Not sure what's happening to me. Need some help.

I've been completely fine my entire life. No mental problems of any sort. I have two family members however that have mental illnesses, my mother's cousin has schizophrenia and my uncle is paranoid in the sense that he thinks that everyone is against him and try to hurt him. He lives alone in the woods and doesn't take medication. My mother has always been worried if I will develop some illness, which could be a huge reason why I'm suspecting that i might have something. Hypochondria if you will, which it seems I'm having right now.

A turned 18 a month ago, and got my first job a few days later. It's boring and mundane restaurant work, but it's nothing awful.

About 3 weeks ago i was walking down the street to my gym, sipping on Monster Energy, and talking/thinking to myself about life, humans, our consciousness, lack of meaning in life, typical nihilistic beliefs of an 18 year old who is athiest and doesn't believe in much in life.

It seems like i wound myself up quite a bit with my thoughts, that once i got to the gym and started working out i had the first panic attack of my life. It was what i would call severe. I suddenly felt trapped in this life, with no meaning or no purpose, it was extremely scary and i had to drop my weights and take a walk outside.

Since that day i haven't felt the same. I've stopped drinking the energy drinks that i used to. But for the last 3 weeks I've been in what i can only call a "brain fog". I feel like I'm not experiencing life the way i used to, even when i go outside for a walk and feel wind blowing in my face. I was originally obsessing with the meaning of life and what I'm doing here and what I'm supposed to do and if there is a purpose...etc. About a week later i read the book "Prometheus Rising" which helped quit a bit with the whole existential dilemma that i had. I figured that once I figured that out for myself or gave myself some sort of purpose, my obsessive thoughts and anxiety on these subjects would go away. I've stopped thinking about meaning of life or purpose since, but some problems remain.

The "mental fog" has remained, and anxiety has become a bit more frequent as i can tell. I keep thinking that since I'm 18 and this is the age that most mental illnesses develop for people, that I'm now going Schizophrenic or developing some other form of Psychosis due to my genetic background. I'm not hearing anything or having any delusions, but I keep getting anxiety attacks after thinking that this is just the beginning and that soon I'll suddenly hear whispers around me and that I'll end up going mad and being locked up and i won't be able to recognize my family or friends and I'll spend the rest of my life being a medicated straight jacket locked up in some facility in the woods or something. I keep thinking about my brain and what's inside it and why it's doing what it's doing and why I'm feeling this way. Then i think about how my brain is acknowledging it's own brain fog and how it's doing this because it's trying to fight whatever mental illness is enveloping me and trying to rip me from this reality and put me in a sea of madness for the rest of my life. It seems rather absurd as I type this, it's making laugh a bit which i guess is a good thing.

My best explanation is that I have "brain fog" (term someone else told me) because I'm spending so much time obsessing over all of this and worrying about going crazy which is causing anxiety and more thinking, which in turn causes more more brain fog which causes more anxiety....etc. A snowball effect that i can't seem to break out of. Worst part about this anxiety is that it has made me irritable, and worst of all given me a fear of falling asleep. I try to put off going to bed every night, and when i do i have an anxiety attack about falling asleep and being unconscious that my heart rate goes up to ~80bmp and i just roll around in that fearful state until i fall asleep and wake up in the morning. In the morning i figure that I'm ok, and i get up and take a shower and soon i check if i still have "brain fog", feels like I still do, and I end up having anxiety about all of this all over again for the rest of the day.

I don't really have anyone to talk to about this, I'm not antisocial but the last few years I've made some choices in life which have distanced me away from a lot of people. I haven't really spent time with any friends or done anything interesting since before my birthday which i pretty much spent alone. Defiantly can't talk to my parents about this, no sense making them worry, I figure if i develop anything I'll do my best to hide it until they pass away that way they don't have to worry . Maybe it's my prolonged isolation from any friends to talk to which is causing me to be this way. Maybe I'm going crazy.

I really don't know what to do. I wish i could enjoy life the way I used to again, and i wish this would all go away. Writing this all out here for the first time has defiantly seemed to help. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

A bit more.

From what I can tell, i do have a bad habit of over-thinking certain subjects ad nauseam. I usually have to rationalize everything, and what i have sort of noticed is that i will usually twist logic, assume facts, or in general just make stuff up to come to a conclusion that i want to come to in my head. It's like I over-rationalize everything.

It feels like because I'm thinking so much about developing some sort of mental illness I'm subconsciously finding reasons to prove that I really am. Then i think that if i can't stop doing that now, I'll develop some sort of mental illness just because I'm obsessing over the subject so much. It's obsessive roundabout thinking all the way.

EDIT: What I actually did have most of my life (since age ~11) is self-diagnosed OCD. Which would explain a whole lot right now. It started off once when i spilled some juice on my hand, and i smelled my hand and i could smell peaches or whatever. For the next ~2 months i would always obsessively smell my hand simply out of habit. Then came tongue clicking where i obsessively clicked my tongue over and over for weeks at a time. Turning faucets on and off means i have to do it 2-3 times to do it in the right pattern. Letting go of my computer mouse means i have to place it down on the table a dozen times so that it makes the right sounds. Spitting, well I always spit now wherever I go regardless if i need to or not.

It's always been rather physical tho, so it never bothered me too much, just people around me. Maybe this is just more OCD but now forcing me to obsess over certain thoughts in my mind, which makes me spend all my free time in my head thinking about something, which causes brain-fog, which causes fear of going crazy, which causes anxiety, which causes more fear, which causes thoughts of developing schizophrenia, which causes more fear and anxiety...etc.

What I've noticed however is that i have hardly ever had more than one OCD symptom at a time. I always had something that i had to obsess over. Whether it's smelling my hand, clicking my tongue, turning light switches on and off in the right pattern, turning my faucet off so it goes "tunk" properly, you name it. Maybe If i force some new physical obsession like tongue-clicking again, this over-thinking symptom will go away.