Hypochondriasis Puns

Can anyone explain this concept to me? I have seen it many times while looking things up about my condition. One thing I read said that emotional Hypochondriasis is a defence mechanism that results in thinking "no one's understands me", which is a thought I have at least 10-15 times a day even though I'm almost 30 years old so that's depressing. But I still don't really understand the concept. What is behind that? How exactly is it "hypochondriasis"?

Since Guntrip's model mentions it and I have never seen this topic be discussed before in this sub. I have hypochondriasis and somatic concerns but it only strikes when the external environment is too aggressive for me and causes my severe anxiety.

i have hypochondriasis and ocd both, recently came across a google page(cant stop from searching whole day) which told that supressed anger causes cancer. That was enough to trigger my ocd, Iam stuck in a compulsion to express my anger all day due to fear of cancer, butI also feel stuck, that my emotions may cause something or anything, Iam very scared, stuck in compulsions, please help? suggest how i can stop worrying, please. i now have to stay angry all time, or i feel very stuck, please, help i dont know what to 'feel' literally

Another scare for me. A few days ago, I woke up and saw a new wound on my right pointing finger that seemingly came out of nowhere. I washed it since there was dry blood around the wound, and when I was drying my hands, I got a better look at the wound and saw that there were 2 noticeable spots.

I started to think about what could have caused the wound. The two spots are tiny and are roughly 1 mm away from each other. Thought it could have been a bat bite, a scratch wound since I tend to scratch myself a lot during my sleep, this one just happens to be a very small scratch wound, or a small wound caused by the friction between my dry hands and the bedsheets.

It's been 3 days since the wound popped up, it's still there albeit less visible. I've read that bat bites tend to disappear quickly but not completely sure what exactly that means. Been super on edge lately and still debating whether or not I should really get this checked out or if it's my anxiety assuming the worst.

Here are some pictures
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1auS-F9Lpmr6EnWCtjKdvUzPqmaUs0HYA/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bBHNscyPopognh-Jn3tK4X4ZF28IXvtQ/view?usp=sharing

Would really appreciate some responses.

This happens to me yearly. Every time I think my anxiety is real and this time I’m going to have something happen to me. I’ve been frightened out of my mind and some of my thoughts have even been manifesting into my dreams.

I feel fine when I sleep and even at night but it’s during the day when I don’t have that distraction that I start to feel horribly anxious and find it hard to do daily tasks. I still do them but my thoughts are still there. For example, I went on a walk today and it felt really good but every couple minutes my intrusive thoughts would come back about how something is wrong with me and I kind of felt like crying lol.

Meditation and prayer has helped a bit. I also try and surround myself with lots of people whenever I can. I’ve been told by family that im okay but I still feel so afraid, and hyper-fixate on every sensation I feel in my body.

I just wanted to vent here, and see if anyone else is struggling too. You’re not alone.

Hey everyone! I feel really stupid asking this, but are these a form or OCD or something else:

First case was my existential crisis. For about 2 months I was obsessing about life. I could not stop. Every day I was watching videos about the meaning of life, what happens after we die, that sort of stuff. It kinda got in the way of school, but not too bad.

Then it was ADHD. I found out my friend had ADHD and for the next couple of weeks I spent most of my day looking up symptoms of it and wondering if I had it. It was pretty annoying. Again, couldn’t really stop, as it was always in my mind constantly. I was also fidgety and hyper during that period.

Eventually I moved on to...well...OCD. I thought I had it for a while, or at least developing it, and I couldn’t stop looking up symptoms for it. Went on for a couple of weeks as well. I also started to do these compulsions for no reason: counting to 50, checking doors, tapping things 8 times, adjusting things. I may have done them to test myself, to see if I really had OCD.

Now it’s depression, and after looking it up, I started to feel depressed, or more depressed than before. I felt as if I was just mimicking the symptoms. I had to look up the symptoms because of the uncertainty that I had it or not. “Depression” was always on my mind.

In short, there’s always an idea in my head I can’t get out that gets in the way of my thinking sometimes. So I have to look it up online constantly, learning everything about it, which makes it worse because I end up thinking about it even more. It’s not really anxiety driven but it’s annoying because that “idea” is always there, and sometimes I want it to go away.

I hope this isn’t Munchausen’s or something serious, and just a quirk. Couldn’t find other subs to post this to, and y’all are pretty helpful. Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Here is my thought process:

“Damn, I’m fidgeting. I must have ADHD. ADHD. ADHD. Hyperactive. Hyperactive. Do I have ADHD? No, I couldn’t have. But what if I do? Hyperactive. ADHD.”

