Illness causing extreme anxiety

Post Reply New Topic

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this or knows if it related to ASD. Basically whenever I get a virus I get extremely anxious (10x worse than 'normal' anxiety) and nothing that usually makes me feel better helps. The only thing that stops it is actually throwing up. It isn't caused by catastrophic thinking as most of the time I don't know that I am ill until I throw up.
I've tried Googling this but I just come up with stuff on anxiety causing sickness. If anyone knows anymore on this I would be extremely grateful to hear about it.

Being "normally" sick (say, with a bit of fever or that kind of things) usually makes me slightly less anxious since being sick is an easy social role. You are supposed not to do much, to rest and to take care of yourself until you get better. That's easy, and that is also what is good for your body in most cases. It doesn't mean I like being sick, I don't and I can become quite depressed if I remain sick for a while, but it won't make me anxious in itself.

On the other hand I have a weird irrational fear of getting poisoned, and I can experience extreme anxiety (sometimes up to full scale panic attacks) if I suspect some harmful substamce has somehow entered my body.

no change for me

depends, i feel more anxious when i vomit, less anxious when i have a cold or a non-gastric flu.

I have the flu right now and yes I get more anxious, I don't like the disoriented feeling of being really sick and I have meltdowns which isn't good because I already feel like crap, when I get out of the bad part of the sickness though I feel better and I just sleep a lot.

I find I'm much more anxious when I'm ill, especially if the illness is unpredictable. I'm experiencing ssri withdrawal and have been for almost 2 years, and in that time, because the symptoms change often and I feel so ill, I've had many more meltdowns than normal.

It has been explained to me that it makes sense for people with ASD to feel anxious/overwhelmed when ill because internal sensory stimulation is no different than external stimulation. So if you have a lot of things going on in your body when you are ill, your sensory system is working very hard to process this information. no different than sitting in a loud or busy environment... Worse really, because you can't get away from your own body.

For me, feeling nauseous is the most enormous sensory overload that I know.

Double post

More anxious because

1. It is a change

2. Irrational fear it is something worse.

I haven't been sick in 6+ years so I can't answer that question. To guess, I don't think I would have a change in anxiety levels.