Constant worrying or over-vigilance over bodily symptoms can have a huge impact on our emotional and mental health. Health anxiety is persistent sensory anxiety and physical symptoms. Worrying that you are constantly sick or that you have a difficult disease lurking somewhere in your body can be frightening and stressful. “Health anxiety is much more common than you might think,” says therapist Rebecca Barra, who explains health anxiety. It is much more restrictive and eliminates anxiety.Health anxiety occurs when you feel that you are insecure.” “Worrying, obsessing, and over-vigilant about one’s own health or bodily symptoms and sensations.” This often leads to a vicious cycle of fear, worry about one’s health, and tormenting oneself and one’s health due to constant anxiety.”
Also read: What is health anxiety? Here are the signs
Constantly scanning your body for symptoms and sensations, frequent visits to your healthcare provider for tests, and scanning Google for your symptoms and what they mean are some of the signs of health anxiety. But sometimes our actions can exacerbate our health concerns. Here are some points:
scan: When we look in the body for pain, symptoms, sensations, we find them even if there are none. The reason this happens is because we’ve discovered something when we’ve scanned bodies so far. This sends a signal to the brain that scanning means danger. This danger signal causes pain and sensations in the body.
search: One of the worst ways to deal with health anxiety is to Google your symptoms. When it comes to health concerns, Google and the internet are not on our side. Often, we search the internet for symptoms to try and reassure ourselves, but this creates an even more worrying cycle, constantly seeking reassurance that we are all right.
worry games: This throws us into a game of worry and stress. For some people, rational thinking and trying to reason their worries is helpful, but for many it can be disproportionate and cause anxiety.
