So my health/contamination OCD has been really bad lately, and I’ve realised that I’m not only afraid of physical illness (cancer, kidney stones, heart attacks, etc...) but I’m also afraid of getting other mental health disorders too, and I thought that I was the only one that done so but it turns out that I’m not? A lot of my health/contamination OCD comes from what I’ve seen other people go through in the past: I’m constantly checking for pains around my kidney area, whenever I get a chest pain I check for signs of a heart attack, and so on. But I’ve realised that my brain latches onto other people’s mental health disorders too and tries to convince me that I have them, or that I should have them. More specifically, because of thing I’ve seen others experience in the past (I won’t go into detail because it’s personal), I’m so afraid of schizophrenia. Not as a mental illness itself but the thought that I will get it/I will have it. I always hate saying this because I know it sounds incredibly selfish and absurd, but once I know a lot about an illness (physical or mental), my brain will just latch onto it and try to convince me that I have it, and when I tell myself that I don’t, my brain will THEN say that being “psychosomatic” is a thing and that if I think about it too much then I will get it. My brain will take all the symptoms of this one illness and analyse it, making everything I experience an entire clusterf*ck of “it could be x” or “what if it’s y?” or “what if you were experiencing z right now?” I think what I’d like to hear is other people’s experiences who relate to what I say, especially the “afraid of getting other mental health disorders” side of things, because I never really come across others who do the same thing. Thank you!!

I've never been diagnosed with OCD, but have thought for a long time that I do have it. I've tried to bring it up in therapy but have been shot down as "OCD tendencies". Luckily I'm with a new therapist and am planning to bring it up again. Especially after reading a lot of your posts, I'm really resonating with them. Especially my anxieties and obsessions with my health. God forbid I feel any weird pain or ache, I instantly think I'm dying. Sometimes I get a weird pain in my head and think it's a stroke or aneurysm. Ill go as far as the perform the stroke FAST test. This happens multiple times a day. I also have HUGE anxieties about death and my mortality. If I think about it too much, I get this deep cold pit in my stomach and spiral. Even talking about it causes me sooo much distress. I'm just worried I'll be dismissed or told I'm just self diagnosing because I related to a post online. But if any of this sounds accurate, please let me know. I'd love to be reassured of my obsessions rather than just dismissed as being anxious.

It started when I became an adult, and started receiving my mental health diagnosis. I hyper fixated on each and every action I did and how it could be related to my diagnosis’s. It then lead to fixation to my physical health — making appointments and seeing every specialist I can to rule out every possibility. I currently have been suffering with obstructive sleep. I woke up the past few days with severe pain from the lack of sleep whilst believing I was oversleeping. Luckily my fit watch tracks my sleep cycle and it turns out I am not receiving any sleep. I had an extreme panic attack — bursting into tears on the phone with my mom wondering what this case might be. She told me it could be sleep apnea and that a simple sleep study could figure this out. However, knowing my family history I made appointments to every specialist I can to make sure it is nothing serious. The unknown of health can be scary to me. Watching my mother suffer with her physical health chronically since I was a child lead me to be very conscious and aware of how my body is functioning. This morning was one of the worst moments of physical pain. I should just take one step at a time with the sleep doctor instead of taking measures to see every specialist that could pertain with this issue. However, that is very hard to me. I don’t want to ever wake up in the pain I was this morning. Does anyone else suffer with health-related OCD? And if so, how do you find a sense of ease during moments like I expressed?

I started dealing with OCD when I became fixated on health issues, particularly the fear of contracting a life-threatening disease. If I experienced any kind of medical symptom, no matter how small, that even remotely hinted at something potentially fatal, it would drive me crazy, and I couldn’t stop obsessing over it. Then one day, I started having intrusive thoughts about accidentally hitting someone with my car, and I would end up driving in circles to check if I had. Eventually, I found myself overwhelmed by a flood of new obsessive thoughts and compulsions. One day, while I was at the park, a squirrel came near me, and for some reason, I felt like it attacked me. I Googled it and learned that squirrels could carry rabies, which spiraled me into a deep fear of rabies. I became consumed with the thought I received a bite from a squirrel, raccoon, or bat any time I’m in areas that trigger me. It started off only being inside then transferred to even being in my own home. This made me obsess over every physical sensation in my body, compulsively checking to make sure nothing was wrong. One compulsion that I hated the most would to be putting rubbing alcohol on me to make sure that I had no open wounds. Every day feels like I’m walking around in a fog of anxiety, constantly worrying that I won’t even make it to old age. Sometimes, it gets so overwhelming that I just want it all to end. It stresses me so bad at times to where my brain feels like I’ve been studying all day.