If health anxiety is taking over your life, the first step is acknowledging that it’s anxiety, not illness. Constant fear about having a disease doesn’t mean you actually have one, it means your mind is stuck in a cycle of worry and reassurance-seeking.
If you’ve ever felt trapped in that exhausting loop of checking your symptoms, googling diseases, and still never feeling at ease. Understanding what’s really happening behind those thoughts can help you break free from the fear that controls your days. Keep reading to learn practical, proven ways to stop health anxiety from ruling your mind and start living with calm and confidence again.
What’s Health Anxiety?
Health anxiety is a fear and preoccupation with the belief that I have or am in danger of developing a chronic health illness. It’s a psychiatric issue that can affect a person’s life in various ways.
Health anxiety is also known as illness anxiety disorder and hypochondria.
Because of the constant fear, people with health anxiety consider normal physical sensations as symptoms of a fatal disease, such as a new growth on the skin, a muscle twitch, a change in bowel movement, etc. As a result, many people with health anxiety are unable to function properly in life due to their fears.
This article discusses healthy anxiety, its types, causes, symptoms, and the best telepsychiatry treatment for it in the USA.
Where Does Health Anxiety Come From?
In the USA, health anxiety affects 4-6% of the general population, which means it affects nearly 1 in 20 to 1 in 17 people.
It’s a somatic symptom disorder. Though the exact cause of health anxiety is unknown, certain factors are generally involved:
- Lack of knowledge or misunderstanding of physical sensation and how the body works.
- If the disease is genetic or if any close relative has hypochondria, it increases the chances of developing it.
- People with bad health experience in the past may develop a constant fear of getting ill again.
- Other psychiatric or behavioral diseases such as depression, panic disorder, OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, or GAD, generalized anxiety disorder.
- Greater exposure to diseases on social media is also a cause of health anxiety. People Google each and every change in their body, study diseases, and then get stressed with insufficient knowledge or misunderstanding.
- Sometimes people develop health anxiety at the age at which their parents pass away, especially if that was an unexpected death because of sudden health changes.
- Self-critical or perfectionist people more often suffer from the disease. Because they believe health should be perfect, and by perfection, they mean no pain or discomfort. And when any pain or discomfort strikes, they become worried and start fearing disease or illness, while that pain or discomfort may be a part of the normal growth process.
When Does Health Anxiety Start?
Somatic symptom disorder usually begins in adulthood, typically by age 30. The symptoms usually appear during recovery from a deadly disease, or after a close family member or friend becomes ill or dies.
For example, if a patient has chronic diseases such as heart problems, they may keep on fearing the worst each time they experience a higher heart rate or a change in BP. Fears like the disease will get worse, impact their other organs, or the thought of death overcomes their mind.
Symptoms of Health Anxiety:
Individuals with health anxiety can experience different symptoms. But, there are some common symptoms:
- Constantly checking your body for pain, lumps, tingling, or other signs of illness.
- Fearing non-significant diseases such as a runny nose, a small sore, a cough, or a slightly swollen lymph node.
- Some people with health anxiety might focus on one organ only, such as the lungs, and one disease only, such as cancer. While some people may fear one disease after another.
- Constantly asking your friends or family for reassurance that I am healthy?
- Excessively searching for each disease or health information on the internet and finding its symptoms in your own body.
- A constant fear that the doctor or lab might have mixed or misinterpreted my results.
- A non-stop feeling of worry about health.
- Acting as if they’re actually ill and avoiding participation in physical activities.
- People with health anxiety often keep talking about health, symptoms, death, etc.
- They may avoid people, places, and activities that they believe can lead to a health risk.
Types of Health Anxiety:
People with health anxiety fall into two groups:
- Care Seeking:
These individuals continuously seek medical attention even for natural body changes. They constantly use different aspects of healthcare systems and request opinions from multiple doctors to get satisfaction and reassurance that they’re healthy. People with care-seeking types of health anxiety request doctors for multiple investigations and treatment just out of fear.
- Care-Avoidant:
These people completely avoid medical treatment, fearing that if they visit a doctor, they will end up receiving a deadly diagnosis such as cancer. As a result, they don’t seek medical treatment even when genuinely required.
How Does Health Anxiety Affect a Person’s Daily Life?
Health anxiety seriously creates significant effects on a person’s personal, social, family, and professional life.
People with health anxiety usually spend a lot of time focusing on their body, visiting doctors, getting medical tests done again and again to get reassured that they’re fine and healthy. This is also financially costly, depending on their insurance or copayments.
Because individuals with health anxiety often fear that they’ll die soon. They spend a lot of time googling their symptoms, which leads them to ignore their other responsibilities.
Health anxiety affects people’s professional life, because they might demand more short leaves to visit their doctors. Also, because of a preoccupied mind and fear, their focus and productivity decrease.
It also affects their family life because they’re always irritated, and spend too much on their labs and doctor visits, which disturbs the overall expenses of the family.
While some people with anxiety disorder visit doctors more often than required, there is a small percentage of people who avoid visiting healthcare professionals completely out of fear of receiving a serious diagnosis. This is dangerous as it actually leads to neglecting the actual needed medical attention. Both these states badly affect physical and mental health.
