Health Anxiety 101

Compulsions or safety behaviors. This part of health anxiety (and we are talking about actions such as searching the internet for symptoms, excessively visiting the doctor, or asking your family members for reassurance) is what makes the cycle continue due to the reinforcing nature that it has on the condition. Compulsions serve to reinforce the danger signals that your brain sends to you when it is faced with an alarming idea (such as the possibility of having cancer). When a compulsion is performed, it confirms the concern has validity and it creates a sense of temporary relief from the associated anxiety. This relief feels much better than the discomfort of the anxiety (understandably), which in the future will make seeking relief even more tempting!

Symptoms may include both mental and behavioral actions that are centered around the concern of something medically catastrophically wrong. This may include mental experiences such as intrusive, scary thoughts/ doubts about illnesses, attempting to rationalize or reason with yourself that the dreaded illness outcome is false, words/ phrases/ mantras that provide yourself reassurance, mental body scanning of how certain body parts or areas of the body feel,  etc. Also, there may be behaviors that can be seen as symptoms as well including: making frequent trips to the ER/ Urgent Care/ Doctor, checking yourself for lumps/ bumps/ etc, checking your pulse, checking your blood pressure, and spending excessive amounts of time on the internet looking up symptoms. While we may all engage in some of these behaviors from time to time, the frequency and intensity of these symptoms usually begin to interfere with life for the health anxiety sufferer.

Yes, it can lead to physical manifestations like headaches, digestive issues, muscle tension, and other stress-related symptoms. Health Anxiety can often cause a difficult cycle of physical sensations and emotional reactions that can be a “catch-22.” If your concern is about your heart, sensations that may come from your chest (such as rapid heartbeat) can be a result of a medical symptom (heart attack) or a psychological symptom (anxiety). Often, if we notice a rapid heartbeat, it will trigger our anxiety, which unfortunately then creates a rapid heartbeat. However, a rapid heartbeat may then prove to be an alarming health anxiety trigger that something is wrong with our hearts. Oftentimes, the physical symptoms experienced can increase anxiety, and the increased anxiety can produce more physical symptoms, and so on.

Boy, oh boy, do we wish we could give you a definitive answer for this one. But unfortunately, we cannot. Truthfully, if this answer was out there, would Health Anxiety even exist? Once we have a reasonably “clean bill of health” from a qualified medical provider, we begin to find ways to accept some of the uncertainty around the endless possibilities around our health while relying on the “pretty good answer” we currently have. Are these answers perfect? No! But they may be good enough to get back to important activities in our lives!

It is understandable to say that if you are diagnosed with a medical condition it can be anxiety-provoking. However, if you are diagnosed with a medical condition, and attempting to cope with this diagnosis, it is often considered to be anxiety surrounding a major life adjustment. The difference between this and health anxiety would be that no medical diagnosis has been made and concerns around the possibility of a diagnosis become excessive and interrupt life activities. Either way, there are some helpful ways to approach both of these scenarios with tools to be able to help you focus less on your medical status and more on valuable life activities and pursuits.

Yes! Look, we are not medical doctors so if you have a symptom that is new, serious, or totally out of the ordinary, go get that checked out by a doctor. Even though we want you to learn to manage your health anxiety, it’s important to take reasonable precautions around your health. However, if you have sought treatment multiple times for the same concern, always to have the same negative test results, it may be time to do something different!

You deserve to have quality healthcare and to feel like you can trust your healthcare professional. It is also difficult since doubt around our medical health can also feel like we don’t trust our healthcare professional. However, if you ever feel not listened to, disregarded, or dismissed by your healthcare team, that is a noteworthy experience to possibly consider a change.

Absolutely. Actually, this is built into the fabric of all mental health diagnoses which indicates that these symptoms need to progress for a certain period of time (usually 6 months), create distress, and impair functioning in life. Health anxiety can have implications for individuals financially (medical testing/treatment is expensive!) and can affect the relationships that you have with others. Additionally, the time that it costs the health anxiety sufferers’ schedule to attend various appointments or even spend hours searching on the internet for symptoms is often in direct contrast to the valuable and meaningful activities that they could be doing at that point in time.

In short, it can be but not all of the time. Many anxiety specialists consider Health Anxiety to operate just like OCD, as it often has the same cycle of obsessions around our health and corresponding compulsions to attempt to deal with the associated fear. If you have anxiety around your health but no other areas that are significantly impacted by fear, you might fall into the category of Health Anxiety. For others, you may also recognize that you may have other OCD triggers such as contamination concerns, intrusive thoughts about harm, sexuality, etc that you also experience alongside your health anxiety. If this is the case, you may have OCD with “health themes.” Either way, the way that Health Anxiety functions is going to be the same and require a similar approach to treatment.

Treatments include therapy (such as cognitive-behavioral therapy), medications (like antidepressants or anti-anxiety drugs), or a combination of both. This would be, of course, after undergoing a medical evaluation to rule out medical explanations for the experienced symptoms.

Yes. While the symptoms of health anxiety usually revolve around the individual themselves, it is not uncommon for some of these fears to be applied to other important people around you. Fearing for the medical well-being of family members and other loved ones can take shape in a similar cycle but it focuses on the other person and not yourself.

There are two moments when it can be important to seek professional help around health anxiety. The first is when the anxiety that is associated with your health becomes distressing and begins to impact daily life and functioning. Feeling overwhelmed by anxiety, beginning to miss responsibilities due to excessive medical appointments, or having time stolen from you to do other valuable things because you are checking your body or researching online are some of the ways that health anxiety can begin to interfere with daily life. Secondly, even if we have received multiple negative test results that never seem to lessen the concern, it might be time to seek help. Although it may seem to be the most helpful thing to continue to assure ourselves with the answer, this can often cause the condition to become worse.

There sure is! You can check out our free virtual support group here: https://anxietyspecialistsofatlanta.com/events/health-anxiety-virtual-support-group/

Or head on over to our resources page HERE and check out our book HERE!

It is widely thought that conditions such as anxiety disorders don’t “go away” or there is no known cure for an anxiety disorder. However, before that sounds too disheartening, it is important to know that while health anxiety may never go away, much like a dormant volcano, it isn’t always active. Preparing yourself as an anxiety specialist and working through effective treatment, suffering from health anxiety can be a thing of the past!

Sharing some of the same resources that are listed above that you can use for your health anxiety can be wonderful tools to pass along to family and loved ones to help better understand the dynamics of health anxiety. Many family members and loved ones ultimately do want to help but often don’t have a full understanding of the ways that health anxiety can make it so difficult to break away from its strong grasp. This can also take these important people in your life to a place of support for you as you are working through treatment.