Imagine that your throat feels scratchy, but instead of assuming that it’s the start of a cold, you instantly jump to the conclusion that it’s throat cancer. Less than a minute passes and you’ve become convinced of the worst possible outcome and started planning your funeral. It might sound dramatic, but if you experience health anxiety, the chances are that you can relate.
Health anxiety is where you have a fear or fixation of having or developing a serious illness, and the slightest pain or twinge can lead you to catastrophize that there’s something seriously wrong. You might feel like you’re in a never-ending cycle of spotting ‘symptoms’ and worrying about them, which can be exhausting and debilitating.
Health anxiety definitely isn’t a new thing, but research shows that cases of it have increased exponentially over the past 30 years. This could be because it’s easier than ever to look up our symptoms and self-diagnose, thanks to the internet.
According to research, 50 million health-related searches are made every year on Google. While it can be helpful to access health information online, it’s also important to remember that there’s a lot of misinformation out there and, in some cases, Googling symptoms can actually fuel your anxiety and make it worse.
Lola* has lived with health anxiety for over 20 years. Her main symptoms are worrying incessantly about her health, checking her body for signs of illness and Googling her ‘symptoms’, which causes her to “spiral”. Her anxiety tends to strike when she’s relaxing or going to bed, which can make sleeping difficult. Lola can pinpoint the moment that her health anxiety began; she was 18 and sitting her A-Level exams.
I mistook what I now know are classic symptoms of an anxiety attack (heart racing, shortness of breath and light-headedness) as a heart attack. I had my mum rush me to A&E, convinced that I was mid heart-attack to find out I was fine, nothing was wrong with me.
Although the doctors confirmed that everything looked normal, Lola wasn’t convinced. She went back to her GP seven times and had three ECGs over the space of six months. Every ECG came back clear, but Lola still didn’t feel reassured and expected her heart to give out at any moment.
Lola has had many battles with health anxiety throughout her life but nothing triggered her fears more than the COVID pandemic. Everywhere she looked or went, conversations about COVID were happening. There was an expanding list of symptoms to ‘look out for’ on the news, and in the early days, a rising death toll. This meant that the smallest cough would send her into a tailspin, fearing for her life.
[.custom-quotes]"[.custom-quotes]My worries didn’t stop with my own health. I became obsessed with the health of my loved ones, too. Any coughing or mention of a headache, I would jump to the worst-case scenario, asking them if they were okay every five minutes.[.custom-quotes]"[.custom-quotes]
Health anxiety has had a big impact on Lola’s life and the way that she lives. A few years ago, she fainted while having her blood taken, which isn’t particularly uncommon, but following this, she developed a fear of fainting. Lola became obsessed with the idea that she might faint while behind the wheel, and as a result she no longer drives as much as she used to, and avoids motorways when she can help it.
"I add an extra 30 minutes to every drive because I pull over at least twice because my anxiety leaves me light-headed. It’s not fun."
To support herself in managing her anxiety, Lola tries to avoid doom-scrolling on the internet, which could lead her to finding new illnesses and becoming convinced that she’s experiencing the symptoms. She’s also blocked certain words on her social media, so that she doesn’t come across triggering posts that could make her panic.
Another tool that she finds helpful is to laugh at her anxiety. When she’s no longer panicking, she tries to see the funny side of some of the situations that health anxiety gets her into. For instance, she recently woke her husband up at 3am with a tape measure in hand, asking him to measure her left calf as she was convinced that it was larger than her right calf, which could be a sign of DVT.
"Spoiler alert: I didn’t have DVT and it turns out that it’s quite normal for people to have limbs that aren’t identical in size."
Sometimes, Lola can recognise that her health anxiety is rearing its head and causing her to worry, so she can process her thoughts and let them go. But, when she’s got a lot going on in her work or personal life, she struggles to grasp what’s real and what’s not.
"I have learned that health anxiety and me are in it for the long haul. It won’t go away but I can manage the symptoms."
Dan, a CBT therapist at ieso, is a specialist in anxiety disorders with over 3,000 hours of therapy sessions says…
"In my experience working with people with Health Anxiety it can affect people in many ways. Some people may have one specific illness they are very frightened of, whilst others find the focus of their concern shifts rapidly. Many people also find they worry about the health of a loved one, their children, partners, parents and friends."
"When we feel anxious about our health we are inclined to seek reassurance, this helps us feel more in control, and less anxious in the moment. However, as we can never be 100% sure we are ok we find the reassurance doesn’t last, we can find ourselves seeking more and more; checking our bodies, self-diagnosing, and googling our symptoms. This keeps us focused on the content of our worries, meaning we spend more and more of our time preoccupied by our health."
"The good news is that therapy and support can help you become more comfortable with being uncertain. One thing I have found that really helps is to talk about reassurance seeking with those close to you, let them know you’re struggling with your anxiety, and agree how they can best respond to you. This might be to offer emotional support (a cuddle, letting you know they understand your anxious), or helping you distract from your worries, rather than get caught in the loop of providing constant reassurance."
Everyone’s experience of health anxiety is different. Not everyone will have the same symptoms and people are triggered by different things. Triggers can be something internal within us, or something external in our environment.
We all have different bodily sensations that come and go, for instance pins and needles, tingling limbs or ringing ears. We might also have the occasional new symptom like a rash or stomach discomfort. Providing that these things are a one-off, once they’ve disappeared, most people will forget about them and move on, but if you have health anxiety, you might become fixated and convinced that they’re a sign of something sinister.
Things that happen around us or to us can also trigger health anxiety. Here are some examples:
How to manage health anxiety
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