I am invincible

I am invincible

I’ve always been ill and more than often terminally ill. I’ve had brain tumours, meningitis, appendicitis and more heart attacks than I could keep track off. Right now I actually have DVT. Unfortunately only one illness I’ve ever had was real though. Health anxiety, better known as hypochondria.

I’ve talked quite openly about my experiences with anxiety though I actually rarely mention that most of this anxiety is focused on my health. I read a great article last week that hit the nail on the head “anxiety is like water, it needs a container. A thought to give it shape, a channel to flow through”. This is the most accurate way I could describe hypochondria. It’s just the container, the real problem is the anxiety. Understanding this has helped me better understand anxiety in all its forms such as OCD, social anxiety, even jealously in relationships. It all comes from the same place and then we pick and choose where we focus it.

I’m sure I probably lost half of you at hypochondria. It’s become so well known that it’s comical. The people who are obsessed with going to the doctors and think a paper cut is cancer. Even I laugh about it. But there is a serious side. At 3am when you’re still awake googling symptoms, sweating trying not to pick up the phone it stops becoming a joke. At 18 and on courses of anti depressants and diazepam it stops being funny.

Now surely if you have the insight to know you’re a hypochondriac then you can no longer be one? I wish it worked like that. My anxiety is clever. Every time I’m on top it finds a way to out smart me. We’ve been best pals since I was 6 years old though I can remember moments of anxiety even earlier than that. It grew up with me, it changed with me. I’ve stopped watching Tv shows about hospitals, stopped reading articles on fb about freak illnesses but it’s so tuned in. It will pick up stories from half way down the train carriage, remember illnesses from game show questions and then use them at the a later point.

The ironic thing is it has nothing to do with actually being sick. It’s just about control. Like OCD, like eating disorders, they are attempts to gain some kind of control in life. Which is exactly why when I’m stressed my hypochondria will rear its ugly head. But you can’t have control. The only real way we control our lives is by how we chose to react to life.

I realised a long time rationalising with my anxiety was pointless. I’m 22,  this disease is really rare etc does not work. The fear is irrational so how could the answer be rational. The best way for me to deal with it right now is by acknowledging one simple truth. Up until now, I am invincible.

Nothing has ever killed me, no turmoil was too much, no anxiety was ever too frightening, no heartbreak too heartbreaking. No challenge life has given me yet was too hard. I am invincible. So therefore I must assume, based on probability that whatever life throws my way I will overcome it. Because the reality is that’s much more likely that the alternative.

And by that acknowledgement, by accepting that I can’t control if I get sick but that I can control my reaction to it, suddenly you take the driving seat. By letting go of control, you gain it. And not only am I going to endure it, not only am I going to survive it but I’m going to live it. I’m going to own it.

I am invincible.

As G would say..

All my love,

Maeve