notes on hypochondria & more
“abnormal anxiety about one's health, especially with an unwarranted fear that one has a serious disease”
I’ve mentioned my neuroses a few times before, most recently, in my last post. But, the act of self-pathologizing, or, to almost instinctively diagnose oneself based on a few symptoms has been on my mind a lot recently. There’s been a lot of talk surrounding pathologizing in general in today’s culture, an obsession with labels.
As Charlie Squire says in their essay Do Words Mean Anything Anymore?:
It seems like every couple of years, there is an internet diagnosis-du-jour; a condition first brought to the public eye with awareness-raising, then followed by “did you know that X is a symptom of Y?”, then suddenly appearing in the bios and profiles and emojis of swaths of internet users.
I highly recommend you read the entire piece. Squire argues that the mainstream misuse of clinical terms, focusing on intrusive thoughts, leads to active harm against people who those terms actually apply to. I don’t disagree, but I’d like to approach the topic in a slightly different way.
I say this from a clinically hypochondriac standpoint, so take it with salt or as gospel, I don’t care: while labels are important, and exist for a reason, largely to socially or even medically communicate a trait, I find that it’s can be useful to not know exactly what you are but how you are.
Personally, to look through symptoms or feelings being like, “Okay, I have X which means I have to have Y” for my hypochondria is practically feeding fear into an already irrational disorder. I’ve been trying to approach things, especially in regard to my health, more like, “Okay, I have X which means I’ll have to do A to accommodate and maybe I have Y.” This process has led me to think more on how I want to live my life.
If my stomach pangs and I think my appendix is bursting and I’m going to die any second now I’m going to die this has been happening for seven hours I’m going to die I need to go to the ER except I won’t go because I know it’s not real but what if it is and I’m going to die I’m really going to die—
Looking through the symptoms as I all of a sudden feel a mild pain in my lower abdomen would only lead to a level of catastrophizing only slightly above what I imagine could happen if you get all your information from medical books or Instagram infographics rather than listening to yourself and seeing if anything actually applies. I’d compare the almost snowball effect it has to the state your mind is in when you get unhappily woken up by a nap.
“15 more minutes, I can do the homework later… 30 more minutes, the reading shouldn’t take that long… Just a few seconds more, I’ll look at the Sparknotes on the commute there.”
Really wanted to get this done before my summer courses start (aka in about 2 hours) so forgive the rush! I’ve been ruminating on the subject for quite a while now and trying to get over the need to make all my work over 2,000 words of hard analysis.
Further Reading / Viewing:
Do Words Mean Anything Anymore?, charlie squire via evilfemale.substack.com
tiktok is kind of bad for fashion, mina le via youtube.com/@gremlita