# Am I sick, or is this in my head?



## conjectural (Sep 29, 2009)

With my anxiety I experience a lot of physical symptoms on a daily basis. They have calmed down recently because I have more or less settled into college and my routine is pretty normal now. Anyway, I never actually throw up due to anxiety, but I often feel like I'm going to. This is pretty much unrelated to my current problem, I just thought it may help you understand that my body is very sensitive to this kind of thing.

~

Right now I feel like I'm going to be sick. I'm not anxious about anything, so it's not related to that. However, I believe I have mild 'emetophobia' -- fear of throwing up. I have been known in the past to 'think myself ill', which means that I worry so much about getting sick, that I become overly aware of my body, begin to associate any tiny little odd feeling with sickness, and end up literally feeling like I have food poisoning or something.

Tonight I ate a lot of junk food. I had a take-away meal, and I began to feel nauseous very quickly after starting to eat it. I assumed it was because it was so unhealthy and greasy, and I had already sort of eaten. A while later I felt fine, so I ate some more junk (really stupid, I know) but I still felt more or less fine for the rest of the evening -- slightly squeamish, but that's to be expected. Anyway, it's now after 1:00am, I'm still awake, and I feel really sick, like I'm going to throw up. But I can't tell if I'm really ill because I've upset my stomach with the junk food, or if I'm doing this to myself. I have been worrying on and off that I might have made myself ill, it's been at the back of my mind all night. Also, when I'm concentrating on something else, the sick feeling fades away. So all signs seem to point to it just being anxiety.

However, when I am not distracted, it feels so real, like I'm really ill, so it's hard to believe that I'm just imagining it. If it is just my crazy brain, how do I make this stop? I can't keep myself distracted for much longer, I need to go to sleep. But if I try, I'll probably throw up, which I can't stand the thought of.

I'm sorry for the length of this post, I don't have anyone to ask, or anywhere else to write this. I also apologise if this is in the wrong part of the forum. Please help.


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## TheLurkingGirl (Dec 12, 2009)

*...*

Well, I can't really tell you if you're really sick or it's all in your head but I can tell you that when my anxiety is really bad, I feel like I'm going to throw up too. I also have a lot of physical symptoms with my anxiety especially nausea. So it definitely could be related to anxiety but at the same time, you might be sick. Last year I got really sick after eating some junk food, and ended up throwing up the entire night. Sorry for being graphic and disgusting, but my point is usually when you've eaten something bad, you'll get sick very quickly and end up throwing it up really soon. At least that's what happened to me, and what I've heard so...

Anyway, I'm sorry if this hasn't been much help. I hope you feel better. Get yourself to a doctor if you need to.


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## conjectural (Sep 29, 2009)

Yes, I had food poisoning recently and it was pretty fast-acting -- I was sick by the evening.

I woke up this morning and still felt nauseous, but it goes away when I'm not thinking about it, so I'm pretty certain it's just my stupid brain.

Thank you.


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## TheLurkingGirl (Dec 12, 2009)

You're welcome.


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