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Is stress/depression taking a toll on my body?

Hello,

I do not know where to begin. But one thing I know is, after my boyfriend left me, i went downhill. Absolute downhill....
i learned later i have HPV, cancerous strains and I have yet to deal with this by myself as my ex happily moves on with his new committed girlfriend. I have been crying for days.. sleeping very late and either over eating or not eating at all.

My body has been aching, my knees hurt. My legs are often sore i am just exhausted . I have been on antibiotics and antifungals and antiacids for the past month. On and off due to various conditions i am having.

I suffer from extreme paranoia.. i am constantly checking my body and symptoms and that resulted me to be in Urgent Care for atleast 25 times this past month. It I sneeze, you would see me rush to the nearest urgent care.

All i know is.. i went downhill both emotionally and physically.
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Avatar universal
This is common.  Some people respond to grief a lot better than others.  If you think like this long enough, and you're prone to it, it leads to depression and anxiety as it eats away at your self-image, and from your description you've got it bad.  I've been there several times in my life, as my romantic life wasn't very lucky until I got married when I was around 50.  Had many loves, and lost them all up to then.  Some of us are just plain unlucky.  But how we respond to that depends probably on the personality we're born with and whether we're prone to mental illness.  In your case, you appear to be having several difficult things going on at once, and that's even harder.  Also, taking a lot of antifungals and antibiotics very often leads to chronic illnesses, as it destroys the good organisms that protect you from harm as well as the ones you don't want.  Taking antacids for too long causes the stomach to have to produce more and more acid, as you can't digest protein and some minerals without an acidic stomach.  So it goes.  I would suggest you look into seeing a psychologist and working on it.  I'd also try to stop fortunetelling about how happy your ex is.  You really don't know what's going on inside his head.  All you know is you didn't want the relationship to end and he apparently did, and that hurts.  How much or how long it hurts is more up to you than you are aware of, but folks like you and I were just born not being good at handling that.  Perhaps therapy will help you learn to move past this, although no matter what you do, time will take care of most of it and you will meet someone else.  Peace.
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6 Comments
Thank you for sharing..
I am glad you are happily married now, love is powerful.
I am seeing a therapist actually, i thought i only needed her once a week. I now book her almost anytime she has availability. I don’t know when i will create a mechanism to cope with stress but i should attain it very very soon before i snap.
I am hoping my mental health is creating pains but not actually me having any diseases..
it is very heart breaking to see yourself not the same person as you were before. By time , the more i change the more i feel i am losing things.
At some point, if life gets out of hand for too long, you want to discuss medication with your therapist.  It's a big step, and you know better than us if you're at that point.  What I'm saying is, if you think your therapist is a good one -- very often they aren't doing much more than just chatting for their pay -- or one you just don't mesh with well, try another -- and you still enter a long spiral down a steep hill and it goes on for a while, talk with your therapist about medication.  If the therapist thinks you're doing as poorly as you think you are, she will recommend a psychiatrist.  Peace.
Oh, and as for happily married, nobody's really happily married all of the time.  Marriage is long and long is always weird!
I think going for medication is the last thing I would want to do because of the social norms and my family expectations and so.
I am not sure how to point out if I need medication if for example, my therapist just wants my money. She would not tell me yes you do. I believe.

Considering i am 19 and this weak, It scares me.
Medication is sometimes the only thing that works.  Often it isn't necessary but prescribed anyway.  But putting that aside, a good therapist, and like any other human some are better than others, will note if you're spiraling downhill with no benefit from the therapy that you need therapy.  It has nothing to do with wanting your money because so many people stop therapy if they get on medication and it helps, which they shouldn't but it often happens.  Many people are therapy resistant.  Many are also drug resistant.  It takes a lot of options to deal with the great variety of humans.  But if you think you have a therapist who isn't helping and just wants your money, find a different therapist.  As for social norms and family expectations, I don't know where you live so I can't comment on that.  When I was young, getting treated for mental problems in the US was seen as personal weakness and bunk, but that's seldom true anymore.  If that kind of thinking stops you from getting help and your life isn't working for you, then you have to just push those judgments you think others are putting on you aside.  If you are thinking this way, either you are right about where you live or your statement is just a manifestation of your mental illness.  If it's the latter, as long as you think like that you will stay in the same place.  It's hard, but you're very young and this kind of thing is much easier to overcome when you're young and adaptable then when you get old.  Peace.
Sorry, said you need therapy when I meant will say you need meds.
Avatar universal
Anxiety/Stress definitely hard on one's physical health.

