I have a win and I am going to put it here so it doesn't set off people in the very specific forum dedicated to it. I follow a Reddit community for benign twitchers, and in the last few days there have been TWO people who have (albeit vaguely and without definite proof -- and both these people have pretty obvious anxiety issues, one of them has even been sectioned before) claimed to have been diagnosed with MND/ALS. That's on top of two other people in that Reddit who were diagnosed earlier this year. The group has about 4k people in it. A lot of more vocal posters proceeded to post in panic.
Using my powers of rational thinking, I did two things: (1) Reminded myself that one in a thousand is still pretty good odds; (2) took my ssri and then leaned back and said "shucks, this is some drama!"
Did it also spike my anxiety? Of COURSE it did. I had a more unsettled weekend than I would have liked, and I have heartburn right now as I type this... but I have done the hand-to-hand combat with my HA-OCD long enough to know that this much is true:
Nobody else's situation means much in relation to my own. Nobody's story is a "talisman" for me.
At the moment, I personally don't feel like I am dying. And while I certainly could grasp for some straws to believe I am -- I've done that before, and it was miserable! So I'm choosing not to do it anymore. Que sera, sera!
Gandalf was right: All we can do is decide what to do with the time that's been given to us (I thinned out my late crop of beets/kale/carrots yesterday and tidied the rest of my flower beds.)
And with that, I go back to doing my early Xmas shopping for myself, because if I buy everything now I can hide it in a closet and have my mum come over and wrap it next month, and then I really WON'T have a clue what I got myself, and that too will be a giant win over the last few years of having to wrap my own stuff because my husband isn't very good. (Please note I use Xmas as an excuse to buy myself basic things like *socks with cute patterns*, *soap that smells nice*, *slightly nicer than usual tea/coffee* and *non-American milk chocolate (because most of ours is awful)* ... so we're not talking fancy things here, just niceties for daily existence!)
Anyway, Thank God for this thread and all of you wonderful people. Really. <3