You’ve had two doctors look, and you have had your chest imaged.
To give a bit more context, whenever I had the GPs "touch" the parts that I feel were alarming, they never managed to "feel it" or "grab it" the way I do. So I don't feel like I gave them enough evidence. And for the "chest being imaged", it was about one year ago (things might have changed since then), and the doctor did it quickly looking at my heart, not really looking precisely at the part that I'm concerned about.
(I know that I sound a bit like "the medical evidence is wrong, they didn't find anything because they weren't doing... (read more)
Thanks for the comment! It really helps to know that other people are in a similar situation.
My childhood went fine. I did spend the past 3/4y midly-to-severely depressed/anxious and saw a CBT therapist for about 6 months this year though (stopped it last month). We mostly worked on how to build self-confidence and avoid self-loathing through the three columns technique. I also did the exercises from "Feeling Good". We did not focus on my illness anxiety (never mentioned it to her to not sound too crazy and because we had other things to fix first). Never heard of ACT, will check it out and think about doing a therapy more anxiety focused.
alleviating... (read more)
Action cures fear. Stop ruminating and do the thing.
Thanks, that's the boost I needed.
In the longer term, one thing that has helped me is to list all my nagging fears
Sounds super useful for the long run, will start today!
Disclaimer: When I think about dying I mostly think about cancer (I don't know much about other diseases). In the following, I'll be refering to "cancer" to point at deadly diseases where early detection is crucial.
[Epistemic status: thinking out loud; trying to debug my irrational mind.]
Situation I strongly believe that I have final stage cancer. When I touch my pectoral muscles, I can feel lumps. I have been suffering unbearable anxiety for the past one year and a haf or so, feeling that something very wrong is happening.
Medical Evidence One year ago, a cardiologist told me my heart was fine and didn't see anything from ultrasound. In the past two months,... (read 606 more words →)
I starting feeling anxious about left chest pain about 18 months ago. I would say I started touching/feeling lumps maybe one year ago, and I started being really concerned (touching more) six months ago.
Number/size/distribution