If interested research the Sympathetic Nervous System vs. the Parasympathetic Nervous System.

SNS is the "Rest, Digest, Restore" mode. But when we're being chased by a tiger, the body switches into it's "Fight or Flight or Freeze" response, and says "Forget about healing myself we're putting all our energy into surviving the next moment".

Which is great if we're actually being chased by a tiger. Otherwise it's disastrous in today's modern society where we have no tigers, but we can endlessly worry ourselves sick about other possibilities.

So part of healing ourselves is trying to switch ourselves out of PNS mode back into SNS mode, even if just briefly, by trying meditation, or a meditative motion exercise such as qi-gong or certain types of therapeutic yoga.

They're not instant cures, but over time they can help.

(There are numerous meditation apps one can try. Also 'Headspace' has some good short animated videos explaining the concept.)

(Or support groups I personally like. Nice to be with people who understand our struggles and accept us as we are.)

Best wishes!
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2 Comments
I would only amend this to say it can be hard on physical health.  It can also not be.  Depends on the person and how the person manifests their anxiety.  Just don't want someone to have something else to be afraid of, many really don't have a lot of physiological problems because of it.  Many do.  But it's not guaranteed that will happen.
I have done meditation before and everything too.
It does work sometimes... but i am inconsistent. I Remember spending hours in bed thinking when i wake up .. just thinking and not be able to get anything done.

