The Everything Blog

Being a Hypochondriac

Okay so, I’m going to talk about being a hypochondriac. It was a request and I’ve had my fair share of experiencing being a hypochondriac myself! Firstly, just to clarify, I’m not a doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist, fortune teller. Nothing like that. I’m just going to share my own experience and how I’ve dealt with it.

Let’s start with explaining what Hypochondria is = ‘Abnormal anxiety about one’s health, especially with an unwarranted fear that one has a serious disease.’ When having that type of anxiety it could suggest that you may be a hypochondriac. I definitely was due to a few reasons including; watching TV programs, being ill and close family!

My health fears started when I was about 12 years old. I watched an A&E program on TV and saw someone having a heart attack and they got taken to A&E. As a child, I had a very sheltered life, never saw any horror movies, anybody in any real pain or any that I can remember. Generally, I thought the world was very nice apart from a few mean kids at school. When thinking about it, seeing a heart attack at 12 years old and you don’t understand the reason behind it, is going to be quite startling. As a result of this, I would rub my chest checking to see if my heart hurt (in my mind, that made sense when trying to check if my heart was healthy) this went on for about a week. Anyway, after struggling for a few days I went into the living room where my parents were and I asked them ‘Is my heart okay? It hurts, am I going to have a heart attack?’ Although, it was my chest that was hurting as I had been rubbing it so much. Finally, after so much worry, My parents explained in the simplest way the reasons why someone would have a heart attack and luckily they mentioned ‘healthy, 12 years olds won’t ever have a heart attack’. I can still remember the relief that I felt and I stopped rubbing my chest. That was only the beginning.

The year after, I witnessed a close family member fainting in a doctors surgery after they had their flu jab. Thereafter, I always thought that I would faint if I stepped into a doctors surgery. Luckily at that time, I was rarely ill. This is just a bit of back story information as this isn’t exactly hypochondria but you’ll see how it’s linked.

Then when I was 14 years old, I had the worst flu I’ve ever had and I’m still saying that 9 years later! For a couple of weeks I had cold, sickness, light-headed and dizziness symptoms. I was pretty scarred by the whole thing as I never wanted to go through it again. This made me start worrying whenever I had a headache, felt nauseous, coughed, sneezed and basically anything that is a symptom of any illness (as minuscule as they were). ESPECIALLY AT NIGHT. So, guess what, I was a pain for my family as I wouldn’t sleep, nobody in my household had a full night sleep because of me for about 6 months!

Bear in mind, I was doing my GCSE’s at this point so this had to stop for everyone’s sanity and for me to pass my exams! My mum would try to take me to the doctors but I still wouldn’t step into a doctor’s surgery because in my head I would faint (I’ve still never fainted), the doctors had to come and see me in the car. This is when they decided I had to be referred to a psychologist and psychiatrist.

I attended the psychologist/psychiatrist sessions with a lot of pushing and nagging but I went. I HATED them. I went to about 6 sessions and despised every one of them. Not because they weren’t helping, I just hated feeling like I needed a psychologist. BUT one day, as my mum parked up to take me to my 7th session where I refused to get out of the car, she said something which made me change my whole mindset… ‘Emily, if you don’t wake anyone up and just go to sleep and stop worrying about your health anymore, I will stop taking you to these sessions’, I said ‘YES, YES, I will go to sleep and never wake you up again’ so we went home and missed my 7th appointment.

That night was the night that I had to prove myself. I can assure you that it wasn’t an easy one BUT I didn’t get up even though I still had all the thoughts of being sick, my stomach was hurting or I have some sort of silent illness in me that hasn’t been surfaced. I just waited out the night and got up in the morning with no sleep! (That’s how much I didn’t want to go to another session) This was good, this was the first step.

Every night from then on, I would still stay awake as long as possible (out of worry) but as time went on I started to realise that nothing was actually happening to me, and anything that did happen would be out of my control anyway. I was winding myself up, I actually ended up concentrating more on trying to stay away from those dreaded psych sessions.

Long story short, how I dealt with it was making the deal with my mum that triggered my mindset to change and think ‘nothing is happening to me right now, if something does then I have no control over it and I will deal with it when it happens’ and over time I am no more a Hypochondriac. I’m not saying that will work for everyone but I also had an incentive of never going to the place that I hated (that also helps).

However, I say this, BUT every time I step outside during this Coronavirus I check my breathing to see if I have the virus because if I have it, I swear, I will not be a happy bunny!