Health Anxiety Explained
What is health anxiety?
It’s normal to worry about your health. Those ‘what if?’ thoughts that prompt you to get a skin check, go for a run, or skip the second (or third) chocolate biscuit for the day can help you live a longer, healthier life.
Sometimes however, people can become preoccupied with their health. They might worry constantly about developing rare or deadly diseases, book frequent doctors’ appointments, or feel panicked when they experience mild physical symptoms, like nausea or a headache.
Health anxiety is intense and persistent worry about having a serious illness that is disproportionate to a person’s actual risk of developing this illness. People with health anxiety tend to interpret common physical symptoms, like nausea, tiredness, or headaches, as signs of serious illness. They often ‘Google’ their symptoms and seek excessive reassurance from others about their health. People with health anxiety also tend to get frequent medical checks or feel too afraid to ever go to the doctor.
The key feature of health anxiety is disproportionate worry. It’s normal to worry about your health, especially if you’ve had, or are at risk of having, a serious illness (it’s probably a good idea to monitor your cardiac health if you have a strong family history of heart disease). However, if you find it hard to stop worrying about your health, or your worry is getting in the way of you enjoying life, then it might be helpful to learn more about health anxiety.
What are the signs of health anxiety?
Psychological Signs
Worrying that mild physical symptoms are signs of a serious disease
Worrying about your health even after a medical ‘all clear’
Feeling very distressed by common or mild physical symptoms
Frequently worrying about developing rare or deadly diseases
Becoming distressed by health-related media reports
Feeling persistently tense and on edge
Behavioural Signs
‘Googling’ your symptoms
Frequently checking your body for symptoms
Frequently asking others for reassurance about your health
Avoiding activities that trigger common physical symptoms (e.g. exercise)
Booking frequent medical appointments
Avoiding people and places that remind you of sickness (e.g. doctors, hospitals)
Remember, only a qualified mental health professional can diagnose anxiety following a thorough assessment of your personal situation and circumstances. If you’re concerned about the way you’ve been feeling, please don’t delay speaking with your regular healthcare provider or check out our anonymous online assessment below and see if one of our online programs could help.
Not sure whether to seek help?
If you’re unsure about the way you feel, take our anonymous online Wellbeing Test to check whether your levels of stress, anxiety, or depression are within a healthy range, and see if one of our online programs could help.
What causes health anxiety?
Health anxiety isn’t caused by one specific thing. In fact, it most likely develops from a combination of different factors.
There’s good evidence that genes play a role in the development of anxiety in general. Anxiety disorders tend to run in families and having a parent or sibling with anxiety can mean that you’re more likely to experience anxiety as well.
Your personality structure also influences how you feel. For example, being a ‘worrier’, some who tends to think negatively, or someone who likes to feel ‘in control’ can increase your risk of developing health anxiety.
Stressful health experiences can also influence the development of health anxiety. Experiences like having a loved one get very sick or die, witnessing a traumatic accident, working in healthcare, or even being exposed to distressing health-related media (e.g. movies, news reports) can make you feel overly vulnerable to illness.
Becoming a parent can also trigger health anxiety in some people. Being responsible for a child can heighten people’s sense of responsibility and mortality, causing them to become more concerned about their own health. However, this experience is very normal, and would only classify as ‘health anxiety’ if the worry is out-of-proportion or interfering with the person’s well-being.
How can I deal with health anxiety?
Psychoeducation
Psychoeducation refers to learning about what health anxiety is, how it develops, and what keeps it going. Psychoeducation can help people recognise when they are experiencing anxiety and learn to distinguish between normal and abnormal physical symptoms. This can give people a greater sense of control of their physical and mental health, thereby improving their well-being. Providing education for families or carers also helps them offer support.
The most important pieces of information for a person with health anxiety are:
- It’s normal to experience unpleasant or uncomfortable physical symptoms, like pain, nausea, and tiredness.
- Having unpleasant physical symptoms does not necessarily mean that you are seriously ill.
- Anxiety is not a sign of weakness or a character defect.
- There are many effective treatments for health anxiety.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
CBT is an effective treatment for health anxiety, alone or in conjunction with medication. CBT involves learning skills to:
- Mange the worried thoughts that characterise health anxiety, and the emotions of fear and anxiety that are triggered by these thoughts.
- Overcome the unhelpful behaviours that keep health anxiety going, like ‘Googling’ symptoms or booking excessive medical appointments.
- Re-engage in activities you might have been avoiding because of anxiety.
CBT will often be recommended when:
- The person has found CBT helpful in the past.
- The person wants to take an active role in their recovery.
- The person wants to learn skills to help them get well and stay well.
- A competent, trained clinician who has expertise in CBT is available, or the person is prepared to use internet CBT (iCBT).
- The person prefers CBT or iCBT.
- The person does not want to take medication or there is a medical reason that they cannot take antidepressant medications.
Medication
Medications for anxiety are often (somewhat confusingly) called antidepressants. This is because these medications were originally developed to treat depression but have since been found to work for both anxiety and depression.
Antidepressants are generally recommended for people with very intense anxiety, ideally, in combination with CBT. Medications are not often recommended as a first line treatment for mild to moderate anxiety.
Different antidepressant medications work in different ways. You may need to trial more than one type to find the medication that works best for you. Make sure to keep in close contact with your prescribing physician during the early stages of taking medications the side effects can often be difficult to deal with.
Some things to remember when taking these medications are:
- Take the medication as prescribed.
- Don’t stop the medication without contacting the health professional who prescribed it.
- Side effects lessen as your body adjusts. If the side effects don’t diminish, or are unreasonable, contact your health professional.
How can Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) help with health anxiety?
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT is considered to be one of the leading psychological treatments for health anxiety. All of our online programs use CBT strategies to help ease symptoms of anxiety and depression. Click below to see if CBT can help you tackle your symptoms to improve the way you feel.
How can I cope with the symptoms of health anxiety?
There are many different strategies that can help you manage the symptoms of health anxiety. Just a few of these techniques are shown below.
Managing muscle tension
Anxiety can cause muscle tension, aches, and pains (which, in turn, often trigger health anxiety). To counteract this:
- Try to stand up and move around throughout your day.
- Do some gentle stretches in the evening, to release tension and increase feelings of relaxation.
- Take some time out of your day to breathe deeply and purposefully relax your muscles, from your head to your toes. You might be surprised at how much tension you hold during the day without even realising.
Reducing reassurance seeking
It can be very tempting to do some online research or ask friends and family about a new symptom you’ve noticed. In fact, many people with health anxiety are so used to seeking reassurance that they don’t even notice when they’re doing it.
- Try to notice when you’re feeling the urge to Google or check-in with someone about a symptom.
- If you can, ride this urge out.
Much like food cravings, urges driven by anxiety tend spike and then ease off with time (it’s a bit like riding a psychological wave). The more you practice riding these urge out, the less intense and frequent they will become, reducing your anxiety.
Re-evaluating worry
Worrying can sometimes make us feel like there’s something we need to worry about. When we feel nervous and uneasy, we often assume that something bad is about to happen. However, when we look back at the times we’ve worried, often we realise that our worries weren’t very accurate. In this way, worry is a bit like a weatherman who keeps predicting hurricanes will happen – one day, he might be right, but overall, he’s pretty useless.
- Keep a health anxiety journal.
- Write down every time you worried about your health and everything you did to address these worries (e.g. doctors’ appointments, online research).
- After a few weeks, review what you’ve written. How accurate were your predictions? How helpful were the steps you took?