Thank you for the suggestions though.
973741 tn?1342342773
Geminiii, yes.  I think that depression and anxiety can take a toll on our body.  In essence, your health anxiety makes you feel every little this or that, blip on the radar that most people would just be like no big deal and hardly notice.  You escalate it and are hyper sensitive and aware.  I'd say, working on treatment of the anxiety is the best bet.  I'm glad you are in therapy. BUT, that's expensive and going more than once or at most twice a week is excessive in my opinion.  :>)   What can your therapist help you with outside of seeing them?  What about go to things you can do when you see the signs that your anxiety is about to go off?  What about medication?  Have you considered that aspect?  You are spending a lot of time and money on testing and worry.  This is impacting you negatively.  I would get very aggressive about treating it.  There are apps, calm and headspace.  I've tried calm and my son has used headspace. They really aid in meditation which is something I could never master before.  
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3 Comments
You know, when I first got my issues many many years ago -- ugh, to think I've gotten old with this nonsense -- seeing a psychologist was pretty cheap.  They saw you twice a week if you were in crisis and then once a week when you got more stabilized, and it didn't cost that much.  None took insurance back then, it didn't cover mental health care other than meds which is one reason meds became so easily overprescribed.  They all had sliding scales.  I think the reason was that most people didn't do therapy, it had more of a stigma and a lot of the things that have become medicalized today were just different personality traits back then.  Today, most mental health practitioners still don't take health insurance, and those who do are often those who aren't very good at it or just don't enjoy having to hustle for patients.  But at least now some do.  But the price, as with all aspects of health care have gone through the roof as health care professionals feel they deserve to get rich if they're going to spend all that time in school.  It's too bad.  When I was a kid your doctor or lawyer or psychologist didn't make any more than the guy who owned the local pizza joint.  Times have changed.
Oh yes.  We went through an extensive search to find a psychologist for my son.  We tried insurance first.  Those that our insurance would pay for were not who you'd entrust your child to.  And then we narrowed it down to the 'good' therapists, all were cash pay and it is very expensive.  Once a week is still a chunk of change for us!  Definitely unfortunate.  Plus there are then separate appointments to talk to just us (parents) and we are charged the hourly rate for that as well.  Sigh. Mental health help is not cheap.  But so necessary so people have to find a way.
This has been a big problem for me.  The anxiety killed my ability to do what I trained to do, and what I did didn't pay much, though I did like it better.  I can tell you, a psychiatrist who was the only one on my health plan who had openings was the one who killed me, basically, he was one of the biggest ignoramuses I've ever met.  I had to get one who didn't take insurance and by then it was too late.  And I also can't find a good psychologist who takes insurance.  It is very sad, and it angers me when our political figures talk about health insurance and all that they miss the main problem, which is that so many doctors and other health practitioners are really bad at what they do and are very poorly educated in medicine.  The textbooks they learn from and the docs they train with are all paid in some part by the pharmaceutical industry. None of them study natural medicine or nutrition or prevention much at all, if at all, so they have very few tools at their disposal.  If we don't change the greed of our health care professionals and their lack of education we can't fix health care, in my opinion.  
Avatar universal
Hi Geminiii I am not sure what year this was. I think 2018 or 2019?  I did want to recommend a few things I experienced with my husband which might help you.  He almost died taking Abilify for 8 years.  To make a long story very short, my husband and his doctors were addressing treating his symptoms and not the cause of his depression.  I highly recommend going to Genesight through a psychiatrist and see what meds your genes will accept before you decide to take any pills related to mental state changes.  The Abilify my husband was taking was in the red column and as a result with any of these mental state pills can mess up everything in your body which flows to the mind.  The gene sight will tell you:
1. Which meds you can be on that your genes will accept so it doesn't run your body down.
2. If you have a gene mutation called 5-MTHF.  In short, after going to the apothecary, we found his low folate level didn't increase from folic acid pills he was taking because my husband had the Gene mutation C677T (the gene sight test told us this) The apothecary showed that he should be on the L-Methylfolate because his gene couldn't make this necessary vitamin like everyone else can.  It took him 12 months to function both mentally and physically after taking this necessary vitamin made by Thorne.  He could only take 15mg per day and it was the wait for his body to heal and his mind to follow.  It started working after 3 months but took a full 12 months to put him back to his normal self and above.  He is completely off of depression pills.  This entire time his doctors were treating the symptom and not the cause.  A few things in your details reminded me of my husbands dysfunctions.  This gene can be the cause of many dysfunctions kind of like Lymes disease.  In some, this mutation can cause anxiety (but so can D deficiency, like my husband along with this gene mutation) so he had it twofold but he was so out of it, you would not have known it.  He was a mess.  Today, he is back to where he was when I met him.  Although he has diabetes from that darn Abilify which caused overeating to the extent it almost killed him. Gastroparesis followed that. He says I saved his life.  I think a few prayers were answered and I am not a religious person but somehow it worked. Your boyfriend isn't someone you want to end up with because when the situation gets hard, he takes off.  Not someone you want to spend the rest of your life with! My husband still goes once a week to therapy.  His emotions came back and he is doing fine.  He wants to work now but I don't care!  I am just so glad he didn't die because I would have missed him so damn much.   That is love and that is what you need to reach.  First reach it for your self and you will find it in another that is truly worthy your love for them.  That is what real love is.  Someone who will stay with you and help you find the answer.  There is an answer out there for you and you deserve to find it.  One day at a time, I am sure you will.  Leave out the expectations and aim for this as a beginning.  You will find your way.  Have hope and faith.  Keep reaching out.
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I'm not sure genetic testing can actually tell you if a medication is going to work for someone or not.  There have been so many claims of different tests for that, including eeg tests and brain scans but they don't actually work and it's still trial and error.  The only one I've heard of that might work are looking a liver metabolites, because the liver does in fact have to allow a drug into the system for it to work.  But even that only eliminates a couple of the many drugs that are out there, and then it's just back to trial and error with the ones left untried.  Abilify has a very high side effect profile and so was only approved if every other antidepressant out there didn't work.  It's usually used in combination with other meds for depression.  As for the B vitamin problem, while many have this genetic defect, it doesn't affect everyone who has the mutations.  But if you're one of the ones it does adversely affect, that is your problem, and in this case it looks like that was the villain.
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