Health anxiety- how your internal alarm may be doing its job too well
Have you ever met someone who, despite your efforts to reassure them, interprets any small delay in responding to them as a national emergency? They send you a text and perhaps you are working or driving, or its late, so you don’t respond straight away. And then you forget, or something else comes up, and before you know it, they think something terrible has happened to you. You get another text, then they are worked up even more, while you are just going about your day.
You are fine- but they are not.
This is a bit like having health anxiety, with your nervous system being the over-reacting friend. Once unhelpfully labeled as ‘hypochondria’, health anxiety is the experience of fearfully focusing on sensations that are then perceived as harmful- causing your brain to interpret them as threatening, which makes you fear the worst. This fear can then inadvertently fuel the very symptoms you are worrying about- causing a vicious cycle which leaves you anxious, miserable and preoccupied with what’s wrong with your body.
What health anxiety feels like
And the physical sensations that accompany the anxiety can have a life of their own. On top of the worrisome symptoms that provoke health anxiety, you may feel tight, tense, shaky, a knot in your stomach, jittery, racing, tired but wired- and the thoughts that go with it may be along the lines of ‘Is this serious? What if I never get better? Why can’t the doctors find out whats wrong? Am I broken?’ Or even ‘what if I’m dying?’
This constant focus can cause you to mentally scan and hyper fixate on sensations that are harmless and neutral- but your brain interprets them through a lens of fear and threat, meaning they feel dangerous, provoking even more worry.
Then the researching - googling symptoms, getting tests and scans- of course, its really important to rule out anything underlying, but going down internet rabbit holes never helped anyone with health anxiety to recover.
So whats going on? The answer is within us all- and its called interoception.
We all have an internal sense thats running in the background, monitoring internal bodily signals from temperature, breathing and heartbeat, to tiredness and comfort levels. This is called interoception, and its usable a useful tool that helps you to stay safe, by making sure you respond appropriately to cues of hunger, thirst, cold etc.
But when your interoception gets dialled up, and when your nervous system is quick to detect threat, you can unconsciously perceive normal levels of discomfort- or even neutral signals- as potential danger. A bit like your friend who freaks out when you don’t text them back immediately.
How health anxiety becomes self reinforcing
If you notice a sensation that causes an anxiety reaction, the anxiety will cause more physical symptoms such as a racing heart, shaky hands or shallow breathing. This gives you even more uncomfortable sensations to notice, causing more anxiety- and so on. The checking, scanning, googling and seeking reassurance feels like it should help, by ‘getting to the bottom of it’, but actually feeds the cycle by confirming to your brain that there is something with being alarmed about.
Why health anxiety happens- and why its not your fault
If you have spent time in your life where danger felt unpredictable, when you couldn’t let yourself relax, or you didn’t feel safe enough, you lived with chronic stress, or have had previous periods of illness- or perhaps you have had loved ones with serious illness- your nervous system, being the intelligent, adaptable thing that it is, had learnt to monitor closely to feel safer. We can acknowledge that is was a once helpful protective response, whilst understanding that this feature has now outgrown its usefulness. Like appreciating your friend’s concern, whilst knowing that they are over reacting.
If you have health anxiety- here’s one small thing you can do today
When you notice an uncomfortable sensation- instead of believing all of your thoughts about it, pause before interpreting it. Can you see the story you attach to it? Can you take a step back in your mind, so you don’t need to buy in to the story? Next- name it neutrally. ‘There is a sensation in my chest/ stomach/ throat’.
Take a deep, slow breathe in through your nose, and an even slower breath out. Bring your attention to somewhere in your body that feels ok- maybe your feet feel warm, or your hands feel relaxed. You have just taught your brain that there is a space between noticing a sensation, and catastrophising about it. This pause is where the magic happens.
How Hypnotherapy can help with health anxiety
If you have health anxiety, you don’t have to live with it. Hypnotherapy can help to pinpoint, unwind and replace the unhelpful, overprotective unconscious patterns that drive your alarm response. Rather than just managing symptoms, Hypnotherapy can help recalibrate your threshold for threat- so your nervous system can build trust in your body again.
Hypnotherapy can help you to release the unconscious narrative that your body is broken and untrustworthy, and replace this story with a more accurate, up to date and helpful interpretation.
Here’s what one of my clients has to say about working with me- “Ella worked with me on a long standing health anxiety and I have to be honest, she did more in a couple of sessions than anything else I have tried over the last 15 years to manage it. She's worked with me to change the way my body and mind responds to anxiety symptoms and the difference is night and day.”
If you have health anxiety and you’d like some help to let it go, support is just a phone call away. Book a free discovery call here.
