Health Anxiety
What is Health Anxiety?
Health Anxiety is a broad term that usually includes intense worry about your body, status of your health, or likelihood of getting sick.
It is not just “worrying too much”- health anxiety can grow to be a debilitating condition that impacts your ability to enjoy life, maintain healthy relationships, and get a good night’s sleep.
Symptoms of Health Anxiety
Some people can’t stop thinking that they may have a serious, undiagnosed medical condition, which we call Illness Anxiety Disorder. For example, a person may mistake a dull headache for brain cancer, spending hours on google, checking their body in the mirror, and finding little reassurance after their doctor tells them it’s nothing serious.
Others have significant mental suffering on top of very real physical symptoms, which we call somatic symptom disorder. People tend to have uncomfortable bodily symptoms (stomach issues, pain, etc.) and respond to them with unhelpful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
In some cases, an individual’s physical suffering cannot be explained medically. In functional neurological disorder, the person loses some bodily function (weakness on one side of the body; seizure; loss of vision) that is inconsistent with medical findings. These symptoms are not being “faked” and tend to get better with psychological treatment.
Treatments for Health Anxiety
I provide the gold standard treatments for Health Anxiety: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and “3rd wave”, mindfulness-based forms of CBT.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has the strongest evidence base for reducing symptoms and impairment. It will NOT try to convince you that your symptoms are fake or “all in your head.” You can expect:
-Learning what may cause health anxiety and keep it around
-Tools to “step back” from your mind’s response to uncomfortable bodily sensations.
-Getting clear on what matters to you and choosing a valued direction. This involves slowly approaching what you’ve been avoiding, with support and accountability
-Skills to maintain your progress after therapy ends