Health Anxiety Self-Management Advice

An introduction to health anxiety

Dealing with health anxiety or hypochondria is a challenging and lesser spoken about condition that is full of negative connotations. 

The good news is that with the correct approach to overcoming hypochondria it can be significantly reduced.

If you are concerned you have health anxiety then it is best to speak to your GP about the best steps forward for you. The aim of this blog is to provide information which is primarily CBT based in order to help you with the self-management side of things.

What is health anxiety/hypochondria?

Hypochondria or health anxiety is when you spend so much time worrying about whether you might be ill that it starts to take over your life.

Typical signs might be:

• Thinking that any sensation you feel could be a symptom of something
• Worrying about being ill/having something wrong with you very often.
• Checking your body for symptoms, tingling, lumps, pain etc
• Searching the internet for conditions as soon as you feel anything isn’t “normal”
• Make frequent appointments with Doctors who tell you they can’t find anything wrong.
• Questioning Doctor’s test results.

The troubles with having health anxiety

The biggest issue with having health anxiety is that it can feel as if you are in a battle with your own brain.

It can go something like this.

“What’s that feeling my brain is telling me about?”

“Well, what is causing that feeling?”

“I only know about the feeling because my brain told me that there was a feeling.”

“There must be something causing it, my brain wouldn’t lie to me”

“I need to know what this is.”

Of course we believe what the brain is telling us because….we are our brain, right?

So we have to convince the very thing that’s told us there’s a problem that there isn’t a problem.

Another issue with health anxiety

“It’s all in your head”
How many times have you been told that the issue is in your head?
That one line acting as if just by uttering it the person is going to solve all your problems.

The problem with this is two-fold.

Firstly, they’re actually right but secondly their lack of compassion actually makes things worse normally as you feel attacked…
It’s the same counterproductivity that comes from telling an angry person to calm down, yes you’re right and they need to calm down but it’s hardly the best thing to say.
They say “it’s all in your head” but you hear “you’re making this up”.

The negative connotation that surrounds the idea of being a hypochondriac doesn’t help matters at all here either.
You ask someone what a hypochondriac is and they’ll typically tell you that it’s someone who pretends they’re ill or fakes illness to get out of stuff. 

They will not know or even think about the anxiety, stress, pain and inconvenience that having it causes.
The word has a massive stigma surrounding it which makes it difficult for people to talk about it openly in any way.

The final issue with health anxiety is the whole “well, what if it IS something and I ignore it?”

This is the brain’s ultimate “screw you” thought.

Sometimes you can get your head on top of the idea that “it’s just a headache” and you start believing it only for your brain to turn around and say “yeah, but what if you’re wrong and it actually is something this time?”
But if you’ve read this far you already know all this, hopefully we’re on the same page and you understand that I perhaps know that I might know what I’m talking about.

Let’s start looking at some things which you can do to help yourself.

Overcoming health anxiety

Whether it is health anxiety or any other condition really it is so important to have a correct level of expectation about how you’re going to improve your condition.

No-one is going to do anything to change your condition overnight unfortunately.

The progress you make with health anxiety is going to be based on your input.

You are the one that has to make yourself better, literally no-one else can.

Whilst this can feel like pressure try and see it as inspiration, you’re the one who can change things for yourself and there’s no reason why you can’t.

There will not be one huge thing that all of a sudden changes everything, you will make slow, steady progress as you gain more and more control of your mind.

There might be occasional moments where it “feels worse than ever” but these are blips and are not an indication of

Here’s the first thing that you need to do and you’re probably not going to like it.

Admitting it is Hypochondria

Whether you call it hypochondria or dress it up as health anxiety it is the same thing – a condition that makes you worry that you’re ill when you’re actually not.

That may sound as if I’m being too direct about it but that’s only because it is important to be direct with yourself.

You suffer with health anxiety and accepting it is the first step.

That doesn’t mean you chose this in any way nor that you want it.

You didn’t wake up one morning and decide “you know what I want to cripple myself mentally by worrying about my health every day” did you.

It is an anxiety disorder and it’s really unpleasant.

Accepting that you have the condition and owning the symptoms and consequences are a big first step.

CBT for Health anxiety

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has been shown to be efficacious in treating health anxiety. CBT shows us that the way that we think has a direct impact on how we feel and as such encourages us to challenge our thoughts logically to bring out a more helpful way of thinking.

Many of the techniques below have their foundations within CBT which I am trained in as a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist.

The ultimate shutdown question

CBT works by logically attacking the thoughts (or thoughts we have about our thoughts).

