Hey everyone, I was wondering If I could get some advice on my situation. Sorry, this may be a lot to read but I just want to provide as much detail as possible to best explain my situation. Since I was a child had anxiety about certain things, like I would be scared of bad weather and things like that, which I know is pretty common among young children but as I got a little older around 10 years old I started to do this thing where I started to get anxiety about things regarding my health like when I was 10 I would get ringing in my ears sometimes which I know is common among young children but at the time I was really scared about it. Around that time, I remember I also would constantly listen to my heartbeat and almost like self-inflict that habit on myself for some reason. Soon after though, the ringing went away, and I also forgot about consciously listening to my heartbeat. Later though the summer before my 8th grade year I remember watching this tv show and one of the characters had testicular cancer and they were showing his progression through it and things like that and it was kind of scary to see but I didn’t think much of it. A few months later though I was getting some swelling and some pain in that exact area later and I started to get kind of worried and thought maybe do I have testicular cancer. I later learned that the swelling was genetic, and I wasn’t worried about it anymore. A year after that though I started to get a fungal infection on my skin because I used to play a lot of basketball with friends and also recreationally and would wear lots of polyester shirts that kind of trapped the sweat and caused the fungal infection. When I first got the infection though I didn’t know what it was since my skin just started to get discoloration everywhere with these spots on my belly and back and I got really scared that it was maybe vitiligo at the time. When I went to the doctor, they found out that it was a fungal infection and that it could be treated so after that I wasn’t worried anymore about it. Then for the most part throughout my high school, I had a bit of anxiety about cancer, sometimes I would get bumps here and there and would think maybe it's cancer and would worry about it a little but nothing too bad. Overall, it didn’t affect me too much and I went by with my daily life like normal. It started to change when I went to college as I got older and began majoring in biology and wanted to pursue a career in the healthcare field. I first thought maybe I wanted to be a nurse so to get more experience in that type of work I went to an orientation for a hospice position. While I was there for some reason, they took some vitals I guess to make sure we were healthy. Once they took my blood pressure though for some reason It was really high, and the nurse that was there told me I should get a checkup to make sure I was okay. This really freaked me out I ended up worrying about it for months, I would listen to my heartbeat every day and night because I thought maybe there was something wrong with my heart and it was really rough. After a few months though I went to the doctor for a checkup, and she said my blood pressure was normal and that the cheaper blood pressure machine that the first lady used that gave me that really high reading was probably inaccurate and that can sometimes happen with cheaper blood pressure machines. After that, I was so relieved and was really happy that I knew I was healthy and good, and I immediately stopped listening to my heartbeat and stressing out about it. I was good for a little after this and was taking college classes and living life like normal. About a year after that though from time to time I would get these weird pains in my head randomly which was probably just from stress I was having because I was studying a lot in college at the time and things like that but when they kept happening, I started to get a little worried and started to kind of wonder if something was wrong. This was mainly because a few months before that one of my professors was telling was us a story about how one of his best friends died from a brain tumor and kind of the symptoms and things he experienced and went through. So subconsciously I think I had that on my mind a little when I started to feel those pains. I then started to experience more symptoms as I began to worry about it more and I was experiencing one symptom that matched up almost exactly to the one that my professor explained his friend was having. Once I started getting that one symptom I got really scared and would think about me potentially having a brain tumor. Over the next few months, I started getting worse and worse headaches, I was so stressed, and just really scared that I may have a brain tumor. I would have anxiety attacks and it was really scary just not knowing if I actually had this tumor or not. After almost a year of going through this, I finally went to get an MRI of my brain and the doctor said my brain was healthy and that there was nothing abnormal that he saw. After this, I was so relieved and felt so happy that I knew everything was fine. After that, I didn’t have any more headaches or any of those bad symptoms I was experiencing, and I felt so much better physically. Immediately after this, I started studying for my big admissions test to get into dental school and I was studying really really hard because I had goals for a while to get into dental school. I was waking up at about 5:30 every day and not getting much sleep, and I would drink coffee every morning to keep myself alert, which I had never consistently done before, and I was barely going outside, sometimes I would stay in for multiple days in a row without going cause I was studying so hard. After about 2 and a half weeks of me studying like this, I woke up one morning really early again and felt like I wasn’t rested enough at all but pushed myself to get up and go study, drank my coffee, and went on with my day. A little later into that afternoon I suddenly started to feel a little weird and looking back now it seems like I was having some symptoms of depersonalization. And right after I started feeling weird, I got super depressed a few minutes after like I had never felt before and just felt so bad, and coupled with that, the depersonalization feeling got really bad with it to the point where I didn’t feel like I was in my body at all. This just felt so terrible and I had never been depressed before and still have never felt as depressed as I did that time since then. Now I know it was likely due to me being in the house for so long, coupled with the lack of sleep, as well as drinking so much caffeine. After that, I had lingering depersonalization for a while and then it eventually got a lot better until, but when I started studying for my dental admissions test a second time it got kind of bad again, but it wasn’t where I felt like I was out of my body as much it more felt like my eyesight was like I was looking through a piece of glass or something, it’s hard to explain but it is a symptom of depersonalization. During this time I also went to see a therapist for the first time. I knew I had to do something different, because I just didn’t know why I kept going through these things I was going through. So I started telling my therapist about my story and the things that happened with my anxiety, and then I started to tell her about how I was afraid that I might have a brain tumor after hearing about certain symptoms from my professor, and I told her I was having anxiety attacks during that time because of it and then I guess to get more information on my situation she asked if there were voices with my anxiety attacks which is something I had never experienced and would have never even thought of but since she asked me, after leaving the therapist I couldn’t stop thinking about it and struggled with thinking if it could potentially happen to me for a while and since I was scared of it, it’s like my brain would try to make it happen to almost confirm my fears and I would get symptoms and be scared that maybe I heard something so it was really hard but lately I feel like I have understood that it's not gonna happen to me and pretty much all of my symptoms have gone away. Now I just struggle with occasionally feeling some symptoms of depersonalization whenever I think about it, and just overall I still have a fear that I may become mentally ill or be mentally ill just ever since that therapist asked what she asked me. I know that none of that is true and that as long as I don’t think about any of that stuff, I won’t feel any depersonalization symptoms and I won’t feel any other symptoms and overall, my energy will be better because sometimes I feel kind of down because I’m having these thoughts. It just seems that my brain always needs something to worry about and it's really hard cause I'm always trying to fight against these negative thoughts. I feel like overall I'm a little better at coping with it and understanding that they're just thoughts and this is something that unfortunately my brain does but sometimes It can still be hard. I also ended up being accepted into dental school and I'm going to be attending in August of this year, so I have about 5 months until I start. I'm really happy about this but I'm still concerned about my situation, I just don’t want it to get any worse and I want to figure my situation out more so that I can kind of put this past me and move on without having these negative thoughts anymore and not have anything new in the future that triggers me. I just really want to be able to pass dental school and do well so that I can support myself and my future family. I have a girlfriend of 4 years that I may end up marrying and having a family with, so I just want to be strong for them and not have these struggles. I just want to move on, live freely mentally, stop feeling sorry for myself like I’ve felt for the past few years, and focus on the things that matter in life. So does anyone have any advice on how they think I can work to achieve this or tactics I can implement to combat this so that it’s not an issue anymore. I’m not sure if I should just ignore any negative thoughts I have and just always try to make myself assume the best or should I adopt some other strategy? I would really appreciate any advice on my situation.