“OCD? Is this OCD? Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Obsessive. Obsession. Am I obsessing? Over OCD? No. I should tap this 8 times so I can go. Compulsion. Am I doing that on purpose? OCD. Compulsion. Crap. I should stop. Do I have OCD?”

“I’m so depressed right now. So tired. Depression. Lack of energy. Lack of energy. Can’t focus. Poor concentration. I don’t want to do anything right now. Loss of interest? Loss of interest? Do I have depression? Depression. Let’s re

I have both and they feed off eachother. I can convince myself so easily that I am dying, and end up in the ER almost on a monthly basis because of it. Its horrible, most people don't understand it and think I am choosing to worry about these things. The panic attacks are awful. I spend majority of my time actively avoiding thinking of how I feel or trying to come up with simple, non concerning ways for the way I feel and move on to distract myself immediately. Because if I entertain the idea that something more could be wrong, even for a minute, im down the rabbit hole. How do you cope? Are there ways to treat this? I'm so tired.

This might sound like an out of place question, but I am very hypochondriac, and knowing I'll never have a family is making it worse. I'm not afraid of death, as long as it's quick and not very painful, but I am very scared of getting a physical disability like blindness or tetraplegia.

When my parents are gone, I will have no one. No family, no friends. If I fall and hit my head, I won't have anyone to take me to a hospital. That shit scares the hell out of me. To be honest it's what's bothering me the most at the moment. Does anyone feel the same way?

I read about this yesterday when reading about BPD—it’s the defense mechanism of telling someone they could never understand your feelings. I realized I’ve done this, telling myself I was just explaining myself. I realized how off-putting it is to someone I’m talking to—it completely invalidates their feelings—and if someone said that to me it would feel the same way.

My stomach hurts,

I guess I’ll die,

My legs numb,

I think I’ll cry.

I shiver all the time,

Maybe my body is at its time.

15 years that’s all I get.

Never truly connected at all,

I know I’ll never be that tall.

A stupid poems,

For a stupid fear.

Yet I always wonder,

What if something’s wrong?

i (19f) cannot shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with me (physically). i’m 5’4 and weigh 116 pounds. i’m half japanese half white. i’ve struggled with hypochondria and ocd since i was three, and it’s gradually gotten worse in my teen years. i was also diagnosed with panic disorder at eight and agoraphobia at 16. other than that i have no medical conditions and no history of cancer or heart disease in my family. i’ve been on dozens of medication for my anxiety, from antidepressants to antipsychotics. i currently only take 1 mg lorazepam as needed (i try not to take it, maybe once or twice a week tops, as addiction runs in the family). i have never drank or smoked.

for as long as i can remember, i’ve had a really hard time deducing whether my symptoms are physical, or a direct result of my anxiety. it’s gotten to the point where it’s a running joke between my primary care and me. i’ve been to more doctors than i can count, like cardiologists, neurologists, otolaryngologists and pulmonologists— all in the last three years! i thought i had everything from a brain tumor to supraventricular tachycardia. you name it, i’ve “had” it. i’ve had an eeg, mra, multiple ekgs, 30 day holter monitors, spirometry, blood tests, etc. all came back negative. but the feeling of being ill still persists, presenting new and different symptoms everytime. i can’t stop freaking out. right now, i’m fatigued and feel distant from my body and unfocused. so of course i think i’m one cheeseburger away from a stroke. it doesn’t help that i have persistent lights in my eyes resembling television static that no doctor (not even optometrists or neurologists) can figure out. and that i’ve had exercise intolerance for years that has no underlying cause. it’s neverending.

but there’s always that “what if” question in my head. what IF i have cancer this time? having hypochondria doesn’t make me immune to illness. most the time i can’t tell if it’s mental or physical. so how am i to know if my symptoms are in my head or the result of being sick? medical practitioners of reddit, i need your help. any advice would be great. thank you.

