Life Update - Welcome to my Reality

I wake up and fumble for my phone. I groan when I see it is only midnight. Midnight is a terrible time to wake up. Too early to get up and go about my morning. The night stretches out in front of me.

Perhaps if you woke up at this time, you would simply roll over and drift back off to sleep.

Not me.

I instead start to feel dread wash over me as my anxiety snakes its way through my body, it’s tendrils sink into my mind and dig deep. Most people count sheep at night, lately I go through all the diseases and illness and injuries that can befall humanity. It is not fun.

This type of anxiety is largely known as health anxiety.

What is health anxiety?

Health anxiety is also known as hypochondriasis or hypochondria.

Health Anxiety is when your anxiety focuses on illness. Every ache and strange sensation in your body is focussed on with an intensity of a thousand suns. Every slight bodily sensation googled and fretted over. You self-diagnosis yourself a lot with rare and serious illnesses. And it is not simply a passing fancy, a maybe I have that, it is this solid and unwavering assurance that I indeed have this. And then I start to see my life all stretched out in front of me, with this new illnesses.

It is torturous anxiety. And it has made me despair and cry many times. And it is worse when it happens in the middle of the night, because there is not much to distract you from catastrophizing your future and state of your body.

What did I do?

I carried on this way until it got too much. Until, I crumbled under its weight. So, I got help. I went to the doctor. I dreaded that appointment. I thought she would think me a little nuts, as I listed my fears and myriad of symptoms.

But, I went into that doctors appointment, told her what I had been dealing with over the last few weeks and that I needed help. I was very explicit in that. I asked for help.

She prescribed me an SSRI. And referred me for funded therapy.

I have been on the medication now for two weeks as of yesterday. I started at 10mg, and now this has been bumped to 20mg. I have had some side effects. These being dry mouth, very weird vivid dreams, trouble sleeping, hot flashes and aches and pains. And an increase in anxiety, which has not been fun. The dreams have been interesting. They are vivid so it seems like I am awake, but they are also about really mundane things. Last nights one, was me doing an exam.

They take a few weeks to kick in, so I guess I am waiting for that.

I am cautiously optimistic about them. I was also terrified to put that first pill in my mouth as I was scared it would change who I was. But, what made me take that first dose, was that I was missing life. That I was living in fear everyday. And something needed to change.

And that change, was in the form of asking for help.