Hello everyone,
I've always been looking for an outlet to my anxiety problems, so forgive me as this is my first post. I am second year college student in Ohio. During my first year, I got really sick and was basically bed-ridden for 2 weeks before being diagnosed with the flu (after being told it was just a viral infection they could not treat). During that time of undiagnosed sickness, my mom gave me a legitimately deathly fear that I could have meningitis. I began to develop a feeling of a stiff and sore neck and essentially believed everyday that I was going to die. I began going to a psychiatrist back home because after that situation, any form of sickness or soreness led me to believe that it had a form of life ending result. I was prescribed prozac and took it for about 5 months until I began to wane off of it due to the lack of appetite. It was slightly effective but it never stopped it all together. To this day, whenever I get sick I get tension in my neck due to the anxiety. I still have this brutal fear of death with every sickness or soreness in my neck although I understand meningitis is a very unrealistic actuality.
The difficulty is nobody close to me really understands the magnitude of my anxiety and even seem to joke about it. Does anyone else deal with a similar problem? If so, what has helped you cope with it?
Thank you