Health anxiety is increasingly being triggered by what people are coming across online. Social media access and the increase in targeted advertisements promoting 'well-being' products whilst amplifying health problems with the sale of quack treatments, has fuelled a rise in health anxiety that is being presented at therapy and counselling sessions.
Health anxiety can be associated with panic attacks and conditions such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Individuals with health anxiety may have a range of symptoms and behaviours and these may include the following:
- An increase in 'internal (body)' scanning, meaning that individuals may feel that they are 'in their heads' and just focussing on any changes in or on their bodies. This internal body scanning may then trigger the need to Google any bodily sensations which then cycles the individual back into the fear and anxiety loop. One thing to remember is that safety or checking behaviours simply strengthen health anxiety.
- A heightened generalised anxiety state meaning that individuals may feel tight muscles, a tightness in their chest (which they may perceive as a heart attack and is a misinterpretation of the stress and tension that they are feeling), tense shoulder muscles and being more sensitive to emotional swings and triggers.
- Flitting between different health conditions and individuals with health anxiety may ruminate over more than one health condition. For example, they may get stuck on focussing on a range of core health fears that come up time and time again at points in their lives. To demonstrate this, a recent client that I worked with had a health anxiety focus on cancer and strokes and these two topics came up time and time again in her life when she was under pressure or when she had not had enough sleep.
- Repeated requests for General Practitioner meetings that don't seem to show up any major health issues, though the person concerned may continue to research and believe that the issue is not being picked up.
- Withdrawing from carrying out physical activities because they fear that their body will not be able to cope. This behavioural change, much like the Google scanning and checking simply re-enforce the health anxiety and give credence and weight to the health anxiety generating thoughts.
- Individuals may also carry out other repeated checks on the perceived health issue through touch. Such checking reduces trust in a belief that they are ok and that they are able to cope. It also gives further fuel to intermediate thoughts related to the health anxiety which go onto strengthen their fears. Examples of secondary or intermediary thoughts may include, "I feel that my heart is beating very fast and this means that my heart is weak and unable to cope". These intermediate thoughts sit on core beliefs that are based on thoughts such as 'I can't cope' or 'I am not safe'. So the chain of thoughts underlying the health anxiety could include the following: I cannot cope ➔ My heart is faulty and there is a problem with it ➔ I feel that my heart is beating very fast and this means that my heart is weak and unable to cope. (It should be noted that these thoughts are self re-enforcing).
Counselling work can help individuals to explore possible roots of the fears, the historical and environmental context in which they developed versus the present moment, the identification of behaviours and actions that can further entrench health anxieties and useful techniques to break the anxiety cycle.
Having health anxiety does not mean that your future is irreparably changed. Millions of people live with the condition and have worked through it with counselling, medication and relaxation techniques, so that it does not define who they are and how they live their lives.