I too have always had anxiety issues. I am 38 now, but they only manifested themselves into health anxiety about 15-years ago. What you have described is 100% dead-on to what I experienced as well, and thought I was alone in my suffering.
During times of very high stress I would literally convince myself into thinking that I was dying from the same “undiagnosed” terrible illnesses that nobody could diagnose. I went to doctors repetitively, and even saw different ones for second and third opinions for the same “ailment,” because I was scared to death that I was terminally ill. I didn’t think I was smarter than the doctors… just that I had that 0.000001% unheard of “thing” that most doctors miss until it shows up in an obituary! My obituary!
Perhaps noteworthy here was the fact that I was not a substance abuser at the time (though upon reflection, I was developing early alcoholism), so I wasn’t seeking – nor receiving – anything habit forming. Or receiving any medication at all for that matter; the doctors would seem to just roll their eyes at me and send me on my way after, perhaps, an X-ray or some benign test for my own sake.
In the beginning, my health anxiety focused around my mouth. I was convinced that I had some form of oral/glandular cancer, and despite having pristine teeth and oral hygiene, I could not rid myself of the fear. When I somehow did get over that particular one, I too began focusing on my neck and throat area. I convinced myself that I had a tumor of some sort on the left-side of my throat a little past my tongue, and about 10-years ago convinced an ENT to remove my tonsils because of a history of strep and tonsillitis, with this feeling of “fullness” in my throat being the straw that put me over the top for surgery.
Ironically, while helping my general health (through the removal of grotesque tonsils that needed to go anyway) in the long run, it did NOTHING for that fullness feeling in my throat.
I continued to see doctors to address the throat, and developed a nasty internet habit of checking symptoms making me feel that I had EVERYTHING under the sun. I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned MS or ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), as they seem to be the top two that everybody with health anxiety seems to think they have! Just don’t look them up, you don’t have them!
NOBODY understood what I was going through. My fiancé (now my wife), friends, and family thought I was ridiculous and started getting very annoyed at me. I was always checking my mouth, throat, glands, lymph nodes, etc. to the point of obsession. I felt that nobody cared and started to foster resentment because, as far as I was concerned after all, I REALLY WAS dying and the best I could get was an eye roll! I just couldn't verbalize how REAL these irrational feelings were to me!
After beginning much needed therapy and medication for anxiety, the health anxiety began to subside. I started to realize that the fullness in my throat, the “tingling” from MS or whatever the other physical symptoms I was experiencing were being caused, and exacerbated, BY ME.
These symptoms, for the most part, went away by not focusing on them. Easier said than done, which is the hard part, which is even further compounded by the fact that you and I KNOW that we’re not dying… we just don’t KNOW KNOW that we’re not! Does that make any sense? You as a former therapist, and I as a psychologist, know better “on paper,” but convincing ourselves of the reality is darn near impossible, so it seems at first.
I’m sorry I’m rambling… I guess I never thought through how I would explain all of this to somebody, so I never tried until now. At the end of the day, when I was the most frustrated with my health anxiety, I just said to myself the following: “So what?!?” If I am sick and something terrible happens to me, then the worst thing to happen is that I will be in heaven with God, in pure bliss without a care in the world; I should be so lucky! When I truly internalized that, I realized that I would spend the rest of my time on the planet being the best person I can be. While not 100% gone, this horrible health anxiety is now nothing more than slight “background noise” in my life and no longer interferes as it did.
**IMPORTANT** Please realize that I am only addressing health anxiety here; of course, you must continue to deal professionally with your pain, medication use, therapy, etc. My non-medical opinion, as this is NOT any type of medical advice but just a thought, is that the issues you have all might all be feeding off of each other, so please continue to get help in those areas – just know that despite how REAL health anxiety is and feels, it can be overcome!
Josh