How am I supposed to “accept” health anxiety?

@Anonymous I feel like dread shouldn’t be apart of the therapy though, that’s my point. I feel like this just causes more depression and leads to more ruminating.

@Recoverer I think I should bring this up. It does make sense since the feeling isn’t really helpful.

@Anonymous Exactly, my thing is - if I really indeed have a terminal illness, idk about everyone else, but I’m not gonna be able to go back to the way I was before lol. I’d be saying my goodbyes, preparing a will, planning things, etc. So to take on that whole notion and not have any positive thinking whatsoever??? Like really? Where is the “response prevention” portion of this in ERP if anything positive is deemed “reassurance”?

@Recoverer I understand what you mean but In that case I think the exposure is somewhere along the lines of “ we’ll see if it happens” or “it is what it is” not sure if that’s the acceptance of it but I understand what you mean.

@KElise I hear you, I guess for me I’m so used to realizing “hey this is crap, this isn’t true, I have no evidence that this is happening” and I can start to pull myself together. But the ERP I’m doing essentially doesn’t involve that as that’s classified as “reassurance” and health anxiety is basically my most feared outcome so this is extra challenging for me.

@Recoverer I can really see how challenging that would be to really do exposures around this. It’s brave work. I don’t want to go against your therapist, but it seems like another way is to also not engage with the thoughts at all as a strategy (and that would be not providing reassurance either, such as trying to prove with evidence the thought isn’t real). So like when the scary what if thoughts comes up, totally disengaging and doing something completely different until distress lowers. Just an idea!

@KElise Thank you! My only question in return is what if my anxiety imitates the symptoms of the thing I fear? It might be a dumb question based off what you said which is just disregard but this makes it sooo difficult to deal with.

@Recoverer I get this all the time too, so I really get it. My best advice is to wait it out, at least an hour. Just let time pass without compulsions. Normally for me the somatic sensation I’m fearing goes away bc I stop the stress cycle of labeling it as a threat by obsessing or doing a compulsion over it…

@KElise Mine is surrounded around my memory right now, it’s awful. Because anxiety, stress, and depression can cause forgetfulness and disassociation and to me it overlaps with memory diseases and it scares me to the core. I haven’t been this stuck in a loop in 3 years 😞

@Recoverer I know how scary it can be😓 keep pushing on with your ERP and disengaging w ocd thoughts and in time it’ll lower the anxiety / stress which should help the whole situation you’re experiencing. Good luck 🙏

@KElise Thank you for your kindness and support 🙏

@Recoverer Of course. I’m in it with you🙏