Std paranoid! My health checks are obscene Since four months ago I convinced myself I’m riddled after googling symptoms, and spiralled then more symptoms appeared I’ve been to the doctor god knows how many times - maybe 10 ish The optician 5 times about eye std paranoia Another optician 3 times 4 std clinics Phoned clinics repeatedly Phoned sexual health helplines repeatedly Still scared and depressed and feel at risk of losing my partner Why can’t my brain accept I’m ok? Does anyone know why it’s hard to accept it?

You can laugh at the title if you want, it’s objectively pretty funny. Hi guys, this is my first time on this app and I mostly just wanted to see if anyone out there is in the same boat as me or works in health care and is dealing with this. I haven’t told anyone what’s going on. I’m in my 4th year of medical school and In the past year I’ve developed what I think is pretty bad health OCD. Now health anxiety is a really common thing for medical students to have, I know that. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that the constant lymph node checking, self diagnosing & examining and reassurance seeking could have definitely had crossed the line into compulsions. Both my parents are cancer survivors which is what originally made me want to become a doctor but now every single physical sensation I have sends me into hours or days of rumination that I or someone I love has stage 4 terminal cancer. I spent an entire vacation with my boyfriend having a silent panic attack and convincing myself that he was dying of pancreatic cancer when he just had food poisoning and was fine days later. I had a complete mental breakdown and told myself I had lymphoma for weeks when I realized I could feel some of my own perfectly normal lymph nodes in my neck. My logical brain knows this is completely ridiculous but the emotional brain will not shut the hell up. It seems cruel that I made it this far only to feel like my own damn brain is betraying my ability to think through health situations clearly. I’m determined to get my symptoms under control before I graduate in a year as I don’t want this to affect patient care. Just wanted to get this off my chest and see if anyone else out there in health care is struggling too.

So in the past year that I’ve been diagnosed with OCD it’s always been relationship OCD and I feel that I’ve got a pretty good handle on understanding how to deal with relationship OCD but the past few days I have been obsessing over like different health things like yesterday I was watching so many videos on rabies and like learning all about it and questioning if I had rabies and then like I have a dry patch on me and I thought it was ringworm or something, but I don’t think it is based on like how it is I don’t know, but I did a Teladoc appointment because I noticed a rash and they gave me a prescription for it and like it’s no big deal. it’s just a yeast infection but then he said that like the thing that I thought was ringworm, I should go see my primary care provider to make sure that it’s not skin cancer and so now I’ve been looking up like skin cancer signs what it looks like and stuff because he kind of freaked me out with that and I don’t know if this is a normal reaction to someone saying that or if this is more of like an obsession now.

Hey! I’m new to all of this. I’ve been diagnosed with OCD since I was 10 years old, I’m 22 now. It’s had its ups and downs, but this year it has gotten worse since my mom was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. They said it’s not hereditary…but it activated my health anxiety. I’ve worried about every cancer in the book. I’ve had blood work done 10 times this year, hormones ran, autoimmune disease panel, mri of my knee, colonoscopy, head to toe ct scan, inward ultrasound, 4-5 clinical breast exams…it’s been nuts. I stop worrying about one worry and I move on to another. I’ve been trying so hard to stay afloat, but I’m struggling. I just had a clinical breast exam two weeks ago, they said everything was good, which is awesome. However, my OCD has convinced me that I have a lump again. I know realistically they said there is nothing there, but I’m having a hard time convincing my mind. Has anything helped anyone retraining their mind or maybe stopping compulsions of constantly checking?