Managing Health Anxiety: A Guide to Overcoming Fear and Worry
If you have any kind of chronic or undiagnosable health issue, you might find yourself with health anxiety.
When you have health anxiety, it’s for a good reason: the fear is trying to protect you from feeling any kind of pain. But the problem is the more fear, the more pain, and vice versa. So we have to interrupt the pain-fear cycle.
It’s a common condition that affects many people struggling with chronic pain, fatigue, and illness. This blog post will explain health anxiety and how to manage it so that your fear no longer debilitates you.
What is Health Anxiety?
Health anxiety is a type of anxiety disorder that is characterized by excessive worry and fear about one's health.
People with health anxiety often worry about having or developing a serious illness and may constantly seek reassurance from doctors and others to reassure themselves. The fear can start to take over your life by limiting your actions, not leaving the house, and being fearful of others because you’re scared of getting sick.
Signs You Might Have Health Anxiety
Anxiety is a chronic illness in itself. When you have general anxiety, it can lead to headaches, brain fog, and an elevated heart rate. If on top of anxiety, you have health-related concerns, it’s easy to confuse anxiety for something else.
Common symptoms of health anxiety are:
Checking WebMD for every pain or discomfort you feel
Constantly checking your body for signs of illness, like lumps or tingling
Fear that you’re sick and the doctors missed something
Acting as if you are sick without a diagnosis
Worrying about your health to the point of obsession
Always worrying about what might trigger your symptoms
Learning to Trust Your Body
One of the most important steps in managing health anxiety is learning to trust your body. If you have a chronic health condition, it’s completely understandable how this could be really difficult.
The thing is, the more you fight your body and get frustrated with it, the more pain appears.
Our bodies have an innate ability to heal and repair themselves, and it is important to remember that our bodies are much stronger than we give them credit for. By learning to trust our bodies, we can reduce the fear and worry that often accompany health anxiety.
Activities like breathwork and yoga are great tools for lessening your fear around your health. Both activities are gentle and connect you to your body by calming your mind. Showing your brain what your body is capable of can help you to move through the anxiety you’re feeling about your health.
Soothe the Fear in Your Body
Another important step in managing health anxiety is to soothe the fear in our bodies. This can be done through mindfulness, deep breathing, and other relaxation techniques.
Meditation, breathwork, and journaling are all great tools to use to calm your fear. Focusing on what thoughts are affecting your anxiety the most is a good way to identify if that thought is actually true or if it’s fear-based.
When we can calm our bodies and brains, we can reduce the physical symptoms of anxiety and begin to feel more relaxed and at ease. Once the anxiety is reduced, you can properly check in with yourself and your body without fear clouding your mind.
Retraining Your Brain for Better Thoughts
Finally, it is important to retrain your brain when dealing with health anxiety.
When you retrain your brain, you’re creating new pathways for your thoughts. Instead of letting fear lead your mind to negative and fearful thoughts, you need to look for the truth within your thoughts and focus on the present and what you can control.
By retraining your brain to think positively and focus on the present moment, you can reduce your anxiety and improve your overall well-being.
All in all, health anxiety is a common condition that can interfere with your daily life and can affect just about anyone. When you have a health issue that is not fully understood or has no clear treatment, it can bring up so much frustration, hopelessness, and wasted time and money.
So, when you feel out of control, of course, it will lead to anxiety! Especially when you’re so scared all the time of what could trigger a flare-up.
But once you learn to trust your body, soothe the fear, and retrain your brain, you will be able to overcome the condition and improve your mindset and lifestyle.
As a psychotherapist and pain coach, I specialize in working with people who suffer from health anxiety, chronic pain, and fatigue. I specialize in working with people who find it hard to handle what life throws at them. This may look like focusing on past trauma, but I always bring a trauma-informed approach to my therapy sessions.
If you want to dive deeper and learn HOW to apply these 3 steps to get out of the anxiety spiral that happens with your health, you need to check out my new program: ‘Mindbody Healing Method’.
This program is for women who want to feel free from chronic pain, fatigue, anxiety, and the overwhelm that comes with managing these conditions. You may be constantly worried about your health and know there’s got to be a better way to heal, not just “manage symptoms”. You know there’s more to the physical symptoms and exploring it from a physical and psychological level is the way out.
Symptoms that can be healed within the program range from migraines, joint pain, muscle pain, fibromyalgia, anxiety, and so much more.
And if you found this blog post helpful, please comment on what resonated with you the most! Your feedback helps me create better content for my audience.
Cited websites
Definition of ‘health anxiety’: https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/health-anxiety/
