Why reading magazines can give you hypochondria

So the other evening, I’m sitting by the fire reading a popular Canadian women’s magazine. I’m drinking my “feeling calm” herbal tea and the cat is curled up at my feet. I’m turning the pages slowly, one at a time. Reading about a TV star and then about some fashion and what’s new for fall and what keeps us warm on these chilly days now upon us.

I turn another page and then it begins – the dreaded health article. The battle to stop myself from thinking that I have the health issue I’m reading about it epic. I read about two women who suffered strokes at a young age; what they went through to get noticed by their doctors who thought nothing was wrong with them since they were so young – mid to late thirties. My age! I re-read their symptoms over and over thinking back to when I had my last blasting headache; when I felt dizzy; when I felt ill or had blurred vision.

My heart starts to pound. I start to sweat a little bit. I glance at the fire wondering if turned it up too high or am I starting to have stroke? I take my pulse. It’s in the normal range. I don’t feel dizzy or have blurred vision. I look into my tea cup at the amber liquid looking back up at me. I can see the lights above the chair reflecting in it.

I stop myself; my mind from racing away with its ten million thoughts on how when I stand up I’ll collapse in a heap on the floor and the cat will do nothing to alarm my husband and I’ll lay there my life slowly ebbing away with every slowed heart beat.

As I said, I stop myself from letting my mind run away with itself. I tell myself not to be so stupid and to put that annoying magazine down. I push it into the middle of the coffee table and decide to put it into the pile I give to my mother. I get up and walk away from it and go to warm up my tea and then to bed. I promptly forgot about the article until the next day when my mother did come to visit and I hand her the pile of magazines.

Good riddance! Now time to pull myself back together piece by piece and keep punching away at this wet paper bag.