normal. Shortly after I notice my resting heart rate went down as low as 50bpm. I looked through my history over the months and that seems pretty normal for me I just hadn’t noticed before. Now I’ve been worried about my heart for weeks even tho my dr says I’m okay. It’s exhausting to be afraid of sickness and death 24/7. When I get focused on these thoughts it pulls me away from my kids and husband and daily tasks. I either full blown panic or shut down in fear. Anyone else relate? What helps you? I don’t want to rely on medications as I have so many adverse reactions to the 10+ I’ve tried! - oh year here’s another one - I’m afraid of allergic reactions as well I CONSTANTLY fear I will have an allergic reaction to medications / foods or over dose on things like Tylenol and Ibuprofen or mix meds and have reactions.

Username: angiew58

Date posted: 47w ago

Health OCD Struggles

Hi, im relatively new to the community. I’m hoping I can reach out and hear from some people who have health ocd. I used to have perfectionism, or “everything right” ocd, but ever since an incident involving a health issue last year, it’s manifested into health ocd. It may have exacerbated by the death of someone close to me, as it was cancer-related, and that’s what my intrusive thoughts seem to be about most of the time lately. How do you deal with it, especially when you ARE someone that’s prone to health issues?

Health Concern OCD

Username: Learningtoco...

Date posted: 44w ago

Health ocd

I feel like throughout my life my ocd has taken on different forms and I feel like every time I have issues it’s actually my ocd just getting bad again. Like someone reveals the scooby doo villain and surprise it’s just friggin ocd again . My main “flavor” that I have struggled with ever since the end of 2019 has been severe health ocd . So badly that I have had countless dr visits , hospital visits ranging from panic attacks to lingering anxiety that builds up after weeks of obsessing and loosing sleep . Is there anyone here with some tips to get through this kinda of thing? I’m in therapy and that has helped a lot but I still feel like I pops up and wrecks my life every 4 months or so

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