I suffer with health/somatic OCD. I also have a phobia of the doctor and meds. This makes checking my worries very complicated. My anxiety level is up high. I am starting work with an NOCD ERP therapist this month, even though I’ve been doing some ERP since June. Just 1 time a week, and not enough for the severity of my symptoms. I’m convinced I have every disease under the sun because my father had so many things wrong. My anxiety makes my body do crazy things, and I’m wondering if anyone can relate to this. Hoping my therapist can help me break the fear of the doc, testing and dealing with if something really is wrong. Feeling very alone..

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 Both my parents are cancer survivors which is what originally made me want to become a doctor but now every single physical sensation I have sends me into hours or days of rumination that I or someone I love has stage 4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.

Anyone willing to share there health ocd story with me? I’m really struggling with mine and would like to relate to someone and maybe talk about it. Thanks in advance. I’m new here.

Hey there, Im recently diagnosed with ocd and working with a therapist. My thing is I get focused on how I’m feeling. If I get a headache it freaks me out, I could be congested from allergies and it can spin me out, like what if it’s something more serious, it could be any body sensation that causes me to ruminate. Health ocd? Somatic ocd? Anyone have this? Any tips? Thanks!