This woman is married to a husband who has another family outside (with a one month old girl). She accepted it after a while, knowing that she can’t carry babies for her husband. Her husband was considerably “good” as he never abandon her, although most of the time he’s out there with the family, he calls her daily, gives her complete financial support, and comes back home quite often.

One day this woman visited our clinic, with a lot of somatic complaints (stomach wind? dizziness? chest discomfort? feeling weak and anxious? etc). She has been taking chinese herbs for over 20 years, but still turns out as a very ill-health person. Doctor advised her to stop taking chinese herbs completely (not that all chinese herbs are bad, but those that she had been taking apparently does not help her at all, could even be worsening her health problem).

She is sensitive, anti-western-med, with multiple somatic complaints. On the day she got home after the first consultation, she started to bombard us with phone calls, asking all kind of questions – Can I take ABC soup? Should I continue with med during periods? Why do I feel like losing balance? Can I eat oat? Can I take in some protein supplement? etc

Do you consider this as OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)? But she doesn’t repetitively asking the same/similar questions?! She has kind of wide different concerns…

Do you think she has illness phobia? Because she’s so health concerned that she wants to be so careful and watch out for any possible harm to her health?

Do you think she’s purely attention seeking? Or should I say she just needs some love, care and attention? So she pretends to be “problematic”, to be sick, to be unwell, so that her husband would be calling her and care about her? So she can call us non-stop to ask different questions?

Sometimes I find “attention-seeking” explains a lot of things…