How Can You Overcome Health Anxiety if it Feels like it’s Ruining Your Life?
First of all, accept it and stay relaxed. There are many proven ways you can manage health anxiety with self-care:
- Challenge Your Thoughts:
Take a paper and make two columns. On one side, write health worries, and on the other side, write balanced thoughts. Now, let’s say if you feel worried about your headache, in column one, you can write about your headache. In the second column, you can write that it might be because of dehydration.
- Keep a Health Journal:
In this journal, write your doctor visits, their remarks, your lab reports, the number of times you ask your friends and family about your health status, and their reassurance that you’re healthy, and it’s all good. This step aims to reduce how often you do these things in a week.
- Get back to Normal Life:
Start taking part in activities you avoid because of health anxiety, such as sports, socializing, etc.
- Keep Yourself Busy:
Whenever a negative thought about your body or a fear overpowers you, try engaging yourself with something busy or productive. For example, going to the gym, joining a reading circle, or immediately calling your friend or going for a walk to distract yourself.
- Try Breathing Exercises:
Whenever you feel stressed, try a breathing exercise or yoga for relaxation.
All of these steps can help you stop your health anxiety. But, in case these steps don’t work and you feel like your symptoms are worsening, don’t worry. There are clinically proven treatment and psychotherapy options available. You can move to the next step of treatment.
Treatment Options for Health Anxiety:
The treatment option for health anxiety involves psychotherapy and medications, or sometimes a combination of both.
The most common type of psychotherapy used for health anxiety is CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy.
CBT helps the person to change their negative thoughts and beliefs with behavioral modification strategies. For example, the psychiatrist will address your impulsive habit of checking everybody’s signs for illness. It also helps to educate the individual in natural changes of somatic sensations such as pain, vibration, temperature, and touch.
Medications like SSRIs, serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and SNRIs, serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, are used as a treatment option for health anxiety.
Please note that a psychiatrist can help you understand which treatment option is best for your health anxiety disorder.
This blog aims to provide education and hope to the people dealing with health anxiety, that with the right support and proper treatment, beating health anxiety is completely possible.
What’s the Duration of Health Anxiety Illness?
There is no set duration for the illness. Some people recover in months, others might take longer.
The recovery rate in people with high socioeconomic status is higher. Some research also states that people with personal disorders might find it harder to recover, but more research is needed to confirm this.
As somatic symptom disorder is new, few stats are available, and more work needs to be done on this domain for a better understanding of causes and treatment options.
Best Online Telepsychiatry Services for Health Anxiety in the USA:
Health anxiety is common. It’s okay, accept it and stop stressing. If you think you or any of your loved ones are suffering from it, the clinically proven treatment, sometimes psychotherapy only or other times psychotherapy combined with medication, can help the individual overcome the disease and start living a quality life.
Digipsych provides telepsychiatry services for health anxiety across six states in the USA. If health anxiety is impairing your life, click now to schedule your online session.
Conclusion:
Health anxiety means worrying persistently about your health. It affects a person’s daily, social, and professional life because of their fear, impulsive talking about health, symptoms, and their constant visits to the doctor.
Thinking too much about health, excessive searching for symptoms, avoiding social activities, and spending too much on labs and doctor visits can affect a person’s daily life and relationships.
You can treat the disease with self-care, daily journaling, and getting back to normal activities to avoid health worries. If these self-care steps for health anxiety don’t work, you can go for clinical treatment options for health anxiety, including psychotherapy, medications, or a combination of both.
If a person experiences health anxiety, it’s always best to get professional mental health support.
Today, online telepsychiatry services have made healthcare more accessible and comfortable. You can overcome your disease from the comfort of your home without visiting your doctor again and again, or taking leave from your work, or disturbing your family schedule. Just schedule the online meeting and treat your disease with ease and compassion.
FAQs:
How to stop health anxiety as a parent?
Try not to express your health concerns in front of your kids. Do breathing exercises, health journaling, gym, or walk to reduce your stress and distract your mind. If these self-care steps don’t work, choose online telepsychiatry services with a professional mental health expert to treat the disease and regain control of your life.
How to deal with OCD and health anxiety together?
CBT therapy can help deal with both OCD and health anxiety. If the symptoms are worse, a psychiatrist can combine therapy with medication for better results and a thorough recovery.
Can health anxiety cause fake symptoms?
Anxiety produces physical reactions in the body such as pain, chest tightness, dizziness, and headache, etc. These symptoms may feel like a real disease to the person suffering from health anxiety, while they’re just a stress response. If you stop taking stress and worrying about your body, these symptoms will resolve.
Can health anxiety make you feel ill all the time?
Constant fear and stress can make you feel dizzy, weak, and tired every time, even if your medical reports are normal.
Does googling symptoms make health anxiety worse?
Googling each and every symptom increases anxiety. People sometimes misinterpret online information and relate it in a way that’s not scientifically proven. This increases or even worsens existing anxiety issues. That’s why, if you feel any issue, it’s always wise just to take an idea from online information and let the qualified doctor make the diagnosis.