Overcoming Health Anxiety
What is health anxiety?
Health Anxiety is when we notice any slight changes in our body and start worrying about it. We keep doing this – checking and re checking, but all it does is keep us thinking about it. It increases our worrying thoughts and in turn our health anxiety. This becomes a vicious cycle which will make us feel worse and keeps the health anxiety going. Some who suffer from health anxiety, often claim to constantly look up their symptoms on Google.
If you experience health anxiety, you may well keep asking your family and friends if they notice any difference in you. Or you may frequently request a GP appointment in order to be given reassurance that there’s nothing wrong. This might temporarily help but the worrying thoughts will soon creep back about another health concern – and the viscous cycle starts all over again.
People with health anxiety tend to avoid certain situations in case it evokes anxiety. This avoidance can impact greatly on their everyday lives. Many people avoid certain television programmes, visiting hospitals or conversations about health. Whilst others may avoid looking things up on the internet as this exacerbates our health anxiety.
Many people with this form of anxiety are slow to realise that they have it. This is simply because they are so busy worrying about their potential illnesses and risks to their health that it goes unrecognised and it often takes an outsider to spot it.
How can CBT and Counselling Help?
So, we how do we stop this cycle of worry of anxiety about our health? Firstly, it might be helpful to write down how many times you check your body every day and to note down how many times you think about your health. Do you spend a lot of time looking up what you consider to be symptoms on the internet? Does your health anxiety get worse when you’re tired or not occupied? In seeking more information and what you deem as reassurance you will worry more and feel more health anxiety, so it is important to reduce it in the same way as we reduce the checking behaviour.
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) recognises that health anxiety is often based on unhelpful, irrational beliefs we have about how things ‘should’ or ‘must’ be that make us feel bad. We make ‘demands’ that we must know that we are well at all times otherwise we can’t cope! Our CBT Therapists will help you identify these irrational beliefs and in doing so help you change how we feel about a situation. This is turn will help with the anxiety.
CBT can help in overcoming health anxiety because it recognises our thoughts about a situation (fear of cancer) affect how we feel (anxiety). We can tend to give meaning to situations (a pulled muscle in our chest – heart problems!!). It’s not the actual situation causing your anxiety but the meaning you give to it, even when it’s not factual. When you experience health anxiety you tend to give your thoughts a lot of meaning. CBT aims to help you overcome fears by correcting irrational thoughts and changing problematic behaviours. By acquiring a certain mind-set, you can learn to approach anxious situations differently and overcome health anxiety for the long term.
If you would like some professional help in overcoming anxiety. Then please contact us at CBT and Counselling Kent today. Request an appointment
