Do You Suffer From Health Anxiety?

Introduction

Do you know someone who worries about even the most minor physical symptoms (such as a cough or headache), and thinks that they are as a sign of illness (such as tuberculosis)? Their worry might drive them to constantly talk about their symptoms, conduct a thorough medical investigation for something typically harmless as a common cold, rely excessively on medication, frequently visit the doctor, and go from one doctor to the next in hope of getting a conclusive diagnosis of a serious medical condition.

If you do know someone who is exhibiting these concerns (or you experience these concerns yourself), they’re probably suffering from what is known as ‘health anxiety’. Health anxiety can be understood as an extreme worry about one’s health. When you experience health anxiety, you might often reject a minor medical diagnosis (or even the lack of a diagnosis); instead, you might insist that you have a more serious illness. This belief can make you worry about yourself despite a professional's assurance that you are (or will soon be) alright. This worry, in turn, pushes you to constantly seek help or advice from a professional.

Health anxiety involves misunderstanding, or misinterpreting, the meaning of ‘normal’ bodily sensations. Often, situations that are slightly stressful might produce harmless adaptive changes in your heart rate, breathing, balance and/or blood pressure. A person with health anxiety starts to often pay a considerable amount of attention to such changes, and thinks that these changes are an indicator of an underlying serious medical problem (“My heart is racing, it must mean that I am going to get a heart attack”). What naturally follows is a lot of worry and anxiety about one’s well-being. However, when you worry, your body responds via a series of bodily changes (thinking that you might get a heart attack might make you worry for your life, and this in turn will cause your heart to race even faster). In other words, a vicious cycle is created, and you may get trapped because your bodily sensations cause you to continuously worry about your health.

Differentiating between good and bad

While some amount of worrying about your health may be ‘good’ - in that it may motivate you to take care of yourself, to eat right, and to seek medical guidance when your health deteriorates - when this worry becomes disproportionate (being sure that you have Dengue only because you feel weak and feverish), ill-founded (you haven’t been experiencing any of the other symptoms of Dengue) and highly frequent (you think that you have Dengue whenever you feel weak or have a fever), it becomes a matter of concern. You may no longer be able to carry out your routine tasks, and may spend hours of your time looking for reassurance from friends, family, or even physicians. It is also likely that your relationships with others may suffer as a result of your constant worrying despite assurance.

A few examples of thoughts, feelings and behaviours associated with health anxiety are as follows

Thoughts

• "I am sure this is cancer."
• "I still have symptoms. That means I am really unwell."
• "Maybe the doctors are unable to diagnose my problem."

Feelings

• Feelings of anxiety and apprehension
• Feeling restless
• Constantly feeling tired and tensed

Behaviour

• Frequent visits to different physicians and frequent medical investigations
• Seeking reassurance from friends, family, doctors

If you, or anyone you know, is currently experiencing the symptoms of health anxiety, it is strongly advisable to seek help from a psychological professional. Talking to a therapist can help you view your bodily changes in a more realistic manner and thereby bring your worry in control.