- Date posted
- 3y
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 3y
Wow I relate to this SO much. I have health anxiety and somatic ocd. One of my biggest triggers is my breathing and I’m always short or breath! I also have asthma so I’m like constantly anxious about my breathing and thinking I’m going to pass out or stop breathing. Every day is a struggle I constantly check my heart beat and focus so much on my breathing that I don’t feel it’s automatic I feel like I have to tell myself to breathe or I won’t
- Date posted
- 3y
I’ve been going through this for 2 weeks now, I’m with you on this. Feel like I forget how to yawn and I’m sleeping terrible because I’m waking up to make sure I’m breathing! Definitely not alone
- Date posted
- 3y
Thank you for sharing your story. This is such a hard subtype. It hard to know what’s reality and what’s OCD. How are you doing these days? It looks like you posted this awhile ago. Have you done ERP therapy to help? I hope you’ve found some progress. Really struggling tonight with health ocd and working through some dark thoughts. Looking towards others who have peresevered!
- Date posted
- 2y
Going through the exact same thing, hyper focused on breathing and thinking I am short of breath then constantly worry its a heart attack even though I have been given a clean bill of health from a cardiologist. I find myself checking my heart rate constantly and o2 then googling symptoms. Also seems to be worse since my first panic attack which sent me to the hospital. I tell myself I am fine and it's nothing major, but the "what if" constantly creeps in. Please let me know if anyone has any strategies that might help...besides constantly seeing a doctor when I get freaked out by a symptom. Thanks!
- Date posted
- 2y
@Anonymous I am in the same boat. I feel like I am constantly going to the doctor or ER to rule out anything big. I just keep thinking they must have missed something. It’s a terrible feeling and very isolating when no one understands.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 23w
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?
- Date posted
- 23w
I don’t have much of a support system outside of my bf, so I find myself here a lot. I think I just need to vent, so forgive me if I do this too often. It helps to have a community of people who truly understand. I haven’t felt this debilitated by mental illness in months. There has to be some explanation, maybe it’s hormonal, because I feel like I’ve completely lost myself. The panic hits in waves, sudden and overwhelming, like my head is submerged in lava, burning and suffocating. Then, for a brief moment, I feel almost normal and wonder what all the fear was about. But it never lasts. The chaos always comes back. I even considered going to the ER because I’m not sure I can trust myself anymore. Something has to be wrong, because this isn’t me. My life isn’t perfect, but it’s not unbearable either. Since I withdrew from school, I’ve been so much less stressed that even my cycle, which has been irregular for years, has somehow regulated itself. But even with that, I feel like a failure. I was one semester away from finishing, so close, but OCD hit me harder than it ever has. It felt like drowning, gasping for air, reaching for something solid, only to be dragged under again and again. Now, I feel like that again, but worse. I feel hollow, like something is wrong with me at my core. I don’t just feel sad; I feel broken. I break down into uncontrollable sobs every few hours, and I don’t even know why. I just know that whatever is happening, OCD is taking full advantage of how vulnerable I feel. Is this what MDD feels like? Everyone tells me I have it, and it’s been confirmed by my psych, my pcp, and my therapist, but I still can’t seem to fully see it. I don’t know how to separate what’s OCD from what might be another disorder. I’m sorry to anyone also going through such a hard time, my heart goes out to you 🤍
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- Date posted
- 22w
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.
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