Hello all, I am quite the anxious guy especially regarding health issues. My catastrophic mind is capable of self diagnosing all kind of rare ailments and diseases. Alas, recently I've stumbled upon an article about the ridiculously rare sFI (Sporadic Fatal Insomnia) which my anxiety immediately used as fuel for my nightmares and I've been finding harder falling asleep for the past couple days because I think I have that condition. One night I've fallen asleep at 2 AM after fighting my anxiety for hours, last night I fell asleep at around 3 AM, still anxious. I have to my side that once I fall asleep i stay asleep and normally get 5/6 hours of sleep (although not at the normal schedule). Do you have any advice on how to cope with this vicious circle ? How do I convince myself that: No, I don't have such a super rare disorder just because I've fell asleep late for two days. I just can bear to spend the night rolling around in my sleep thinking of an impending doom that is most definetly not there.
Thank you people for your support, thank you very much

EDIT: I just wanted to vent some more: what I find unfair and irritating is that before I've stumbled upon that article I was sleeping like a baby no problem, and all of a sudden here I am flipping around in my sleep as if I was cooking a steak

I'm a hypochondriac. I don't just experience sickness. I feel it in my bones. I'm done feeling sorry for myself, because that's a poor man's game. I summoned the angel of death , and honestly? He's more empathetic than most humans. He knows the torture of my affliction, and he looms like a sickly human on the brink of annihilation. I thought I would ask him when I would die, so that way I wouldn't concern myself with every sniffle, every bump and scrape. He said he couldn't tell me that, but he had another very interesting proposition.

"I can't promise you much," the angel of death says. "But I can take away your fear, pluck it from your heart like a dentist would take out a rotting tooth."

"So, I could still die at any moment?"

"Yes, but if you have no fear, then no sickness truly matters, does it?"

I shifted in my bed, moved the sheets nervously with my hands.

"Fear can't remove pain if I get spinal meningitis. Or if I have a stroke that paralyzes a side of my body. Who would take care of me if I'm all alone, in pain?"

"What do you want? I'm not a miracle worker," the angel of death. "This is the only gift I can bestow upon you. Take it or leave it."

I thought for several minutes, noting the tick tock of the clock, counting down every second I got closer to death. Eventually, I gave a large sigh, then agreed.

"Take away my fear," I said, and the angel of death waved a hand, disappearing in the blink of an eye. The next several days, I felt fantastic, then I started to get sick. Really sick. My back became twisted, and I experienced the most severe pain in my life, radiating up and down my back like a rabid squirrel. I prayed for death, and I even tried to summon that blasted angel again. He didn't appear for several hours. When he did, he didn't look sickly like last time. Instead, the angel of death wore a slick black suit, pressed tie, looking like a businessman about to attend a meeting.

"You've come to strike a bargain," he asked, a slight smile on his face.

"You took away my fear, but you gave me something else, didn't you? You filthy bastard."

"Given your situation, your desperation, I'm prepared to offer you a deal. I can cure your spinal meningitis. Prevent you from ever getting sick again."

I coughed, hacked up a disgusting ball of mucus.

"What do you get out of it in return?" I asked.

"Seems like you really don't have a choice. Sure, there are consequences for every decision, but I think rotting in bed drowning in your own bi

I'm +-70kg @ 191cm (+-155lb @ 6'3'') 19yo male, with fears that I can safely say are hypochondriasis, although not diagnosed. For 2 months my lifestyle was just laying down almost all day.

2 days ago I started feeling more pressure in my lower right abdomen. Not pain, just slight discomfort. I'm having constant fear of appendicitis that only strong calming medication helped me with.

No fever, no pain when applying pressure, absolutely nothing other than bowel movements and this... like, higher consciousness of this area.

I'm unable to see doctor due to work and relative lack of equipment in my area. And I'm kinda afraid of going to doctors.

@edit: I want to see a doctor, but I'm not driving 30km to hospital, because I'm tad afraid of driving.

Can anxiety cause you to manifest physical symptoms of an illness? It seems often I'll get focused on some sort of illness or physical condition while manic. I'll obsess about it and do research on it because I believe I have it. Then I'll go to the doctor and be like, hey am I pregnant/have an STD/have cancer, etc.. The tests always come back normal and fine and I'm healthy but I feel like I have the physical symptoms of whatever it is. Is this my psychosis finding new and evolving ways to mess with me? Is this anxiety? Am I a hypochondriac (yes), or alternatively am I slowly being poisoned over the years by someone and this is what I'm feeling. That's such a throwback paranoia idea, I had that delusion when I was 23 and stopped taking my medication because of it but I kind of feel like that's happening. I mean, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition but maybe that was just the beginning of the poisoning? It makes sense really when you think about it.

I dunno. I've been awake for 40 hours because I forgot to sleep last night and just danced to music maybe that's catching up to me.

