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How can I move past this obstacle?
Hi I am a 14 year old girl and I might be a bit of something you would call a hypochondriac. Almost every disorder or illness I hear about I look it up and start worrying that I have or will get it to no end.(they never came true) This past month I've been a lot lot better then I was last year. There's still a little bit of the old me still there and I want to be carefree(not completely carefree) but just to the point where I don't worry about silly things so I would like to change my perspective on life. I want to be optimistic and fearless but in order to get there I need to get past this obstacle, right? How do I do so?
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Google "dealing with hypochondria OCD". You sound like a pretty mild case, and you are self-aware, which is a major thing.
I occasionally have "checking" behaviour - going back to make sure the door is locked, the stove is off. When I catch it, I tell myself "I'd rather risk the house burning down than become one of those people", and leave without looking back.
Nothing has burned down yet :)
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All your feelings and emotions which includes fears and worries comes from your subconscious mind. I am guessing your sub needs some reassurance that you are not going to catch everything or get a disease. Your subconscious is right now a scared little child, call her your inner child. Instead of being carefree, she is over absorbed with worry of becoming ill. I am not saying you are a child, everyone has an inner child no matter how old we get. Lets say for example yours is 3 or 4 years old. How easily are kids that age spooked or scared?
What I think will reassure her is if you began to be proactive about your health, not worrying what might happen if you sit around doing nothing. Read up on natural health. On line or magazines. A good one to start with is
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
I would save and re-read these magazine and found almost every article was helpful to me.
Health is more than a physical thing, our mental and emotional state can affect our physical health, also spiritual health is important too but that can come later. So I recommend you meditation, yoga for the stretching of your muscles, some kind of aerobic exercise like dancing, skipping rope or plain skipping down the sidewalk. Start watching what you eat. Stop any artificial sweeteners (they are all poison) and stick with pure cane sugar. Once you read up on the subject you'll know what I mean. Many so called foods are artificial substitutes. Take margarine for example, your body doesnt know what to do with it so it just builds up inside you over a life time and can cause problems in later age. Butter is much healthier even though it is fat. Just use it in moderation. There is so much you could study and learn.
There is so much toxins in our food today that we can't avoid it totally, you'd have to stop eating. But one way I have experienced my body being cleansed of some toxins is Gong therapy. That is listening to a gong played for maybe 20 min to 1/2 hour.Your in the room with the gong and can feel the reverberations going through your body like waves hitting the shore at the beach. This is much like being near the speakers at a concert where you can feel the beat inside your body. Unfortunately, rock music doesnt have healing therapys on the body. Copper Tibetan singing bowls works as well, same as Crystal singing bowls. Have fun looking those up and listening to examples on You tube. If you can, read up about Chakras, energy centers in your body that can become stuck by what you are experiencing in life. If stuck too long, the organs near that chakra can experience problems but take can also take a life time to get bad. It is better to have someone check and balance your chakras or learn to do it yourself. Reiki is one of the methods. A master of Reiki teaches you how to do your own chakras for a price. $200. or so. Its less expensive to buy a book on it. I would recommend Magick and Reiki by Chris Penczak. Although not a book on strictly traditional Reiki, it is to me more helpful because it incorporates using our minds in thoughts, will, and intent, especyially visualization with some of his pagan rooted beliefs. Coming from a Christian background, I find nothing threatening or evil connected to what he teaches. Often in studying alternative health practices some churches will label everything bad simply because of the belief system of the person practicing healing. My church forbade us to see an acupuncturist because its evil. No other explanation other than they are Buddhist or something. Your objective is to become well informed so that you feel you have a comfortable control and rein on what goes on with your body. Training your mind to be creative and visual will be part of it. Try this, next time your mind is worrying about you might be getting sick. Close your eyes, take 3 deep breaths. Now visualize in your mind a jar of magick pills. Make the jar look any way you want. See yourself opening the jar and taking two pills. You decide if they are to be swallowed or chewables. These pills have an effect on your mind, they heal your mind of worry about health. Thats their purpose. Stop and do this any time you have an issue.
I also recommend this web page:
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
Good luck dear.
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I can't answer or tell you why this happens to some people. What I can tell you is your not alone and that there are a great many people who suffer as you are. There is a women my wife works with who if she hears about an illness feels she has the same illness or will catch it. Why she is this way she doesn't know. She drives her doctor crazy.
What we think causes this is some form of mental trauma. It could be something as simple as when mom was teaching you how and when to wash your hands. Some parents use fear tactics to get their children to wash their hands after going to the bathroom and before eating an going to bed. You are so young when this happens you don't remember what was said or when but it sticks with you for life.
My mother put the fear of dogs in me when I was young. I do not remember what she said or when. She finally confessed to me when I was in my thirties and my son wanted a dog that my fear was her fault and why.
Germ phobia and hypochondria are real fears that are hard to overcome or live with. Sometimes it takes working with a clinical psychologist to get to and find the basis of the fear. Once the basis of the fear is found you can find a way to overcome it.
Without finding out the cause of your phobia you will never truly overcome the phobia. To just try to overcome it without finding the reason would be like turning up the car radio to mask any sounds the car may be making that it should not be.
My suggestion there for is that you talk with your parents and tell them about your phobias. Ask them if they can arrange for you to work with a psychologist to overcome them. Most EAP programs, if they have them, at work will cover these visits. You should be able to use both mom and dads EAAP programs separately if need be.
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