Has anyone with health anxiety/OCD had a rough day today, lol…? I was out today, and it’s just been one thing after the other! First, we had to SPRINT to catch the train because we had gone to the wrong station (it was a whole ordeal) and had to basically run through a city in under 5 minutes - it was stressful, and my heart was POUNDING. I started to get a pain where my ‘heart’ is… (of course, it probably wasn’t my heart, but - health anxiety 😊) and (thank GOD) we managed to get on the train, and it was extremely crowded. I don’t usually mind crowds at all, but a combination of me ruminating on this pain in my ‘heart’ and being squashed amongst people in a boiling hot train, led to me having a panic attack. My mind was saying, ‘what if you have a heart attack and nobody can help you because it’s so crowded?’ etc. I know that’s stupid, but like OCD, health anxiety creates so much physical emotion that it’s incredibly hard to think straight, and you go into fight or flight. I didn’t tell my friends, so I just stood there, trying to do deep breathing, terrified that I was going to collapse all over a slight pain that was likely just a stitch, lmaooo. And then (the plot thickens) I was waiting with my friends for my other friend because she was getting her eyebrows waxed. We were sat in the waiting room, and I suddenly started to feel my ear crunching - I don’t know how to describe it with any other words… I adjusted my jaw and was waiting for it to go back to normal, and then I started to taste blood, and my anxiety was like… ‘This is it… you’re going to curl over and pass away in the waiting room of a waxing parlour’ I was panicking so much but didn’t wanna embarrass myself…. Hopefully (if anyone’s anything like me) you’ll feel less alone after reading that, and I’ll be really interested to see if anyone else has had any weird dramatic health anxiety stories recently…

Anonymous

Date posted: 4y

Hi, I totally understand what you’re going through! this happens to me constantly and in fact I was stretching this morning on my foam roller and I twisted myself in a certain way and then heard my rib pop and snap🙄 I’ve been in pain since and I’ve been freaking out looking up everything I can about a snapping rib from twisting the wrong way, so mad this is now my focus…🤢 I have a huge art show coming up and I have to fly somewhere for seven hours so I’m totally worried that my show is ruined, I will have to have surgery for this and then I’ll die in surgery…or if I do make it onto the airplane I will probably die on the airplane anyway because it’s going to crash, or if I make it to the show I’ll upset the rib more and cause permanent damage and be miserable forever. I also started to feel like I might be getting a cough then panicked the cough could turn into pneumonia and fracture the rib …most likely the cough is acid reflux which i have😮 but my ocd is driving to pneumonia and I see myself in the hospital on a respirator. It’s insane! I’m sorry about your experience as well…ocd never fails to take us to the instant worst case. I also have harm ocd, so now I’m on break from that while the health ocd acts up. I am in therapy and really need to work on the ruminating and compulsions. Ice my rib, relax, and trust I just pulled a muscle 🙈❤️❣️so with you on it all!!

bluebell

Date posted: 4y

I’ve never related to something more! You think EXACTLY like me, 😂! You say, ‘pop and snap’, but like you say, you probably just twisted the muscle and the bone clicked, but OCD will latch onto anything that has any degree of uncertainty around it! An art show sounds really fun, so I hope all goes well with that! I can tell that you’re probably in one of those OCD clouds where everything has to link to permanent misery and pain - I feel you. My acid reflux ALWAYS flares up when I have anxiety, so it’s no surprise to me if you’re worrying so much about your ribs that you’re irritating your GI, etc. I don’t wanna reassure, but you would KNOW if you had done any serious damage to your ribs, a pulled muscle can be very painful, but a fractured/broken rib is BLINDINGLY painful, I promise you (brother fractured his rib playing football)

Anonymous

Date posted: 4y

Aw, thank you!! I’m so grateful for this reply! I’m sure I would relate to all of your health ocd as well …it’s so tricky and so weird how we go from 0-10 so fast and how real it gets. I hope you feel better from Today…you sound good! And thank you for the thoughts about how I would know if it was really serious! Enjoy the rest of your day…always here if you need to talk ❤️❤️

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