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dcs316
Guest
Hi! This is my first time posting on this board. To give a quick background, I am 45, female, and have had health anxiety/hypochondria (whatever you want to call it!) since I was a teenager. It goes thru stages -- sometimes it's worse than others -- but since hitting perimenopause a couple of years ago it's been pretty bad. The logical part of me sees that I am in pretty good health and take care of myself by exercising every day and if I had had even one of the hundreRAB (thousanRAB?) of diseases I have positively diagnosed myself with over the years I'd have been dead long ago. Unfortunately, the anxiety-ridden side of me is much stronger and continues to convince myself that 'this' time is the time that I really have a brain tumor, MS, blood clot, you name it. Most people, including my husband, don't know that I am like this since I keep it mostly inside. There are a select few people I've shared it with but don't talk about it too much because I don't want to drive them away. I hate living like this. It's exhausting and sad and I'm just tired. I want to have a day where I don't think every little pain is a horrible disease. I want a day where I'm not afraid that I'm going to die. I do take Ativan but only on the really bad days. I tried a daily med. but didn't like the dependency or the side effects. I guess my question here is, is there any hope for an end to this? Is there someone out there who has had anxiety and actually conquered it?? I mean really, truly gotten rid of it? It scares me and makes me sad to think I have to live the rest of my life like this. It has kept me from doing many things in the past and I hate to think of what else I'll miss because of it.