Health Anxiety: How It’s Defined & How to Recover

Do you ever get scared when something different happens to or within your body? 

Imagine you are experiencing a headache. Headaches happen all the time whenever we feel sick, stressed, or did not have our usual morning coffee. However, if you’re wrestling with health anxiety,  you could catastrophize this everyday headache. You could end up not getting out of bed or spending hours searching the internet for all of the causes of a headache. Once a term like “brain tumor” pulls up, this could send your anxiety through the roof. 

Health anxiety can present as either a Somatic Symptom Disorder or Illness Anxiety Disorder. Both disorders cause significant anxiety and distress and a trained psychotherapist can help you distinguish your symptoms and identify your diagnosis. In both disorders, fear interferes with being able to function or enjoy your daily life. Your energy is focused on making sure nothing abnormal happens to your body. With the COVID-19 pandemic occurring, fear of leaving the house, constantly checking your symptoms, or avoiding in-person contact likely seems justified and your fears may be running wild.

To remain balanced and mentally healthy, it’s crucial to gain a clear understanding of health anxiety and learn how to decrease your symptoms should you have them. 

Do You Constantly Believe the Worst?

Health anxiety may cause you to catastrophize, or to think the worst of your presumed symptoms based on personal experiences or information from other sources. For example, you may think an earache means you have COVID-19 after learning on the news that an earache is a new symptom. You may rush to take a test and find out you are negative but remain unconvinced.

You may also make assumptions about heredity and contagion. For example, you may devote an inordinate amount of time to thoughts about relatives with cancer, worrying that you will inherit it. This constant distress about illnesses or diseases that you could develop in the future can lead to a preoccupation about your health that hinders your functioning, joy, and relationships in the present.

What You Can Do

After a doctor rules out your health concerns, consider giving cognitive behavioral therapy a try. It is the most effective form of therapy for health anxiety as it focuses on the link between thoughts and behaviors. When we define a situation’s meaning, like a stomachache pointing to stomach cancer, it can of course bring anxiety to the situation and cause us to fear for our health and wellbeing. 

Cognitive-behavioral therapy can challenge your negative thoughts and encourage healthier alternatives. Acquiring a healthier mindset can help you approach your fear differently and increase your ability to tolerate your anxious thoughts.