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Thank you for your reply.Hi there, I guess this is a bit captain obvious, but do you have a diagnose of PTSD?
I can relate to what you’re saying as I deliberately ignore medical problems until I’m forced to go to the ER or something, it’s quite inconsistent but I’m quite worried I’ll be told I’m gonna die. Generally when I manage to go I then stall before any further examination.
Worries like this can also be caused by Generalized Anxiety Disorder (which I have been diagnosed with too) and it’s often co-morbid of PTSD.
What I tend to do is to wait for a window and take an online appointment then tell a friend that I have this appointment and make me go. Now that I’m living alone this hasn’t really been possible (I find it bizarre to do that with my roommates), but writing here has helped me to check in what I’m supposed to do instead of just seeing a butterfly and invent some excuse as not to go.
But I think the best thing you could do is to go and see a therapist. These won’t tell you that you’re gonna die. You don’t need a diagnose. And they can help you with the avoidance.
I hope this helps.
Would teletherapy be an option?I would go see a therapist but where I live you have to wear a mask. I just can’t do that.
It sounds like a cop out but I’m too self conscious to do that. I need to be with the person and see them. And I tend to have a general distrust of people so I need to be there to read them better. But honestly, thank you for the suggestion.Would teletherapy be an option?
I just contacted my GP and asked her if she knew any therapists.Hi there, I guess this is a bit captain obvious, but do you have a diagnose of PTSD?
I can relate to what you’re saying as I deliberately ignore medical problems until I’m forced to go to the ER or something, it’s quite inconsistent but I’m quite worried I’ll be told I’m gonna die. Generally when I manage to go I then stall before any further examination.
Worries like this can also be caused by Generalized Anxiety Disorder (which I have been diagnosed with too) and it’s often co-morbid of PTSD.
What I tend to do is to wait for a window and take an online appointment then tell a friend that I have this appointment and make me go. Now that I’m living alone this hasn’t really been possible (I find it bizarre to do that with my roommates), but writing here has helped me to check in what I’m supposed to do instead of just seeing a butterfly and invent some excuse as not to go.
But I think the best thing you could do is to go and see a therapist. These won’t tell you that you’re gonna die. You don’t need a diagnose. And they can help you with the avoidance.
I hope this helps.
I will go see a homeopath because she, first of all doesn’t touch me, and second, she listens. and then recommends supplements. I get anxious when I go but I can get myself there most of the time. Although lately it is getting tough.I don’t think there’s anything wrong with distrusting doctors and the medical establishment in general. My foster brother, as I refer to him, went to MIT on a full boat and you can’t fake that, gotta be pretty smart. Smarter arguably than most of the doctors, and he avoids them like the plague. I always trusted my doctors till I got a cancer diagnosis in 2019. It’s prostate cancer so I get to wait and see. I get a blood test every 3 months. I hate getting the results but so far, I’ve been lucky. I wish you luck but in not trusting them? I think you are in good company.
And I also wonder how I’m still alive. I’ve never been sick. But right now I have symptoms that are freaking me out.I have this massively.
It's part of the 'sense of forshortened future' that is a common symptom for people with PTSD. As Corax has pointed out, it also shows up in other disorders such as GAD (and can be it's own full disorder as Illness Anxiety Disorder, aka hypochondrias).
I don't so much distrust medical staff as a general rule, rather, that I have too much experience of not being taken seriously, and if only that anxiety part of mine. Too many doctors dismissed my fears. Yes, I physically may be fine, but the anxiety is still doing a number on me so you need to approach my concerns differently than "it's really unlikely". A NP picked up on that a few years ago and while I really had no clinical pointers to anything iniquitous, she noticed it would help my anxiety to actually run that test to confirm this that otherwise I wouldn't have gotten because...well...no clinical pointers.
I avoid medical visits because I'm always afraid to hear something bad. What does help me though is
a) being quite diligant on routine check ups instead of waiting until someting suspicious catches my attention
b) if something suspicious catches my attention, I usually spiral into a freak out, sometimes immediately, sometimes it builds up over a few days. I start doing a SHIT ton of online research, factual-scientific AND actual personal accords, and check my symptoms against that. I do that even if I've researched the same topic in the past, because info can change, my memory could be wrong etc. So I do a LOT of self-assessment and evaluation whether my concerns are indeed warranted. It either helps me calm down.... or I freak out completely and it's usually then when I actually pick up that phone and try to schedule an appointment for *immediately*. If I can get in on a short notice, I usually manage to follow through because I'm still in that freak-out stage and more on an autopilot-overthink-less-sheer-flight mode. If the appointment wouldn't be for another few days or even weeks, I tend to bail because by now my anxiety brain had had time to catch up and working itself into conviction that the doctor is gonna confirm what it's convinced it already knows and that it's too late anyways...
If that makes sense?
For me it's massively that I'm convinced I shouldn't actually be alive anymore but I still am and that I somehow have dodged so many bullets over the years (pretty much never been sick as a child/teen, for example) and I'm somehow cheating fate, so eventually, it's gonna hit to restore balance to how things are supposed to be.
And no, a therapist has not been any help with that for me. BUT, I agree with the others that you should try to get into therapy, especially if you suspect you have PTSD, because there's more layers to that.