Worrying about worrying

[marie86]

I've been going to CBT for the last few weeks to get to the bottom of my anxiety, after ruling out emetephobia, health anxiety and GAD, we've moved onto meta-worry... Does anyone have experience of this? Any tips?

[NixonRulz]

I used to worry about worrying all the time but I didn't know it had its own name

My stomach would be in knots and I lost my appetite when I was worrying so when I was doing better, I would begin to fear getting into that worry phase again because I hated what it did to my stomach and I couldn't eat. On the bright side, it was a great way of dropping weight in a short time

When I started to understand what anxiety was, those symptoms as well as the others kinda just dissipated

[atav]

So do you not have anxiety at all? Just meta-worry? Thats very interesting. I'm curious to know how your CBT helped you come to the other realizations of what you had or didn't have?

[NixonRulz]

Oh no, you misunderstood. I have/ had the full array of anxiety. Social, general, panic but I also worried about worry. Just didn't realize I could of had yet another diagnosis

[marie86]

Hi nixonrulz! I'm exactly the same! I could have written what you just did, I'm glad you found yours went away, hopefully mine will too!

Meta worry is a form of anxiety, I've been anxious for about 5 years and it's developed into worrying about worrying, so much so that it's now my main anxiety... If that makes sense.

I thought it was health anxiety or fear of being sick as my anxiety is always to do with my physical symptoms, through CBT we tried exposure therapy for emetophobia but I wasn't bothered by it. I also tried imagination exposure, but same wasn't bothered... So from this my therapist suggests it might be meta-worry and I think he could be right!

Not sure what kind of therapy this involves until my next session....