By changing the way we think we can change the way that we feel.

As you make progress with your health anxiety you will start to learn your mind better and know what you can ask to help yourself.

Once you’re in a position where you’ve accepted that you have health anxiety the following question is a very good starting point.

“Could this be my health anxiety making me feel this way?”

Diarising health anxiety incidents

It can be very helpful initially to make a diary of health anxiety incidents.

This can be split into 5 columns

When / Where / Circumstances / Thoughts / Outcome

An example of diarising health anxiety

Tuesday morning / At home / About to go out for a walk / That feeling in my stomach isn’t normal, I think I must have a bug or something / Decided not to go out just in case.

The when/where/circumstances will hopefully help you to start to notice any particular triggers for you.

We’ll dive into how knowing what you’re thinking can help you.

The outcome section can begin to start showing you what you’re missing out on in life or what you’re doing differently because of the condition. This is designed to inspire you rather than deflate you – more on that later too.

Finding your health anxiety triggers

Health anxiety can often be a very circumstantial condition and diarising it as mentioned above is a simple way to identify triggers.

You may quickly find that it feels worse at certain times or days, in certain places and most likely in particular situations.

Once you notice a particular pattern you can start tackling those times head on.

For starters if you feel triggered around a time you’ve identified as a problem time you can simply ask yourself something like:

“Isn’t this a time/place/situation when I normally feel a bit like this due to worrying about my health?”

Recognising that what you’re experiencing is hypochondria as opposed to whatever serious medical condition you’re imagining it is doesn’t suddenly make things better but it helps.

If you can then back this up with a strong affirmation to ground you and remind you of this can be really helpful.

You could say things like

“This is me feeling anxious about my health NOT an issue with my health.”

“This is hypochondria making me feel this way.”

“This is my brain/health anxiety playing tricks on me.”

Challenging thoughts around health anxiety

The diary entries will also help you to understand better exactly what is going through your head when health anxiety rears its ugly head.

Once we know what we’re thinking we can use CBT to challenge these thoughts and calm them down.

Tweaking thoughts

It is very beneficial to learn to adjust the thoughts that we have around our health so that they are very logical and boring.

So if you’re prone to saying something like “my heart is racing at a million miles an hour” then stop.

Is your heart really racing at a million miles an hour?

Or is it just beating a bit faster?

Use dull and factual accounts of your thoughts to yourself to calm them down.

Notice how much less interesting it is to say “my heart race is higher at the moment”.

It’s much harder to get carried away by a boring thought.

Thought challenging

Another good exercise to help you is to start challenging the thoughts with questions, you can either do this in the moment or after the fact so you’re more prepared for the next time.

You can ask things like:

“Is this thought actually true?”

“How much do I believe this thought as a percentage?”

“How much is my health anxiety influencing this thought?”

“Where is the evidence that the “symptom” I’m worried about is not completely normal?”

“Is this thought getting me anywhere?”

“Is this thought helping me or making things worse?”

“Have you had this thought before? What was the outcome?”

“What would happen if you just waited 5 minutes?”

Challenging the thoughts is a two fold attack, firstly it can help you think something different which will make you feel differently. Secondly it encourages your brain to slow down a bit and stop the thought from feeling so “fast” and “overwhelming.”

Changing your outcomes

Finally the diary can help to inspire you to create different outcomes yourself.

By diarising the impact that your health anxiety has on your life it can help you want to change just that little bit more.

You can rewrite your outcomes as statements of intent.

An example.

Original outcome – “I cancelled plans with my friends.”

Can become

“If I can get in better control of my health anxiety then I can stop cancelling plans and have more time with my friends.”

Let yourself see what you can make different when you make the changes you’re going to make.

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Recognise your health anxiety secondary gains

You’re not going to like this but here goes anyway.

Healthy anxiety can have some benefits.

But first let me explain what secondary gains are.

Having any medical condition is pretty bloody terrible so our clever brains like to try and find good stuff for us to focus on.

If you’re ill and signed off from work and don’t have to do things around the house – that’s a secondary gain.

Perhaps you get more attention because you’re ill.

Maybe there’s a financial incentive.

These are NOT things which you are choosing to have, they are things which happen circumstantially due to your situation.

It is part of your brain’s protection system working normally not you being an awful person, just so we’re clear.

Perhaps health anxiety gets you out of trips to the in-laws or means that you get sympathy from a partner/friend?

Secondary gains are making the best of a bad situation but they are an issue for your progress. They are something “beneficial” for you to hold onto so moving on from the issue is harder.

