On hypochondria and bad extremes
Seven years ago, I started suffering from a silent hypochondria. It was present every single day of my life, but it didn’t dominate my anxious thoughts, it was more like an extension of my general anxiety. I put it this way because the thoughts that truly tormented me had more to do with losing my job or an irrational fear of a loved one passing away. For years, I visited countless doctors for basically any discomfort I had, no matter how minor. To my mind, feeling a new pain was the first sign of a deadly disease waiting to happen.
During my hypochondria phase, I went to urologists, proctologists, cardiologists, psychiatrists, gastroenterologists, and ENT specialists. The only one I actually needed was the psychiatrist. I remember the ENT because he was the last doctor I visited before swinging to the other extreme of hypochondria—which, I don’t know if there’s an official term for it, but basically, I went from obsessing over my health to being negligent about it.
After countless therapy sessions, I came to the realization that my fear of getting sick stemmed from two major factors:
- My brother has kidney failure caused by an autoimmune disease, which sent him to the hospital multiple times when I was a teenager and he was a young adult.
- I grew up and lived surrounded by elderly people. Basically half my life. They raised me with a lot of love, but I spent all that time watching them get sick, take dozens of pills for everything, and slowly lose their vitality until they ended up bedridden and eventually passed away.
Illness and death were two things I was exposed to from a very young age. As I grew up and distanced myself from that reality, my mind naturally feared ending up like them one day. For me, it was normal to see the kitchen table covered with the medications my grandparents took for diabetes and hypertension, along with vitamins, supplements, prescriptions, and insurance documents. On top of that, my great-grandparents also lived in that house. Both died of cancer, and I witnessed the painful process firsthand while occasionally helping my grandmother take care of them.
Two years ago, everything changed after that last visit to the ENT. I went because I felt dizzy all the time, and I was terrified of developing vertigo—the disorder, not just regular dizziness—because a year earlier, I had an episode while sleeping, and the experience had traumatized me. During the visit, everything checked out fine; the doctor examined me and said I was perfectly okay. As for vertigo, she told me it seemed like an isolated case and that those episodes sometimes just happen and never return. She gave me treatment for my allergies, and I left. Four days later, I fell in the shower.
I have no idea how, but I slipped, and my forehead hit the floor. I cut myself right above my eyebrow. Needless to say, the experience was horrible. The wound was deep, and I needed a plastic surgeon. I spent days feeling dazed, with my forehead bandaged, and completely consumed by fear that the injury would leave lasting effects. Fortunately, it didn’t, and my family supported me throughout my recovery. But something shifted in my mind. After that accident, I stopped worrying about my health. Or rather: my hypochondria disappeared.
In reality, this extreme and unhealthy concern about illness didn’t just vanish, it’s more that, even if it’s not immediately obvious, I took another step in my anxiety journey. Except now, the feeling flipped in the opposite direction, and I’ve become somewhat negligent about my health. That doesn’t mean I avoid doctors when I feel sick, I still seek help when I need it. But I stopped worrying about what might make me sick someday. I stopped thinking about long-term consequences, and honestly, I don’t think that’s a good thing, because many chronic illnesses develop due to bad habits that persist over time. Deep down, I know I should care at least a little. Or maybe I’m wrong, and this way of dealing with health is actually normal—the way people without anxiety handle it.
In the end, I just got tired of worrying. I got tired of anxiously suffering over what could happen in the future. And on the surface, that seems like a good thing.
Thanks for reading.