Does your health anxiety make you have a symptoms of a disease or sickness?

[IloveGod]

Does this happen to you? In other words, the more nervous you get about sickness, the more symptoms you get of that sickness. For instance, I am having constant right head pain. It makes me worry I am having a stroke. The more worried I get about having a stroke the more symptoms of a stroke I get. It's weird. This past year I went from being worried about having a heart attack to aneurysm to seizure to stroke. But, like I said, when I worry the symptoms worse and mimic the illness or sickness.

[Buttercup]

Thankfully this doesn't happen to me anymore but when I was younger and had health anxiety this happened frequently. I ended up having to stop watching medical dramas on tv or movies where people got sick as I would worry i would get whatever they had and then i would feel like I had the symptoms of the illness. I used to be convinced I had a brain tumor as I got frequent headaches and the more I focused on it the more symptoms I would get- blurred vision, weak arms/legs, tingling and/or numness in body parts, forgetfulness and so on. The mind is amazing at playing tricks on us! But it's just fooling you. Also most anxiety symptoms do mimic other illnesses so it's natural to start thinking you may have something else wrong. The physical symptoms that anxiety gives us can easily be mistaken for heart attacks, ME, MS, brain tumors, cancer etc so no wonder we get freaked out! It's difficult to do but try and remember that these feelings are from your anxiety and not another condition.
Do you see a professional to talk over your anxiety with?
B x

[alekumo]

I also had this. I had numbness and tingling all the time in had and feet for awhile plus panic attacks. I actually did have a medical condition. I was diagnose with hypo thyroid cause by hashimotos disease of the thyroid. I know when my meds need adjusting but it is still a concern when it starts.

[kiwiang]

agree buttercup, my anxiety has seen me spend $$$$ of dollars trying to find out was wrong with me- no one suspected anxiety for about a year, then one smart GP said try valium for 2 weeks and see...WOW...not one symptom of anything.....I have to be careful of reading things and self diagnosing still, I have bursitis in my shoulder but was convinced it was a heart issue/attack......
cfs/me was my original diagnoses but now I know it was ALL ANXIETY.....scares me how many physical symptoms anxiety can cause.....

[AnxiousChic]

Yes! I do this all the time. The thing is, my husband is a Physician's Asst., so I drive him nuts, to the point he sometimes won't answer me. LOL!
If I have a headache, I think it's a tumor.
If I have stomach pain, I think stomach cancer.
I rarely think heart attack, but that's only because my husband did Cardiothoracic surgery for over 2 yrs and I pretty much know about that. ;)
But I am right there with you. I can google for hours when i have something wrong...sometimes days! It's insane! But I can't help it :(

[Lokahanawan]

Unfortunately, I am the same :( I feel like I'm having a heart attack and I was checked out in the ER & my EKG and cardiac enzymes were negative.

[missfoxC]

I do this all the time! I went from heart attack to aneurysm and now I feel my throat is closing all the time! Im getting better and better but it's hard to struggle! I have to tell myself I've been to the dr a hundred times and have had test done over everything! I'm OK and so are you! :)

[arsenalfun]

Yeah, health anxiety pretty much copy symptoms of certain diseases. You can see here list of anxiety symptoms (http://www.anxietyspot.net/symptoms/) and find more informations about them.