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Sable_Jan
Guest
It may be good to start a post about it....you obviously have a deep understanding of it. It may help some people, if not the sufferers themselves but their friends and relatives...Re the Googling of symptoms..
I raised this issue on a fairly recent response I gave to a lady who had unfortunately suffered a traumatic bereavement, you can see the post by checking my profile. I have the feeling what I said went down like a lead balloon and there were many posts with the alternative view, which is fair enough - I kept quiet after that. Can I just say that this type of obsessive anxiety is very specific, it's called Health Anxiety and is a truly awful thing to live with.
I was a member of an anxiety/depression/phobia forum ( not for HA) and the amount of people who had this anxiety was staggering. The old name for it is hypochondria but that doesn't come close to scratching the surface, people are CONVINCED they have illness A, B or C and no amount of medical testing/ reassurance alters their thinking, most of the time is spent googling symptoms or illnesses. The suggestion that it is anxiety is often met with total refusal to accept it may even be a possibility. The trouble is that anxiety can come from nowhere, with no specific cause and the physical symptoms of severe, heightened anxiety can mimic many, many illnesses. I was going to start a thread about this, to make people aware that it exists, and that not everybody who comes here with convincing symptoms but no diagnosis, especially after numerous tests, has a physiological problem. They're not making these things up, they are really suffering symptoms, but the worst thing for HA is repeated reassurance as it just reinforces the fear - until they exhaust all avenues and then symptoms of something else appear. Therapy can often help but it's getting someone to see that in the first place.