Content note: this article contains descriptions of health disorders, intrusive thoughts and references to suicide that some readers may find upsetting.  

One, two, three… I stood in front of a mirror counting the moles that freckled my thighs. Was that one there before? Has that one got bigger? Six… seven… I was exhausted. This was the fourth time that day I’d stood in the bathroom at work inspecting my body.

I returned to my desk, my boss throwing me a sideways glance. I was certain he was counting how many times I’d been to the loo. This wasn’t new: since the start of university, I’d been developing anxiety and OCD symptoms that had become progressively worse. It started with small things, such as needing to know the exact timings when meeting someone, to more horrific and irrational thoughts.

I can’t quite pinpoint how it all started, those years feel like a distant blur to me. But I remember my first panic attack, sitting on my single bed in my tiny box room of the uni halls. My entire body was tingling, and I felt like I was going to pass out. I began banging on the paper-thin wall between my bedroom and my housemate’s. “I’m dying,” I yelped at him.

As I got older, I began a high-stress job in an industry where going out four nights a week was the norm. Burnout began to plague me, as did imposter syndrome, and my anxiety soon began manifesting itself in intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviours, including scanning my body for illness. GP visits became frequent: at first for small things like sore throats that won’t go away and persistent headaches, but soon my illnesses upgraded. In my mind, my tingling, numb body was MS, the searing headaches were a brain tumour and the discomfort I sometimes felt just before my period was cervical cancer.

One significant moment for me was visiting my GP for my self-diagnosed multiple sclerosis. He looked me dead in the eye and said: “Usually the first symptom of this condition is your eyesight starts going.”     

Sure enough, the following day I began to go blind. I know it’s easy to laugh when you haven’t experienced this debilitating mental health condition, but your body works in mysterious ways. Yes, the spots in my vision were there, but they were being caused by my debilitating anxiety and not a health condition that Dr Google had diagnosed me with. Barely being able to see my screen, I rang 111 from a meeting room in my office, who immediately told me to go to Moorfields Eye Hospital. When I arrived, my poor mum was waiting outside after a hysterical phone call from her daughter. This wasn’t new to her. Several hours later, and a scan of my eyes which involved liquid that turned the whites of them yellow, the sympathetic doctor told me they were some of the healthiest she’d ever seen.

I’d already sheepishly confided in her I had health anxiety. Just like I did to the doctor doing my breast ultrasound for a lump (it was hormonal changes) and the dentist who checked out a ‘growth’ in my mouth (it was a normal part of my jaw). 

I was shattered. My sleep was fractured, broken by a mixture of panic attacks and hours of endless scrolling on the internet. My phone was filled with images of various parts of my body, to keep track of any changes. I’d stopped exercising, my increasing heart rate triggering panic attacks. I looked and felt terrible. And I couldn’t think about anything except that I was going to die.

“You need to stop this; you need to see someone,” my mum begged. She’d watched me become a wreck over the months, having to rock her adult daughter to sleep at night after I woke up sobbing.

My boss said the same, telling me I needed help, and I agreed. That lunchtime I sat on a bench in the middle of Soho Square, and I spoke to the referral team my GP had put me in touch with, telling them how I was feeling, and how it was impacting me. I admitted for the first time that I had intrusive thoughts of ending my own life to stop the desperate situation I had gotten myself into. 

Not long after, I sat in a small room of an NHS-funded therapy centre, in front of Lauren*, my new CBT therapist. My boss had already signed off a new working pattern to help what would become a year of Wednesday afternoon intensive CBT sessions.

Cognitive behavioural therapy is a form of psychotherapy that aims to train you to manage certain situations and think differently when it comes to coping with problems. Essentially, if it works, you become sort of your own therapist, armed with the techniques and skills you need to help yourself in the future.

“Let’s unpack together what all of this means,” Lauren told me as she began writing a thought bubble on a whiteboard – talking me through triggers and what they meant. I spoke about my arm aching from my bag and about having read a story about a woman who had undiagnosed breast cancer from an arm ache. 

We discussed at length what the meaning behind all of this was we finally concluded that I was terrified of death. I was scared a serious illness would kill me and dying would mean leaving behind the people I loved and not leading a fulfilling life.

That was the first time I had said that out loud. I couldn’t even say ‘death’ in case I was tempting fate by just uttering the word. From there we could begin to unpack my emotions and physical symptoms, how these increased my negative thoughts which spiralled back to the triggers.

I learned about selective attention and began to understand my safety behaviours: googling, reading, visiting my GP, checking my body, seeking reassurance from friends and avoiding certain triggers.

We began to retrain my mind, and I was given tasks each week. One week, I was allowed to check the moles on my body once a day at 7pm, but no more than that. The week after, I was only allowed to check once in that week. Another time I had to keep a diary and write down every single time I had a thought about illness or death. I filled pages. Another time, I had to read five different health articles and talk to my therapist about them.

As the weeks and months went on, my checking became less frequent. I was happier, calmer and thriving at work. As my CBT eventually came to an end, I began talking therapy, unpacking the relationships in my life, the intensity I put on people about timings, and my insistence on having Find My Friends on my then-boyfriend’s phone in case he died.

Most importantly, I began to come to terms with the fact that death is inevitable. It’s the one thing that every single person in this world will experience. I began to put less pressure on myself, five-year plans went out the window, and I embraced small wins and living a little more in the moment. 

Therapy eventually came to an end, as did the seven-year relationship I was in, which I knew was toxic for the both of us. My antidepressant prescription continued, as did all the learnings from CBT – I could quickly diffuse a panic attack now by ripping my socks off and standing on the bare, cold floorboards of my bedroom.

Yes, I’ve had a couple of hiccups in that time, and I still take meds, check in with a therapist when I need to, and I work extremely hard to look after my mental health. It has been seven years since that very first therapy session, and I mourn for that younger, terrified version of me; I see old photos of myself and know now how dreadfully unwell I was.

On very rare occasions, I’ll wake up my husband in the middle of the night, the air knocked out of my lungs as I grasp with the onset of a panic attack. “It’s OK, Vic,” he’ll say, rubbing my back, “just remember everything you’ve learned.”

*Name has been changed.

Frame Of Mind is Stylist’s home for all things mental health and the mind. From expert advice on the small changes you can make to improve your wellbeing to first-person essays and features on topics ranging from autism to antidepressants, we’ll be exploring mental health in all its forms. You can check out the series home page to get started.

Images: courtesy of Vicky Chandler