Dealing with Health Anxiety
5 tips to help you combat Health Anxiety
When it comes to your health, it is natural to occasionally experience some level of unease; let’s be real, at times we experience things that make us wonder! There are also some of you that naturally have a greater awareness of the sensations happening in your body. Feeling wary or being aware of odd changes can even be beneficial in avoiding any potentially serious conditions. However, excessive worry or attention to such things can be counterproductive.
What is Health Anxiety?
If you find yourself constantly over focusing on what you feel and consider worst case scenarios, you may be experiencing health anxiety. Health anxiety is often characterized by having an unrealistic fear of having or developing a serious health condition. This fear or excessive worry may lead you down the internet rabbit hole - googling your symptoms, believing the worst based off of one commonality or none at all. You may even continue to worry despite receiving confirmation that you are in good health by a medical professional.
In addition to the emotional distress this causes, health anxiety can influence other important areas of your life. It might interfere with your ability to focus on work, extracurriculars, relationships, or maybe even social activities; negatively affecting your well being.
What can I do to manage my Health-based Anxiety?
If you feel as though this resonates with you, it’s worth taking steps to find a better balance. Here are a few tips to help you combat your health anxiety -
Avoid the internet Rabbit- hole. This one is self explanatory. Surely, we have all turned to the internet at some point to solve our mystery illness. It’s true that the internet can be a wonderfully convenient place for finding things quickly. However, not so great of a place when you are under the weather and want to know why. Research your symptoms long enough and you’ll inevitably end up with an untreatable illness as the outcome. Health-based anxiety is a hungry beast, so it’s best to find ways to minimize your media consumption. Setting limits to how much health related news your consume may be a good start. Another alternative, if feasible for you, is seeking help from and trusting a medical professional. Although this too can be terrifying, remind yourself that they are professionals for a reason. If the internet held the same knowledge, medical professionals would simply not exist.
Your body is constantly sending you signals. The human body can be quite noisy! Healthy bodies are producing all sorts of physical symptoms which may be uncomfortable, unexpected, and unwanted. At any given time normal processes in our body can affect our heart rate, blood pressure, balance, breathing, and so on. The sensations are real, but the belief that they are symptoms of a terrible disease are not. When you begin to experience these changes, remind yourself that what you are experiencing is actually a sign that your body is functioning the way it should be! Easier said than done of course, but the following tips may help you apply this mindset.
Ease up on excessive self- checking. Anxiously scanning your body for an illness may seem like the best way to protect yourself. However, when you are facing health anxiety, the repetitive nature of checking yourself for symptoms, will only lead to your anxiety being fueled - uncertainty and doubt surface, giving your imagination additional fuel to create false thoughts. As you imagine the worse your body is naturally going to set off an alarm, instilling all of those unwelcome symptoms of anxiety - racing heart, difficulty breathing, stomach discomfort, sweating, headaches. Again, the symptoms are real. Your thoughts are false. When you catch yourself hyper focusing on your body's sensation, try to recognize and challenge these thoughts.
Recognize and challenge unhelpful thoughts. When experiencing anxious thoughts, it can be easy to jump to the worst case scenario, even when you have little to no evidence to support it. Questioning and challenging your thoughts can help you recognize a factual thought over one that is created by anxiety. Once you are able to recognize the difference, you can replace your health worries with health actions.
Consider CBT. In conjunction with the tips above, Exposure work with a therapist may be a great fit for you. Engaging in exposing exercises can help you reduce both the fear of your bodily sensations and the use of your safety behaviors; excessive body-checking, spiraling down the internet hole, or avoiding the doctor.
growgood psychology has a team of therapists ready to support you as you learn to manage your health anxiety.
Understanding how to cope with and heal from your health based anxiety can be extremely daunting. Our team of therapists are ready to help you gain additional tools that will help you adopt a different way of thinking. Protecting your long term health is intimidating - you don’t have to figure it out alone. Connect with us today to get started!