Psychosomatic Ailments

my anxiety (particularly the fact that I am an obsessive-compulsive sufferer) has caused so many of these over the years. the obvious (heart palpitations), the less obvious (involuntary limb twitching, tingling feelings in legs). always seems to be one at any given time, and when a new one arrives it just pushes out the old one, so I always hope for one of the more innocuous ones like the twitch.

This week it seems to be urination - was (apologies for the TMI) convinced I had a UTI this week, went to the doctor who told me my sample looked perfect and there was nothing visibly wrong (no diabetes, no UTI, ketones, etc). my 'urge to go' has been much greater in the day time (when working) than at night, which kind of supports that.

frankly - i grow more amazed at how many weird things just stress/paranoia/excessive fixation can do to your body. anybody else have these kind of weird, psychosomatic symptoms and how do you cope, how did you make them go away (I usually try finding another area of focus and the clean bill of health made me more calm but find I'm still causing these symptoms).

and did any of you ever find that having these caused you to almost miss legit symptoms when you were seriously ill because you falsely assumed those were psychosomatic?

amazing how many of these things disappeared when I was on a ssri

Effexor zapped most of mine to where I was feeling the most 'normal' I"d ever had my entire life between like 2010-2011 and some of them have kinda been mostly eradicated since then (twitching/tingling especially). though part of me thinks it had less to do w/ Effexor, more to do with "relative calm life".

imo lifetime anxiety makes it impossible to rationally address some things and even a brief period of medication can reset your baseline

then instead of "my arm itches, I must worry about what this could mean for the next four hours" you just scratch it a little and forget about it

I still take it (actually increased dosage last year under dr supervision). it def works well on depression symptoms because I notice full well a difference when I miss a dose (not just the withdrawal symptoms mind you, but the actual way my brain approaches issues).

"my arm itches, I must worry about what this could mean for the next four hours"

guilty lol of recognition

tbh I just found that SSRIs gave me more mysterious side-effects to worry about, but "oh no I noticed a slightly odd bodily sensation and must now google it obsessively for the next 6 weeks" is def a thing for me

did any of you ever find that having these caused you to almost miss legit symptoms when you were seriously ill because you falsely assumed those were psychosomatic?

not yet (I hope) but since I always have about 3 possible health things which are bothering me which rotate every couple of months I can't possibly ask the dr about them all and I don't know which ones are more likely to be real so I end up not asking about any of them, which may cause trouble eventually

last time I carefully determined which one actually seemed most like a legit complaint to ask about the doctor barely even looked and m/l said "that's just what bodies do" oh great, now not only do I feel silly but also like you weren't even paying attention so I can't even cross that one off the list