Managing health anxiety

"There must be something wrong with me, there must be – why else would I be feeling all these strange feelings within my body?"

If you resonate with this, you experience the regular repetitive thoughts that create health anxiety. Sometimes this starts with an ailment that causes you to lose trust in your body. You begin to perceive everything as another medical issue. Other times it’s a result of secondary trauma from something you’ve read or heard.

The abundance of information can amplify, or cause health anxiety as rare stories seem like a common occurrence. Twenty years ago, adults were somewhat like innocent children with regard to health horror stories. Nowadays it is like taking a child to a playground and making them watch 10 people fall off the high climbing frame. Awareness has moved from a vague understanding to an in-your-face experience that leaves you feeling you’re next in line.

Sometimes health anxiety is so pronounced people spend nights in the hospital hooked up to all the monitors, only to be told there is nothing wrong. You might feel as though you have had all the tests, yet they’ve found nothing. Surely, they are missing something? So, you Google regularly to try and find the answers yourself.

If health anxiety negatively affects your life and feels unmanageable, there are some things you can do.

Techniques to manage health anxiety

If you have concerns about your health, a doctor is the first point of call. I urge you to insist on tests if your doctor is reluctant to perform them. When the tests show everything is good, the following techniques can help you to find confidence in your body again. To trust in your immune system and regain belief in your own strength and health.

1. Turn off the screen

It is no secret that the thoughts in our heads are manipulated by app algorithms. When you read information, your screen will send you more of the same. If you regularly click on articles about a person’s experience with a particular illness, you will see more related articles. This gives a warped representation of the virulence of the ailment. Alongside this, your brain cannot differentiate between real and imagined experiences. As you become emotionally involved in someone else’s experience your brain can take on the belief that it is your experience.

Make the choice to stop reading about it and take control of your thoughts. As a result, you will find that you are no longer targeted with health-related articles and the anxiety weakens.

2. Live mindfully and explore the feelings without judgement

You are a human animal with a wide array of emotions and physical feelings. Although designed to take on some human roles, robots are unable to feel. Having feelings is what makes you human. Next time you feel something that would ordinarily concern you, allow it to be there and imagine with positive curiosity what your body is doing that a robot cannot.

Your body does some fascinating things – is it peristalsis for example? The movements of the long circular muscles, primarily the digestive ones, that move food through you without any conscious thought. Sometimes that same progressive wavelike movement occurs in other hollow tubes of your body. Perhaps you feel a muscle contracting or your heart beating. When we cannot feel movements within it is more distraction than anything else.

A distracted mind will not notice the internal goings-on, other times they will take your focus. Spend time getting to know your internal body in an accepting way. Some of the feelings will need remedying, just as you ease a rumbling hungry stomach with some nutritious food, a racing heart (that has been checked and found to be in good order) can be eased with a twenty-minute meditation.

3. Thought-stopping and positive thinking

A few years ago, I had dinner with a friend. She told me about a cancerous patch she had removed from her face. My good friend is a stoic character, she appeared calm. As she talked, I started to panic, I became very aware of myself rubbing a lump on my neck. While she continued to speak my entire focus moved to the lump on my neck as I realised my own habit. Something I did without noticing. In fact, until that moment, I was not consciously aware I even had the lump or that I rubbed it. I became convinced it was a problem.

The fear prevented me from booking a doctor’s appointment for a long time, but when I did, the doctor (who could barely feel the lump) told me it was not a concern. However, she booked me a blood test to make sure. The blood test results were spot-on healthy.

Over the next year or two, I continued to “check” the lump. Make sure it was not growing, checked the internet to make sure I knew exactly what a cancerous lump feels like so I could check whether mine matched and so on…

I felt convinced the doctor did not perform enough checks, surely, she should have sent me for a scan, done more, checked more, and not been so blasé. Health anxiety at its finest. Despite my hypnotherapy work, I am also human, and it can take me a while to process things too. Once I recognised what I was doing, I made the conscious decision to stop.

I accepted that blood tests show abnormalities and chose to believe I am perfectly healthy. Every time I felt my hand go up towards my neck, I made the choice to put it back down. At first, it took some time to change the habit but choosing to take control of myself changed everything. The anxiety is no longer there, I know that I am healthy, and would you believe it – the lump is gone! I imagine my constant checking created the lump in the first place.

Take control

When you make the choice to stop specific thoughts, you take control. The first step is to recognise yourself as healthy. Make the decision to trust the judgement of the doctor, your body, and its workings. Align this decision with your actions. You are healthy therefore you no longer need to research the ailment. Alongside stopping the research, scroll past any articles that pop up due to the algorithms.

When you notice the physical feeling that you attribute to the ailment, accept it as a normal part of a working, functioning body. Work on your interception: are you hungry, thirsty, tired, overwhelmed, overstimulated, burnt out, etc. or is your body performing a normal internal function?

Choose positive curiosity above fear. Your body is a wonder. It functions in a miraculous way, and it is functioning. Notice the difference between a machine, a robotic body, and you. Know that nothing within us is computer-operated, we cannot input a function and have an identical output every time. You will feel different feelings within your body, choose to experience the feelings in the wonderful way a child might a release of wind!