Puberty
Ella’s fear started in her adolescence, around the age of fifteen. “I experienced my adolescence as intense. I have been bullied a lot; I have sometimes been chased and even beaten up. I had no friends to talk to and I didn’t have a good relationship with my parents. I do now, but those fears were really stirred up then.”
Now that Ella has a good relationship with her parents again, she talks about her fears more often. “My parents say to me: ‘Don’t drive yourself crazy, you’re so young and healthy.’ Yet I often feel misunderstood, but of course they cannot feel my fears. At the same time, I am aware of this and can sometimes get over it. Nowadays, if I feel something, I try not to go straight to the doctor anymore. Often it just goes away.”
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Distraction
Ella tries to do a lot to distract herself from her fear of getting sick. “When I sit on a terrace, I immediately feel much less stressed. I don’t actually have time to discover all kinds of ailments in my body. I also try to concentrate on a movie when I’m in bed. But it’s still hard to get it out of my head.”
“I don’t see going on holiday as a good distraction. Last time my holiday was ruined by anxiety: I got palpitations and then panic attacks. I was so afraid something was wrong until it turned out to be heartburn. That happens often; When a doctor says it’s normal, I’m immediately relieved.”
Stress
The fear of feeling a disease in her body has surfaced more often in recent years than before. “This is mainly because I now live on my own: all the responsibilities cause me a lot of stress. I am also now studying to become a skin specialist, something I really want. But lessons at school also often incite fear. Although the training is not very medical, we often talk about the human body and terrible skin conditions. Then I immediately become whole dizzy.”
Psychologist
Ella has recently started talking about her problems with a psychologist. “I have long been convinced that there was something physically wrong with me, but psychologists say it is really in my head. I found that very annoying to hear. I think it will stay in my head forever, but by talking to a psychologist I hope to reduce it; I have confidence in that too.”
“I do this, among other things, through trauma therapy: I go back to an event in which I had palpitations or a panic attack, for example. I will also soon talk to my psychologist about my past, because it seems very logical to me that I have gained a lot from it.”
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