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The journey to diagnosing a chronic illness often starts off on the wrong foot right from the beginning. Many are told that their symptoms are due to anxiety, when in reality, there is another underlying medical issue.

Of course, some people have anxiety as well as a separate medical condition, or have anxiety due to the trauma of living with health challenges and their anxiety may make their other symptoms worse. In these cases, it’s extremely important for you and your doctors to take an anxiety diagnosis seriously and find treatments and coping strategies that work.

However, doctors may think you have anxiety, even though you don’t, for a couple reasons. Your symptoms might mimic the physical symptoms of anxiety, like rapid heart rate, sweating, difficulty sleeping, nausea, and difficulty breathing — or, you might literally have anxiety, but the anxiety is actually caused by hormones, not your mental health. Or, doctors might tell you “it’s just anxiety” because they can’t find another cause for your symptoms (this is especially common for women with invisible or difficult to diagnose illnesses), even if you’re not struggling with your mental health and your gut says your symptoms aren’t related to any anxiety you are already having.

Believing or being told that you have anxiety when you actually don’t can keep you from getting the correct diagnosis and treatment, sometimes for years. We asked our Mighty community to help us create a list of medical conditions that are often misdiagnosed as anxiety. Whether you have anxiety, one of the conditions below, or both, always trust that you know your body best, and keep fighting if you believe you may have gotten the wrong diagnosis.