Hello,

I have very recently developed severe OCD and fear that i have cancer, it dominates my life and i just need help. I can't sleep, can't think about anyting else, i can't function, i'm unhappy, fearful and sometimes i do have tiny feelings of self harm. I feel the pandemic and constant fearful news cycle has triggered this. I am in my 40's and have to say in general over the last 5 years i have become increasingly paranoid about my health and my family's.

The story of how this started (which i am sure seems ludicrous to most people) was we bought a house in January and i found some old lath and plaster in the wood store outside. I brought in some of the wood to use as kindling for the fire and snapped a piece which released dust into the room (which my 2 young kids were in too). This triggered weeks and weeks of internet searches basically telling me i am certain to die, along with my young kids, as lath and plaster sometimes contained asbestos. So finally i plucked up the courage to send off a few samples for asbestos testing which all came back negative, fine you may think story over, but something about that whole cycle of events messed me up and things have spiralled since.

Now i cannot go in my attic as i am affraid there is asbestos in there, i can't go to my parents home because my dad told me there is asbestos board in an old disused fireplace which was boarded up and pained over before i was even alive and has never been touched.

This week i have suddenly started panicking that the schools i went to were covered in asbestos, there is no logical reason that i should think that, and that when i did chemestry in GCSE's that all the heatproof mats and other equipment was asbestos and killing all of us in the class, again no reason to think that other than looking on the internet.

I can't stope myself, i think of some other way i could have been exposed to asbestos then start a death spiral of internet research that tells me i am going to die. This has gotten so bad now that i am so convinced i have been contaminated with asbestos that i have started planning my funeral, really.

I am at the point where every little symptom i get for anything i immediately assume its the asbestos related cancer starting

I don't know what to do, i am desperate, i'm sorry because i know there are people in this forum who are actually ill with this horrible desease, my family has been touched by it too, but please i just need help

Thanks for sparing the time to read my post

From a very worried 42 year old