Diary of a Hypochondriac
The sensation of void creeping up our throats when we wait in line for a doctor’s appointment, the bouncing of our legs while a shiny needle digs into the pale skin of our arm, the worry that sinks in when an unexpected skin condition appears out of nowhere: we all know these feelings and to some extent, mostly, we manage to overcome them rationally.
What differentiates the mind of someone who suffers from health anxiety (formerly known as hypochondria) from that of someone who has a healthy relationship with the medical field is the constantly increasing panic that weights on our shoulders while us hypochondriacs analyze every single inch of our bodies, trying to get to the root of that weird itch or of that fleeting pain. Health anxiety sufferers overzealously scan their bodies in search for explanations that most of the time will not even be obtained, causing, other than a significant amount of panic, the creation of a vicious cycle of checking and seeking reassurance in regards to illness we are not even sure we might have contracted.
I am a twenty-one-year-old man and I know what you are probably thinking:” Why isn’t he out there hanging out with his friends instead of trying to write a piece on health anxiety” and first of all, true, but also, we are in a pandemic so I guess the whole “social butterfly” thing is not so trendy anymore. But what I am trying to portray through my words is not the picture of a young adult who cannot go out and enjoy life because of a raging pandemic, what I want to highlight is how the world we live in nowadays has led me to develop one of the most draining kinds of anxieties I have ever experienced.
I am no stranger to some familiar anxiety, it runs in my family, my grandmother was hospitalized because of an anxiety-induced mental breakdown and even my mother finds it hard to detach from this dreaded feeling of pressure weighing down on her chest, and while growing up I experienced my fair share of shortness of breath and lightheadedness because my brain was “wired differently”. I grew up bisexual and with a confused conception of gender in a small conservative town and you can certainly guess that this did not help in developing a good approach to stress, but as this well-known pandemic has taken the world by storm it also brought a silent danger hidden behind her cloak (or should I say… mask…bad one, I know).
Health and illnesses have always been a sensitive topic for me, I still remember bawling my eyes out when my mother had to go to the doctor to get her desultory medical check-up or when my father had to drive home from work under the pouring rain, but it had never occurred to me that one day it could have been me the subject of these draining episodes of panic and fear. As July 2020 approached and my university exams started to pile up I made the mistake of closing in on myself and this overall sadness and discomfort eventually led me to contract a plain and simple skin infection. This harmless bump in my road to academic success made one of my lymph nodes swell up and with that, the tidy world of deadlines and assignments that I had built for myself came crashing down:
I fell into a spiral of worry and anxiety that kept me up at night, prodding around my body, on the lookout for any weird or worrisome lump that I could report to my general practitioner. I remember spending hours in front of the mirror twisting and turning my neck, bending into improbable positions to dig into my skin with the most ease, pressing so hard into my tendons that I caused damage that took days to heal and made it practically impossible to sleep on my back. I had lost connection with reality and with those around me, keeping my family awake by continuously asking them to feel my body or booking countless doctor’s appointments hoping the following one would be the last.
I got my blood tested, I booked an ultrasound and an appointment at the dermatologist’s office, I went to see my GP 6 times; throughout three months. My skin broke out in countless places and I could not sleep a full night without waking up because of nightmares in which bumps would grow from my body; it was probably the hardest time in my life.
It eventually got to the point where I felt so unheard and misunderstood that I considered hurting myself a more pleasing possibility than spending another minute with my pounding head, that continuously screamed and pleaded for more examinations and tests, to prove that I was in fact healthy. Although almost six months have passed since that dreaded month I still find myself overly attentive to every little twitch and itch that occurs in my body and my routine of checking every single bodily function has only reduced slightly.
I surely did get better since then, time was a healer for me I suppose, but recovery is a bumpy road and to this day I still relapse at times, finding myself back to scavenging forums and online support groups to draw some form of reassurance from the chorus of those whose experience is as painful as mine.
The reason I decided to sit down and put these thoughts on paper is to highlight how powerful these trying times are and how dangerous they can become if we underestimate their influence on our mental health: a year ago I would have never worried about a few red spots on my leg but now even a minuscule abnormality sends me spiraling down the rabbit hole. For what is worth I wanted to let those of us suffering from health anxiety that even though it feels like a lonely road, the path to recovery is filled with individuals alike, sharing similar pains and worries, and that somehow makes me feel less alone in this struggle.
Love ❤
- Atlas
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