How to Make Peace With Your Health Anxiety

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If you have health anxiety, you might feel like you are in a constant battle with your body. Any unusual symptom might seem like a looming catastrophe. You might feel driven to seek reassurance by searching the internet, by asking a loved one if they think you are OK, or by being a “frequent flier” at your doctor’s office. Or your anxiety might lead you to avoid doctors, skipping physicals and important health screening appointments (e.g., mammograms and colonoscopies).

Regardless of how your health anxiety manifests, there are strategies you can implement to start recovery:

1. Don’t Personalize Other People’s Medical Issues. If you have health anxiety and hear about someone else having a disease or dying, you might personalize it and think you are at risk for developing that condition. It could be a relative who died from a certain disease or even a friend of a friend of a friend on social media who developed a rare health condition at a young age. Or you might hear about a celebrity’s health issues and worry that you might have the same problem. It’s important to keep this statement in mind:

Just knowing about someone else's health condition does not increase the risk that I will develop it.

Even if there is a family history of a specific disease or problem, it does not mean that you are at risk right now for having a tragic outcome. If you are worried about having a family history of an issue, talk to your doctor about your concerns and about preventive actions you can take.

2. Reduce Excessive Body Awareness. Many people with health anxiety are highly attuned to their body symptoms. While it’s important not to be in denial about what’s going on in your body, too much awareness can be problematic for two reasons:

• It reinforces your anxiety. It is almost as if you are saying to yourself, “I am at immediate risk of developing something serious, so I need to be constantly on alert.” Thus, excessive body awareness makes you more anxious.
• The more aware you are of symptoms, the more you will feel. I will always remember the time in second grade when I was in line for a lice check at the school nurse’s office and was mortified at the possibility of having lice. Suddenly, my head started itching. It turned out that I didn’t have lice, and the itching stopped immediately after the nurse finished the exam.

To address excessive body awareness, notice when you are being overly aware of your symptoms and then redirect your attention to something outside of your body (e.g., look out the window or feel the fabric of the chair you are sitting on). You can also remind yourself that you do not need to constantly pay attention to your body sensations to keep yourself safe.

3. Restructure Your Anxious Thoughts. Here are some strategies to address your catastrophic thoughts:

• Remind yourself that everyone experiences unusual or uncomfortable body sensations and that everyone gets sick from time to time. Just because your body isn’t feeling completely perfect, it does not mean that there is a looming catastrophe.
• Reflect on all of the times you thought something catastrophic was happening when it turned out to be nothing.
• Ask yourself to consider the most likely scenario instead of the most catastrophic. For example, Is it more likely that my headache is just a regular headache, or is it more likely that it is a brain tumor?

4. Reduce Excessive Reassurance Seeking. People with health anxiety have difficulties tolerating uncertainty and related distress and tend to do a lot of reassurance-seeking behaviors.

Searching for symptoms on the internet is a common reassurance-seeking behavior. If you have the urge to do an internet search, try to resist your urge. Internet searches can lead you to discover scary (and irrelevant) diagnoses that can make your anxiety worse. In addition, it keeps you in the cycle of health anxiety. Similarly, asking a loved one for a lot of reassurance about a health symptom can be problematic. Some people seek reassurance by excessively taking their pulse, oxygen levels, or blood pressure. This is also problematic.

With all of these reassurance behaviors, you keep yourself in the anxiety cycle and are reliant on the reassurance to feel better. A better choice is to work on resisting urges to seek reassurance and turning your attention to something else that is not health-related. At first, even if you can only resist for a brief amount of time before seeking reassurance, that is a success. You can build up your tolerance from there.

5. Use Doctor Visits Appropriately. If you contact your doctor’s office excessively about health concerns, consider having a conversation with your doctor, letting them know you have health anxiety. You can ask them how to differentiate between an urgent or important medical issue or something to ride out without contacting them.

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If you avoid doctor’s visits out of fear, consider if there is someone who can go with you to support you. If you fear that the doctor will find something wrong with you, remind yourself that early detection is important and can lead to better outcomes.

The Good News

The good news is that you can heal from health anxiety, even though it will take some effort and will be challenging at times. If you think you need additional support, consider finding a therapist who specializes in anxiety to help you.