Health anxiety

You may be experiencing health anxiety if you worry about your health a lot of the time when there is no medical reason to do this, and how you lead your life is affected by this. You may often seek comfort or reassurance from other people that everything is all right. This may be from family, friends or your doctor.

You may find you are checking your body for symptoms, and that the more you check the more you seem to notice strange feelings or lumps in your body. You may avoid certain activities as if you were ill, and you may avoid anything to do with illness. This may include watching medical programmes on the television.

On the other hand, some people with health anxieties find themselves drawn to any information about illnesses and can begin to notice the signs of such illness in themselves.

There are many reasons why someone worries too much about their health. You may be going through a particularly stressful period of your life. There may have been illness or death in your family, or another family member may have worried a lot about your health when you were young.

People with health anxiety have their normal day-to-day life badly affected by their worries about heatlh. This often continues despite tests and reassurances that no medical condition justifies this concern.

If you find yourself with many troublesome worries about your health you may be experiencing health anxiety.

Below are the thoughts of two people who suffer from health anxiety. That means that they worry a lot about their health. This focus on health makes their symptoms seem worse. Much of their time is taken up with these worries and reassurance from a doctor that nothing is wrong doesn’t seem to help for long.

“I am always at the doctor’s surgery. That is because I often worry about having something wrong with me. Last week it was tingling in my hands and arms. I thought it was the first sign of something like multiple sclerosis. The doctor did some tests and said it was nothing to worry about. At first I felt better, but this week I have had a headache too, so maybe I should go back just to make sure.”

“I often have worrying symptoms that must be the sign of something serious. The doctors have found nothing yet. I make sure that I rest a lot so I don’t strain myself. I don’t travel away from my own town, because I want to be near our own doctors. My wife tells me nothing is wrong but that only makes me feel better for a few minutes. I just feel I must keep checking how I am every day.”
 

Anxiety of any sort can affect us in at least four different ways. It affects:

The way we feel

The way we think

The way our body works

The way we behave

In order to check out whether you may be suffering from health anxiety, check the symptoms below and consider which of these you experience regularly:

How you feel

• Anxious, nervous, worried, frightened
• A feeling of dread
• Tense, stressed, uptight, on edge, unsettled
• Unreal, strange, woozy, detached
• Panicky
• Feeling tired or unwell

How you think

• Constant worrying about health
• Imagining the worst and dwelling on it
• Thoughts about illnesses and symptoms
• Concentrating on parts of your body and symptoms
• Thinking that the doctor may be able to help
• Thinking that if you don’t worry, you are tempting fate
• Worrying that the doctor may have missed something
• A belief that unless you keep an eye on things you may miss signs of a serious illness
• Beliefs that you may have something terribly wrong but you don’t want to think about it
• Thinking that your family or friend may know if this symptom seems serious
• Wish you could consult the doctor but fear they now think of you as a time waster or do not take you seriously

Common thoughts

• “This must be cancer”
• “I feel I am unwell”
• “Surely a headache like this can’t be just stress”
• “Doctors often miss illnesses despite examinations and tests”
• “That tingling seems like it may be the first sign of a stroke”
• “I may die if I don’t do something”
• “Some new symptoms have come since I last spoke with the doctor. It may be more serious than they thought.”

What you do

• Go to the doctor’s surgery very frequently
• Ask family and friends for reassurance about your symptoms
• Frequently check your body for symptoms
• Focus on one area of the body for changing sensations
• Avoid any information on serious illnesses (for example, turn the TV off if a hospital programme is on)
• Seek out any information on serious illness, and check for those symptoms (books, internet, TV)
• Act as if you were ill (for example, avoiding exertion or exercise, keeping near to home, or resting)

These symptoms are typical in all types of anxiety:

• Heart pounds, races or skips a beat
• Chest feels tight or painful
• Tingling or numbness in toes, fingers or arms
• Stomach churning, ‘butterflies’
• Having to go to the toilet frequently
• Feeling jumpy or restless
• Headache
• Tense muscles
• Body aching
• Sweating
• Breathing changes
• Dizzy, light headed
• ‘Odd’ sensations in various parts of the body

If you are regularly suffering some or all of these symptoms, then it is possible that you are suffering from health anxiety.

You can find support at NHS Talking Therapies and contact us using the methods on this page.