Fran is my really good friend. She is sometimes my doctor and often my therapist. We speak on the phone most days but unlike my other friends Fran is the one who will always ask me how I am with a little more meaning. She is the one who will understand when I say genuinely and without humour “I’m okay but I’m really worried that the pain in my stomach is something sinister, what if I really have bowel cancer this time?” I add “this time” because Fran is used to me having bowel cancer, or brain tumours, even breast cancer, measles and through one really dark time she nursed me through the times I was convinced I had Aids.
It turns out that, touch wood, spit three times or whatever you need to protect my health, I don’t have any form of cancer, I don’t have measles or Aids or chicken pox or dysentery or MS or Motor Neuron disease but I do have health anxiety, also known as hypochondria.
The Greek word “hypochondria” translates as “below the ribcage”. It was first used to explain indigestion, then melancholia, then neurosis and finally, “a misplaced fear of illness based on misinterpretation of bodily symptoms” and while almost no one will own up to it publicly up to one in 10 people suffer from anxiety problems and doctors are seeing more cases in which this shows up as health anxiety or hypochondria.
I spend a lot of time online “researching” my various ailments and I am the first to admit the danger inherent in those searches . But I’m not alone, “health” is the second-most popular internet search topic after pornography. And sometimes the time spent on the internet is worth its weight in the relief you find when you find yourself mirrored in someone else’s writing
Louise Carpenter recently wrote about her health anxiety in The Observer
Over the past five years, since the birth of my three children, I estimate that I have been to the doctor’s more times than in the preceding two decades. Unlike some hypochondriacs, there is some part of me that recognises the neurosis, but I find myself in a loop; that talking myself out of a surgery visit might be seen as an act of hubris for which I’ll be punished. It’s a lose-lose situation. There is no logic here.
Okay so I could have written every word. Especially about the logic. I know there is no logic. I know that I have hypochondria not some other disease. But I still worry. And I worry more so now that I have a child.
According to Louise’s article and specifically a book called Anxiety – A Self-Help Guide,
“There are many reasons why someone worries too much about their health,” says Lorna Cameron, one of its authors. “You may be going through a particularly stressful period of your life. There may have been illness or death in your family, or a family member may have worried a lot about your health when you were young.
I understand my worries about responsibility, I understand my fear is irrational and I am probably trying to mask a thousand different things but I think I need a lot more therapy before I can let Dr Google (or Fran) go. But at least I know I am in good company.
Do you use Google as a symptom checker? Do you suffer from hypochondria? Is there anything that makes your “symptoms” feel better or worse?
Top Comments
I have always been an anxious person, but since having my daughter 2 years ago I have developed such a health anxiety, brought on my my fear of not being around for her as she grows. I become obsessed with a certain disease,( usually a form of cancer but it can vary to MS, anuerrism, anything really). I even had a full blood test done last week at the docs and was told I was in great health, but by last night was convince a pimple on my chest was skin cancer! It is an exhausting way to live, and I have been on anti-depressants, which did help, but have just come off them as we try for another child, and I can feel it taking over again. Whilst i feel for all those who suffer with this, it is good to know I am not alone.
so glad to see a post on this!
i have always been an anxious person, a worrier, ever since i was a kid. my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died just 10 weeks later when i was 8, and since then i have always had bouts of intense fear of illness. when i was still in primary school i read a dangerous creatures book, there was a story in it about a 9yr old girl who died after a paralysis tick was not discovered embedded in her head, and i became obsessed with checking my head for bumps incase i had a paralysis tick!!! (??? i lived in the heart of suburbia!!)
i constantly fear cancer.. and once i convinced myself i had MS or ALS. My first baby was born 6months ago and it reinforced to me my mortality, how desperatly i want to be around to watch my son grow up, and i am in the midst of intense health anxiety at the moment, worried about my heart after heart palpitations and some breathing difficulties.
i dont always feel this way, during my pregnancy i was never anxious about my health at all. But when it hits it hits hard and fast, altho i know and i try to reason with myself that it is illogical, irrational and most of the time, unlikely, when im in the grip of the anxiety the fear and the terror is very real, i am overcome with panic, i feel like i cant look forward to things becos of the possibility of being ill, nothing i say to myself can talk me out of it. i also feel physical symptoms which only fuels the fire.
i avoid talking about it to people because i know it makes me sound crazy and paranoid, and i try not to go to the doctor alot. the only person i really talk to about it is my husband, he is always supportive (and used to answering questions and statements such as "does this mole look like its changed? i think its become a cancer")
How a bout you go to the gp and tell him/her what you've told us. Maybe you can be referred to a psychologist/counsellor. It seems to have helped a lot of other posters here.