Hello, first time posting here. Does anyone else suffer from bad health anxiety? Due to stress mine has gotten pretty bad recently and for a week now I've been REALLY scared of skin cancer to the point I have difficulties sleeping and I worry all the time. Logically, I've had my moles all my life and most of them are very small and round and I don't think the bigger "weirder" looking ones have changed at all (ofc, my brain keeps telling me to check them constantly and looking at them makes me imagine things and causes anxiety). I also keep imagining I'm finding "new" small ones all the time (probably just haven't noticed them before bc they are so tiny, light brown and I haven't been checking myself like this before..). This is just really frustrating for me and is causing distress. If anyone else has experienced similar worry, do you have any tips to calm down or force yourself to stop searching your skin for marks and spots? This new obsession is driving me crazy, and makes me feel really foolish, but the feelings are real and scary!

I'm going to try and be coherent because I know that sometimes during these moments I tend to babble in fear. I have a mole on the left side of my chest that I've had since I was a kid. Been there for as long as I remember. And I never paid attention to it; it was just a part of my body. I even felt a little sad considering that I might not have it anymore whenever I get top surgery. Yesterday I went down a rabbit hole and landed on Melanoma. Which, of course, prompted me to look at my mole again. And again. And again. It's large, bigger than my other moles. Always has been, at least to my knowledge. I always thought it was cute whenever it crossed my mind. Now...now I'm just scared... I'm not asking for reassurance. None of us on here are medical experts (unless youre an actual doctor) (also insert OCD joke here). I sent a picture to my doctor, and she said that if it hasnt changed size that's a good sign. But she also suggested a follow-up with a dermatologist. And that's what scares me the most. All of this started yesterday, but I sent the message to my doctor this morning. And ever since then...I havent been okay. I can barely eat, and every time I try to I can barely swallow. I've isolated myself in the guest bedroom of my parents house. I cant move. I cant think straight. And...let's just say my thoughts havent been good. Like I said, I'm not asking for reassurance or medical advice. I just...I need help to not feel like I'm dying. I didnt mention that yesterday, in the midst of going down the rabbit hole, I realized how badly I didnt want to be afraid, and yet I also felt like I needed to be afraid. And I realized that that's what ERP is (at least for me in case it's different for everyone). I really did naivietely think that it was just going to be about avoiding compulsions. I didnt realize that accepting uncertainty would feel like a death sentence. And now this has happened. I just...I'm scared. And I dont want to be. I dont want to live in this reality where I'm sick and dying. I dont want to have to tell my family. I dont want to live in that world, but it feels like I'm already in it. My body is just preparing me for it. I dont know. I dont know why I'm even making this post. No one can help me, can they?

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.