Just something that makes me feel better

[u/okyxnus]

This might not work for everyone, but it does for me sometimes and I thought maybe for some people as well.

Since I was a child, I had health anxiety, once I told my mom about it and I remember she said to me that "They're just humans like you and I". I didnt know why that time but it helped me a lot.

But now looking back, I now understood where did she come from. Lately when the anxiety comes back, I started to watch and read documentries about the ppl who has the disease that I am afraid of. Not in their extremly sufferring stage, but the ones that you to remind yourself, they're just humans. This is real, and it's just a thing in life. I think it helps me to get out of that spiral and getting touch with reality again. It's not something that "super evil spooky nightmerish concept that comes out suddenly and haunts their victims who is specifically afraid of it", or the videos on the internet who talks abt real diseases like scary stories to tell in the darkness. ARE they scary? yes. But its something that happens in the life and to livings, it IS a part of the cycle and life.

My another point is, internet has been dramatized real life health issues that real people struggles so much for the sake of shock value that, it made people getting lose touch with the reality. People started to see them as like horror concepts, and forgot what actually are they and where did they come from. I'm not talking about every person who has been experiencing health anxiety, but there's a huge crowd started devoloping anxiety with this way and even without knowing truely about the thing they are afraid of-- I saw so many people who started to stop feeling anxious once someone sat down and actually explained the disease with an educational manner without misinformation and exaggeration. And I'm not talking about "it's actually not THAT bad-" type of conversations but explaining why and how it causes properly. People are tend to be afraid of the things that they know less about, talking about prevention and information is more effective in anyways.

I just feel like writing and yapping about this for some reason, take what I said just as a personal opinion. anyways thank you for coming my ted talk !

[u/ImaginaryUnicorn241]

You are bypassing a therapist and giving yourself exposure therapy. Whatever works keep doing it. Health Anxiety is f-ing bastard.