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My mind keeps telling me “something is wrong with you. the weird feeling you are feeling or the weird tingling you are feeling or there is a weird mark on your body. Those are actually a severe symptom and by ignoring it you could die!” Or especially the constant, “go to the emergency room because this impending doom you are feeling, yeah that’s because your gonna die shortly” It doesn’t help whenever people say “well if something was wrong your body would tell you” because my mind keeps telling me that what I’m feeling is proof something is wrong and I need to get it checked out. That I actually am severely sick and that I need to get it checked out as soon as possible, that if I get one more test than I’ll be okay because it will prove nothing is wrong. How do I tell my mind that it’s just anxiety whenever my mind keeps telling me “well if you keep saying that you could be ignoring something more serious.” Or “the doctors are just brushing you off..something is wrong with you” It’s hard to live with my thoughts whenever they are constantly coming up with ways to challenge me and challenge logic. New reasons on why I need to get this checked out because “I’m just being ignored” or “no one is listening to me so I’ll just end up dying” My symptoms range from weak and shaking legs and body to dizzy and unbalanced and dissociated. Recently I’ve been getting this tingling feeling inside my head and on the back of my neck. And my temples have pressure on them. My body keeps coming up with new symptoms I need to worry about, whenever most of them are probably caused by severe and constant anxiety. So severe I can’t even leave the house because I constantly worry about whether this is severe and something will happen if I leave the house. I need immediate ways to start fixing this because it’s especially horrible whenever my period comes around and my anxiety/depression is already higher than usual. I’ve even started considering taking medication (Zoloft, 25mg) which is another trigger for me, I worry about the symptoms I might get from taking it. That’s how you know it’s gotten pretty bad whenever I’ve come to taking something that I’ve been actively avoiding. What are your thoughts? Do I take the medication? What are ways I can deal with my symptoms that seem so severe in the moment but pass by once I’m not anxious? What are ways my thoughts can ease and I stop taking every symptom as something serious, because at the end of the day my anxiety is most likely the reason I have these horrible symptoms. I’ve always been extremely healthy and everytime I go to the doctors they express how healthy I am with all the tests I’ve had.

This should be common sense, but unfortunately I stumble down these rabbit holes and subreddits because I have a complicated health problem, and am trying to seek a similar community. I have sought out medical advice with no real conclusion and ocd anxiety makes things worse so I guess this is a form of compulsion? I’m not exactly sure anymore. Anyways, I had a strange experience last night where I had a bit of swelling and discomfort in my mouth and fingers. I took an antihistamine just in case, and the issue resolved itself. I posted in a histamine intolerance subreddit asking if anyone has experienced similar as there was no known trigger. Well, someone told me it was anaphylaxis and that I had to be more careful with what I ate. Anaphylaxis is already a trigger of mine, and although I know logically it couldn’t have been, the opinion of another person feels like confirmation. I am now afraid to eat or drink because of it. I am unsure if posting on subreddits was a compulsion now but please be careful with anything like that. It can make things so much worse.

I regret researching every single day🫠 In the beginning, I thought searching for similar stories to my own would help ease my fears, but my mind ended up latching onto their worries, which only heightened the anxiety I had before. There were worries I didn't have, and now I do.