How can I stop my obsessive thoughts about health and existence?

Hello everyone! (Existential Obsessions) I have struggled with anxiety since I was a young boy. I remember worrying when I was younger that I was inadvertently trying to harm my mother, even though I love my mother more than anyone in the world. It’s shifted more times than I can count, from worrying about poisoning or contamination to thinking that I had heart disease. It’s all the same animal just shape shifting into whatever I fear most at the given time. Currently, (trigger warning) I am constantly obsessed with the fear of developing some sort of delusion or schizophrenia. I am 25 years old (I know that it would’ve probably developed by now) and have no schizophrenia in my gene pool. But I am constantly checking my thoughts to see if they sound delusional or if I am hallucinating my reality. This of course if extremely frustrating for someone with OCD because there is never going to be any definitive proof that I am not going mad. It has caused me extreme discomfort over the past few months and has brought me to extreme states of panic. I was wondering if any of you deal with existential OCD or fears of losing touch with reality. Of course, some days this seems laughable and others I can almost taste the insanity. On paper, everything in my life is going amazingly but in truth I can’t seem to enjoy any of it because I have these nightmarish intrusions of everything falling apart around me. Is this a common symptom? P.S I already run a few miles a day, meditate, do yoga and am working on strengthening my CBT. Any other suggestions?

The past year I’ve been dealing with OCD about free will, consciousness, and instincts. The latter two stem from the free will problem, but basically I’ve been having anxiety and OCD about having no control over my life on a biological basis. It all started because I watched a YouTube video called “Why we Don’t have Free Will and why that’s OK” from a health channel called “What I’ve Learned” about a year ago. After the video, I started panicking and thinking what if I have no control over my life? What I really am just a product of my environment and I have no freedom? I went and scoured the Internet for counters to these questions and actually found some really good stuff, but my search for answers kept leading me to other topics that threatened the idea of free will. This is where consciousness and instincts OCD come into play. From this research, I found out some scientists say that a lot of our actions are unconscious, but luckily however I did more research and found out that a growing number of psychologists don’t think the unconscious mind actually does not even exist. As for instincts, it all started because I saw a Quora questions that asked “Why is human instinct generally considered to be overriden?” I thought I would get more answers about how human have free will, but instead the top answer was the complete opposite. That answer to this question talked about how humans always act on instinct and that the reasons we give ourselves for acting a certain way are always an illusion. He claims to have done 20+ years of research on human instincts to further his business. The guy doesn’t have a bio degree or anything. I want to be suspicious about these thoughts, but I STILL think about the possibility of him being right about how humans might not be as free as we think. All my research and counterpoints to my own existential crises are nice to know, but I still haven’t been able to shake the thoughts “What if all these people are right? What if we really have less control than we think?” One thing I try to still tell myself is that pretty much everything we know is not a certainty. There is so much uncertainty in the world, and we shouldn’t try to find certainty all the time. I want to just live my life without thinking about all these existential things and just enjoy it. Please let me know if any of you have had similar thoughts or experiences. I’d love to hear your tips, tricks, and anything that can help. Thank you, and have a great day, wherever you are.

So I’ve been suffering with intense health anxiety for a few years now, and just recently I learned it may be caused by OCD. It’s to the point where every time I get a headache I start to freak out, scared that I could be having an aneurysm. I am far too worried about having a stroke or heart attack for being 21. I can’t even enjoy a casual, relaxing hot shower anymore. I have to slowly increase the temperature when getting in and slowly decrease the shower while getting out because I am afraid that any drastic temperature change can give me a heart attack. I know deep down that these fears are illogical, but no matter how often I get them they still feel just as real every time. I try to reason with myself, but every time I feel mild discomfort in my body I can’t help but freak out. I am so tired of checking my face in the mirror for symptoms of stroke every time I get a headache or feel a weird sensation in my body. Every other day of the week I force myself to stay awake for a certain period of time because I’m scared if I go to sleep I won’t wake up. I get hymnic jerks every single night (where you jolt awake when drifting to sleep) because my brain is so occupied with making sure I’m staying alive that it jolts me awake because my body is trying to sleep while my mind stays awake. It’s so difficult for me to pay attention during lectures because I get so caught up in my health anxiety that I’m focusing on grounding techniques in order to keep myself from hyperventilating. I spend more time making sure I can understand the words my professor is saying to make sure I’m not having a stroke than actually paying attention to the lectures. Another thing I struggle with is having to count my medication every time before I take it to make sure I didn’t accidentally take two or more doses, even if I KNOW I only took one. I have to count them anyways otherwise my mind will convince me I overdosed. It will not stop until I count my medication and make sure I didn’t overdose. It’s honestly so tiring, and the sad part is that my health anxiety has actually gotten better. It was even worse before now, and everything I’ve listed is stuff that I still do. Does anyone else have this struggle? Because it feels so isolating and makes me feel like I’m going crazy.