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Hypochondria
Hypochondria. Illness Anxiety. Health anxiety.
Call it what you will. All I know is I don’t go a single day without smiling at myself in the mirror, examining my tongue, raising my arms, and over articulating basic sentences to myself to make sure I’m not having a stroke. I blink to test my vision, and constantly glance at my calves to assure myself I’m not having a blood clot which they’ve warned me can happen when I’m on my birth control. My head hurts. Do I have a tumor? The slightest twinge in my head, the slightest pressure or dizziness, is never unaccompanied by the fear that I may currently be living in my last hours.
I hear people talking of their medical problems around me. If these problems happened to them, who is to say they won’t happen to me? Immediately my body listens to my fear and starts to falsely produce those symptoms.
It doesn’t matter what the bodily sensation is. My anxiety has made me the most physically perceptive person I know, immediately sensing what is a normal body occurrence, and diagnosing it as life threatening. And the mental fear induces the physical pain, which induces more fear. It all happens in an instant. My heart is racing, but I have to pretend nothing is wrong, because if I tell someone I feel sick, they won’t know that I mean my kind of sick; the kind where I feel like I’m dying but it may really be nothing at all. So “please don’t call a doctor”, but please do, because what if I am sick? My face just gets hotter, my breath shallower, and my adrenalin pumps rapidly, as normal life goes on, echoing around me, and I have to wonder if I am spending my last hours in fearful silence. What if something actually is wrong with me and I’m too afraid to speak up because illness anxiety is embarrassing and childlike? How do I tell the difference between illness and anxiety? But why would my instincts lie to me? Aren’t we supposed to trust those? Something must actually be wrong. All logic leaves me. I type my symptoms into Google, which they tell me not to do, but it is too embarrassing to go to a real doctor when it could be that nothing is wrong. But I have to be sure. So the self-diagnosis of life threatening sickness ensues.
I feel like one day, these severe illnesses I fear on a daily basis, will actually happen to me. My health is too good to be true. You always hear about terrible things happening to such young, and unsuspecting people, and that is what makes them so tragic. Young death, young handicap.
Because my fear of the unknown is too great, I have to shrink that vast fear into an anticipation of the inevitable. I have to think about these deathly possibilities constantly, because if I don’t think about them, I will become one of those unsuspecting people, vulnerable to a medical tragedy. And I can’t bear to think of the crippling emotional, mental, and physical mountains my loved ones and I would have to climb if something knocked my body out of its proper function, forcefully transforming me into one of those tragic people I so pity, the people that terrify me and make me so grateful for my health. I’m so thankful for my working body, that I’m terrified to live in it. So my body sits on the shelf like a shiny trophy I want to save and never risk losing.
Sometimes I wish something awful would just happen to me already so I can stop being nervous that it would. At least then I would just know how it feels and that maybe I could survive it.
I go to the doctor way more than I should. And even when they tell me I’m okay, I don’t believe them. I feel like they’ve assumed I’m healthy because I look young and fit, and they’ve overlooked a horrible underlying issue they didn’t even think to test.
I don’t just fear for the pain of my own death. I fear for my loved ones too. Maybe they fell asleep and that is why they aren’t replying to my text. But my brain immediately envisions the car crash that paralyzes them for the rest of their life, or the beeping hospital room where the doctors even feel hopeless. And all the above anxiety ensues, as I prematurely try to cope with a life without them.
I know it doesn’t make any sense. And heck, if I’m aware enough to be writing this, why can’t I just know that I’m okay?
The only one thing that has ever comforted me through all this anxiety is something I read in a bible study a few months ago. It is that God says: “Don’t you think I love my children more than you do? Don’t you think I can take care of them?” It is a small sentence, but it is a good sentence. Because it is small enough to memorize and robotically pull to the surface of my thoughts when anxiety is numbing any logical reasoning. It applies to me, and my loved ones too. Because if God wants to keep me safe, he wants to keep my loved ones equally safe. We are all his children, and he is looking out for us. I also have to remind myself that if something like this does happen to me, God will have a way of pulling me out of it and ultimately using it for good. God doesn’t plan on leaving me there in the dark to deal with it. I have to know that if something life changing does happen, it is not ultimately in my control to try to prevent it; it was in the plans all along, and I have to figure out how to live the different life I’m supposed to at that point.
Sometimes singing helps because it forces me to breathe. And dancing helps too, because I know that is my God-given passion and gift. And when I dance I feel untouchable. Try to find your God-given gift that makes you forget everything, and fills you with passion. It has a powerful light force, if you have accepted God inside you and acknowledge his glory in that gift.
I know it isn’t much in the way of thorough healing. After all I haven’t seen the end of this anxiety in my life yet. But I’m trying to use this to calm myself when it does happen, because even though anxiety feels uncontrollable, and I didn’t ask for it, it is still a sin. It is still darkness. And I know that God does heal in time.
Please don’t feel sorry for me or treat me like a victim, because I don’t need either of those things, and the last thing I want to do is beg for attention. I just thought it might be interesting to put this blog out there, because I know other people struggle with this specific type of anxiety as well. I thought those people might appreciate understanding in concrete words of someone else who shares the same experiences.
“All things work together for good to them that love God.” -Romans 8:28
“Then He placed His right hand on me and said: Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.” -Revelation 1:17
“When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.” -Psalm 94:19