Perhaps you already know what your secondary gains are, maybe diarising will bring them up.

Whatever they are and however they are affecting you it is time to put them to rest.

So, if normally you know that you can get away with putting the bins out, or whatever it might be because of health anxiety it is time to put your big boy pants on and start doing these things. 

This is true whether it is visiting the in-laws or doing the food shopping.

This is you fighting back against health anxiety even if it could feel like you’re losing a “benefit”.

Because honestly, wouldn’t you rather be doing all of these things for yourself anyway?

Stop people enabling you

This falls into the same kinda category as above.

People who love you want to make your life easier and if they know that you’ll avoid some health anxiety distress/discomfort by doing something for you then they probably will.

It’s a lovely thing that they’re doing that for you.

BUT they need to stop.

This comes out from having a very open and frank conversation about where you’re at and what you’re trying to do.

You can ask something like: “Are there things that you do to stop me getting worried about my health?”                                           

Once you know what they are you can start working out how to start doing more of those things yourself.

It might be best to start taking over these things one by one but you can just “rip the plaster off” if that’s how you want to approach things.

Your two greatest allies against health anxiety.

Anxiety whether it is health anxiety or otherwise feels like it operates in one gear, “really flipping fast”.

If we start feeling a symptom then our brain can jump on that and start overanalysing it instantly, 5 seconds later we’re googling our symptoms and 5 minutes later we’re convinced we’re about to have an aneurysm or a heart attack.

At the moment that we first feel that pang of something “not being right” a slippery slope is created in front of us.

Health anxiety normally makes us grease ourselves up and dive head first down that slippery slope straight away.

But what if we didn’t?

There are two great things we can do to prevent ourselves self-diagnosing with something awful.

Time and Distraction.

Time

Let’s be honest Google isn’t going anywhere so you can searched your symptoms at literally any moment in time.

So, what if you just waited?

When a symptom comes up rather than falling into whatever your normal habit is what if you said “Can I wait 10 seconds before googling my symptoms? (or whatever you normally do)

Then slowly count to 10, breathing as calmly as you can before asking “Can I wait another 20 seconds before…?”

Then slowly count to 20 keeping that breathing calm before asking “What about waiting 30 seconds before..?

If you can do that then you’ve got through a minute without falling into normal behaviour.

You can then check in with yourself whether that symptom still feels as bad, do you still feel like you normally want to dive into habitual behaviour?

If so then start again, ask yourself if you can wait 10 seconds etc.

Giving yourself time doesn’t remove the opportunity to do what you would normally do it just delays it.

In my experience the habitual behaviour normally increases anxiety rather than reduces it so if you can delay or ideally AVOID doing it entirely you’re only going to be serving yourself.

Distraction

In a similar vein rather than counting and asking yourself questions you can distract yourself from your symptom.

Your brain can only do so much at one time so if you can fully focus your attention on something else it will have a hard time remembering to worry about a symptom.

So when you notice a symptom arising find something to do and then you can check in with yourself again afterwards if you even remember to.

Suggestions of things you can do to distract yourself:

• Do some exercise
• Call a friend and “chat shit”
  (With this don’t call a friend and tell them how much you’re worrying and what you want to do to help because they’ll probably want to help you by saying that you should just do what what makes you feel better.)
• Do housework
• Solve a crossword puzzle/rubiks cube.
• Knitting/crochet.
• Writing/Drawing/Colouring/Painting

Once again you can always check in with yourself and see if you still want to fall into habitual behaviour again. If so you can either distract yourself again or just take sometime.

Relaxation techniques for health anxiety

I think that everyone has their own natural resting level of anxiety.

Very chilled people with no anxiety whatsoever will be a 1/10 where as people who suffer with anxiety conditions will be maybe a 4-5/10 even with nothing to set them off.

Regular practice of relaxation techniques whether that is mindfulness, meditation or self-hypnosis will help to bring down the level of anxiety that you feel “at rest”.

I created a 30 minute progressive muscle relaxation which you can listen to here.

Making long term progress with your health anxiety

I really hope that this blog has given you some inspiration and insight into how you may be able to help reduce your health anxiety.

If you would like a more structured approach to overcoming anxiety then please check out my 4-week online course “from anxiousness to awesomeness” which will help you to reduce and control your anxiety using a variety of techniques from Hypnotherapy, CBT, NLP, Coaching, Meditation, Philosophy and more.

It has already helped people just like you to reduce their health anxiety,

You can find more information about that here.