Coping with Hypochondriasis

[Jamshyd]

For those of us who are constantly fearing disease and/or constantly self-diagnosing... how do you cope with it?

Here are my methods:

- Avoid reading medical books/shows as much as possible. In the event that you do read them, make absolutely sure you memorize all the serious symptoms. Ex. If I suspect dysentery when all I have is diarrhoea, I remind myself that I am neither nauseous, nor feeling stomach cramps, nor shitting blood.

- Listen to your body and memorize patterns. When one does this often, it seems that some harmless disturbances actually form in patterns, and that serious disturbances that require attention will stand out because they do not fit into abovementioned patterns.

- Keep affirming to yourself that you are indeed healthy... even to the point of making mantras out of these affirmations and repeating them over and over again. Also, keep at the forefront of your mind times when you were really sick, and compare them to your current (helthy) state.

Edit: forgot another very important one:

- Always always remember that hypochondria is a state of mind - not a disease

 

[CountSymphonic]

It took me a while, because mine was caused by an anxiety problem which surfaced from mushrooms and was made worse by meth use. That last time I used meth, I had what was either a really bad anxiety attack or near heart attack so bad that my arms and face went numb, heart was beating way too fast. This caused me to believe that meth had damaged my cardiovascular system.

So every thing in my body that felt unusual, I had to look up and find an explanation. There were too many, so I considered that it all really was what the doctors had told me... anxiety. From that point on, every funny feeling I got, I would look up on the net, to see if that could be caused by anxiety... and all of them turned out to indeed be products of anxiety. I have since been able to relax. I agree that recognizing patterns has also helped me.

I do still check my blood pressure often, but I no longer think that I might have something terribly wrong with me.

 

[MynameisnotDeja]

EFT might do some good work here..

You could tap on the phrase: "Even though I fear I might possible have [insert random disease here], I still deeply love and accept myself and know that everything will be okay"

^Or something along those lines. Once you work through the anxiety and fear surrounding the thought of having a possible illness and get it cleared, you can see how you really feel with an un-projecting viewpoint.