I am a 23-year-old male with brown skin, brown eyes and has no history of family skin cancer. I've been attacking with anxiety lately and I can't control it right now. I had a mole on my leg that's almost 3 years but it is itchy sometimes so I went to see a board certified dermatologist and a member of internal dermatological assoc. to get check yhis one. She said, it's most likely a benign mole and I even told her that there is a time that it grew rapidly (4mm right now) but then it became stagnant for like years; she still insisted that it's benign. She also added that if I'm worried about that, i had to get excise it with surgeon and get biopsied. But, i didn't do it cause I have no money to pay for my surgery.

Then after 3 days of searching the pictures of my mole, the symptoms and all the stuffs that is related to melanoma, I've been experiencing so much health issues already like I have an aching stomach, I can feel a muscle pain behind my mole (which is not presented even before), breathing pattern became shallowed and I'm not doing my usual exercise routine.

Since I was not comfortable with the first dermatologist, I have to see another one to have second opinion. I told her also the same thing but with pain that I perceived already (idk if it is psychological pain) and the history of my mole. With the use of magnifying glass or dermascope, she said that my mole has irregular borders and varies in color(it's dark and has red). And I asked her if there's a chance to become melanoma, she replied, only Biopsy can confirm with that. Again I have no money so I asked her based on the appearance and my history. She said, "it's more likely benign the fact that it stayed there for like years and didn't grow. Yours is flat. Melanomas grow only in months and has bumps" Although, I was quiet relieved on that, I stilm have a suspect about it. She said, "excise it right now and if it returned, that's the time it will get biopsied".

Right now, I really don't know what to do first. It's been terribly affecting me right now. I'm not like this before. I didn't have much experienced pain or itchiness on my mole before. Only right now, that i'm start to noticing it. Could anyone please tell me that this are only psychological 😔 Skies are turning gray right now for me. Please help me.

How common is hypochondria among medical professionals? I know this is extremely common among medical students who are learning about new diseases all the time. But how commonly do seasoned attendings suffer from this?

I’m a 22 year old female and I have pretty bad health anxiety. I’m chronically living in fear of a blood clot, different types of cancers, appendicitis, or an aneurism. Basically, anything that has affected a loved one, I assume that it not only could happen to me, but I internalize it and assume that it is in fact happening to me right now. I have tried to say that something is “impossible,” but the reality is that anything can happen to anyone at any time. Is it possible? There is a one in a million it could happen, but my brain says that since my loved one struck that one in a million chance, then I will too.

Last year I had a 10 month period of it being gone, then all of a sudden it came storming back. Has anyone had any experience like this? How did you get through it? I have started an SSRI last week, but I’m looking for more coping mechanisms.

Having studied psychology (which ironically was where my latent bipolar went from your usual mood disorder to announcing itself via an ugly psychotic breakdown), worked in the field of mental health for many years and also having a master's in social work, as well as a lot of my own continued reading on it...

Anyway without being /r/iamverysmart about all that, sometimes I think knowledge isn't power when I am constantly in a meta cognitive state of worrying about worrying, ergo worrying about the effects of stress on the body long term, of what this illness does to your neurocognitive functioning, what stress does to it etc etc etc.

As much as I do engage in meditation, exercise, yoga, medication all that, I feel like I've vicariously and directly exposed myself to so much information about the pathology of mental health that, especially in depressive episodes like the one I'm in now, it's all I can focus on.

Strengths based/solution focused stuff? Theory of recovery? Neural plasticity? Maintenance? Stability? My mind says fuck it to all that. Which is annoying cause when I was younger I seemed to be able to 'swallow' that positive counter information in a better light. Now, it's just constant hypochondriasis, rumination about decline, chronic illness, death etc.

I really want to break out of this almost obsessive cycle of rumination about my health. Especially because frustratingly, the biggest irony is it is affecting my health and making it worse, even though it's my brain trying to protect itself.

Brains are shit.

Hypochondria - abnormal anxiety about one's health, especially with an unwarranted fear that one has a serious disease.

This is a public service announcement to anyone in the grips of Kratom addiction. Don’t worry about getting bloodwork or if your becoming ill. Just focus on getting off the damn shit. It might not be physically harmful. But it mentally will mess you up!

During my time being addicted to Kratom and using around 30gpd I would go on for months thinking there was something different wrong with me almost every week if I can remember correctly. Some of the times I remember looking up if any other Kratom users were experiencing the illness I would feel. When I saw there were others I would calm down. Only to think of something else wrong with me. Examples of what I thought were abdominal pain, liver/kidney damage, HIV, Hepatitis, etc... in summary. This post is for those who in the last 24 hours have searched about an illness they might have and also ended up on this sub. Stop thinking there is something wrong with you! It’s the Kratom making you think that for sure! Get off it!