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[toffeecushion]

Is anyone else convinced they are really ill when, if you think about it rationally, you know you are not.  I can find reasons for all my symptoms but I am still convinced I am seriously ill.

[Galadriel]

Yup!

Spent most of last year convinced I had a heart problem (palpitations), MS (tingling hands, feet, bits of face), stroke (tingling/numbness of left side of face). It never occurred to me that perimenopause could be responsible for all these weird and sometimes frightening symptoms.

I ended up seeing a psychologist for 9 months. She was on the other side of menopause so I benefited from her experience as well as her treatment.

I still have days when I think something is really wrong, but I use the strategies I learned last year to help me cope.

What really ticks me off is that when I mentioned some of the symptoms to my mum, she said she'd had them too... Well she never said a word to me or my sis!!!  >:(We could have done with a heads-up!!! My DD knows everything about my experience. 

Galadriel x

[honeybun]

I don't only have anxiety about my own health I worry about my family too so it's a double whammy. End up wondering how I would cope if something went wrong with either me or one of them.

I keep telling myself just to live for the day.....sometimes it works   


Honeyb
x

[Winterose]

Me too, worry so much about everyone falling by the wayside, especially the young, got over worrying about my heart palpitations as still her 8 years on , you can only not try to dwell on it, easier said than done, 

[Kathleen]

Hello toffeecushion.

I am a nervous wreck at the moment so I'm good at worrying. On a good day I can be logical about my concerns but when I'm feeling anxious nothing seems to calm me.

I wonder if health anxiety is another manifestation of 'the dreads' that seem to come with the menopause, we therefore look for things to worry about and even invent problems that don't exist.

I find it very difficult to be rational about anything these days which makes me worry about my emotional state!

Wishing everyone well.

K.

[rebelyell]

I find health anxiety is my biggest problem - I could cope with other symptoms but get completely irrational about health issues.  I read this morning on BBC news that dementia is less likely for the obese and more likely for the under weight.  Obviously as I am only 8st 6 and 5ft 5 I will get dementia.  I am finding it hard to put on weight due to ADs which cause digestive upsets even though I am weaning away from them. 

My teeth are my biggest concern though - not a day goes by without me imagining loose teeth that will fall out...  MY DH would actually rather I had them all out, he is sick of hearing me worry! 

But I am taking positive action and going to counselling.   Although it might be counter-productive as I will just be able to bore someone else with my catastrophising!!  [Oh no, just remembered, if I have dementia, I won't remember about my teeth...]

[rebelyell]

Sparkle - I posted before reading your post!  Love the bit about the medical dictionary - I was just the same!   I had some sort of stomach bug a couple of years ago and my poo went black so I was straight onto google where the headline link was 'colon cancer' - thankfully I noticed just below a link to 'Pepto-bismal' which I had taken and which makes your poo go black!! But if that line hadn't caught my eye...

My husband has had a hip replacement and is needle-phobic so it was hell for him.  But he stoically got on with it and never looked beyond one day at a time.   He just doesn't worry in advance about stuff.   Wish I was like that.  We used to laugh about his mother who was always at the doctors and talked to us in detail about her bowels.    OMG - I just did that in my first paragraph...

[toffeecushion]

Wish I could stop worrying, worry never solved anything did it.  Every little symptom is something serious to me, I just can't kick it at the moment.

[babyjane]

Sparkle you have reminded me of the old Reader's Digest Family Health Guide we used to have.  How I read that book but that was well before menopause so I must always have been a health worrier.

I had a full and total blood count done in January, everything you could think of and I was bang in the middle or at the high end of the reference range for each test.  Did it reassure me? well, er, not totally so I really don't think I am in possession of rational thinking 

[CLKD]

I had a phobia from aged 3 ……..

Earlier this morning I did too much in the garden and really wanted to lay down and sleep …… and it crossed my mind that it might be a 'bug' and now I've eaten I feel queasy  ……..

[toffeecushion]

I was going to look up health anxiety on the internet but thought 'wait, I haven't got health anxiety, I am really ill, just waiting to be diagnosed'.  Now how's that for health anxiety.  Off to search on No More Panic.

[rebelyell]

Love it!  Although I have looked it up...  I think I need to look up 'google health search anxiety' now.    My problem is, if I think I have got something serious I will just worry rather than doing something about it.  So far that has worked as I haven't actually had serious...

Who's had the weirdest/most unusual 'anxiety illness'??   I thought I had dengue fever once!

[toffeecushion]

I had to search it - it's called cyberchrondria.  Well that's something else to worry about then

[honeybun]

According to the papers this week I'm doomed anyway so I might as well stop worrying

I will get heart disease as I'm too short and dimentia because I'm not over weight 

Honestly it's just not worth it....on a positive note if I get dimentia I won't remember I have heart disease, so every cloud 


Honeybun
X

[CLKD]

what was the question again?