Hypochondriacs: gather around, I have some questions.

For me, and probably for a lot of people, I conquered it when I gave up being a drama queen. As soon as it stopped being all about me, the hypochondria dropped right off.

It’s a head thing. Get your head right and it will disappear. My best advice is go do some volunteer work in a hospital; your ills will vanish.

My experiences with hypochodriacs is, they really believe they have the illnesses. They may have SOME of the symptoms, such as nerve pain. But having dealt with someone with a real severe pain disorder, someone I knew later with a psychosomatic illness was willing to pretend to endure it but made a lot of excuses. The person with the real pain disorder tried to live a normal life and hide it somewhat.

Another category might be psychosomatic illnesses that manifest real symptoms. I knew some ladies in my church who claimed to be deathly allergic to pollen, but because I wanted flowers for Easter Sunday, I arranged some very realistic silk ones. The two ladies went to the hospital with their throats swelling and breaking out in hives. So the brain can send a message to manifest the symptoms even if there is no allergen or trigger.

Have you always been hyochondrial? No, it came and went
If not, do you recall what started it? Completely random, out of nowhere
How did/does it affect you(r life)? I could not function, it was debilitating and worse than having the real diseases. You never get to the acceptance stage, you’re stuck in the initial anxiety/fear/bargaining stages
Do or don’t you have difficulty acknowledging it/be open about it? I’m ok with being open about it
Have you maybe overcome it, dealt with it? I accepted the fact I will die and don’t fear it now, possibly my amygdala is completely burned out and no longer functions well anymore
Did you do so alone, or with help? nobody can help you through this, it’s all you
How does one treat hypochondria? exposure therapy possibly, facing your fears maybe, I treated mine with grit and sheer exhaustion if that makes any sense. You get to a point where you would rather be dead than to keep worrying and that’s about when the worrying stops. I don’t honestly think it’s treatable, it will run its course and you just have to hang on. On exiting hypochondria and not having symptoms for a long time I’m unemotional about it now and this extends to others. When people get sick and die for real I’m stone faced and can’t process the emotion very well as it’s “just an inevitability” to me at this point. It’s as if that part of me that deals with this sort of thing is again just burned out from feeling it so intensely for so many years.

Thank you for your time to answer!
Some interesting insights here.