Hello, new here.

[stephanie3126]

Hey everyone. My name is Stephanie and I'm 23 years old. I've always had some sort of anxiety but it got serious a few weeks ago when I started getting pretty bad panic attacks. I haven't been seen by anyone except my GP but I'm 100% sure I'm a hypochondriac. All I want is to not think every little pain that I have is an life threatening illness. It's severely affecting my every day life and it's driving me insane. I figured I'd join a forum since no one I'm close with or my family really understand what I'm going through and this seems like a good place I can get some answers.

[em1]

Hey everyone. My name is Stephanie and I'm 23 years old. I've always had some sort of anxiety but it got serious a few weeks ago when I started getting pretty bad panic attacks. I haven't been seen by anyone except my GP but I'm 100% sure I'm a hypochondriac. I figured I'd join a forum since no one I'm close with or my family really understand what I'm going through and this seems like a good place I can get some answers.

Hello and welcome Stephanie :)

[str8trippin]

Hi Stephanie, welcome to the forum! This is a great resource...and a great place to find support. There are a ton of people here that can completely relate to what you are going through, myself included! I've always had general anxiety, but mine got serious about two months ago and I started having panic attacks and severe anxiety pretty much constantly, along with agoraphobia, which is totally out of the norm for me. Now, pretty all my anxiety is health related, so I totally understand the turning into a hypochondriac thing. Best advice there is DO NOT GOOGLE SYMPTOMS! It is the worst idea ever, and it just fuels the anxiety instead of alleviating it like you hope it will. I'm the process of obtaining a clean bill of health...have already had blood work done and an EKG and those were normal, so I'm just taking the steps I need to take to make sure the rest of my health is okay...and that has provided me with a lot of relief and reassurance just by ruling out the other possibilities for why I feel the way I do sometimes. That way I can feel more assured that is really is just anxiety! You'll find a lot of great suggestions here for coping with anxiety!