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How To Deal With Health Anxiety

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Do A Daily Or Routine Meditation

How To Deal With Health Anxiety and Hypochondria

While this takes some practice to do successfully, mindful meditation, when done regularly, can eventually help you train your brain to dismiss anxious thoughts when they arise.

If sitting still and concentrating is difficult, try starting with yoga, or walking meditation. There are many free guided meditations on apps like InsightTimer that can help you get started.

How To Overcome Health Anxiety: 3 Helpful Tips

Health anxiety is an obsessive and often irrational worry about suffering from serious medical conditions. It is more formally known as illness anxiety, and used to be known as hypochondriasis.

Someone who suffers from health anxiety will obsess over their health: from their normal body functions to contracting illnesses and diseases. They may frequently visit their physician or spend large amounts of time reading about their symptoms and possible conditions.

In severe cases, health anxiety can become disruptive to a persons life. It can interfere with their daily activities, hurt their work performance, and even cause strain in relationships. Fortunately, there are ways that you can cope with your health anxiety, including:

  • Changing your focus of attention
  • Practicing mindfulness
  • Challenging your worrisome thoughts

Read on to learn more about each of these coping techniques in further detail alongside treatment options for health anxiety.

How To Prepare For Exposure Therapy

Preparing yourself for exposure therapy can be a nerve wracking experience. After all, youâre going in for a treatment that will require you to confront the things that you fear.

Meditating for a few minutes before going to your session can help you remain calm throughout the process. It may also help to say some coping statements for anxiety to yourself before and after therapy.

Keeping a therapy journal is also useful because it will show your progress. Understanding how youâre improving and what else you need to work on can motivate you to keep going with therapy. If youâre feeling especially anxious, you can attach an anxious thoughts breakdown worksheet to your journal so that you can identify your anxious thoughts before, during, and after therapy.

Lastly, itâs best to have a support system in the form of family or friends that will help you throughout the experience.

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Tips For Coping With An Anxiety Disorder

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Having occasional feelings of anxiety is a normal part of life, but people with anxiety disorders experience frequent and excessive anxiety, fear, terror and panic in everyday situations. These feelings are unhealthy if they affect your quality of life and prevent you from functioning normally.

Common symptoms of anxiety disorders include:

  • Feeling nervous
  • A sense of impending panic, danger or doom
  • Increased heart rate
  • Obsessively thinking about the panic trigger

These feelings of anxiety and panic can interfere with daily activities and be difficult to control. They are out of proportion to the actual danger and can cause you to avoid places or situations.

You should see your health care provider if your anxiety is affecting your life and relationships. Your provider can help rule out any underlying physical health issue before seeing a mental health professional.

While most people with anxiety disorders need psychotherapy or medications to get anxiety under control, lifestyle changes and coping strategies also can make a difference.

Here are 11 tips for coping with an anxiety disorder:

  • Keep physically active. Develop a routine so that you’re physically active most days of the week. Exercise is a powerful stress reducer. It can improve your mood and help you stay healthy. Start out slowly, and gradually increase the amount and intensity of your activities.
  • Learn more about anxiety management:

    What Causes Hypochondria

    Psychology Infographic : How to Deal with Anxiety

    It is not clear why people have hypochondria, but it is more common in people who:

    • have had major stress, illness or a death in the family
    • were neglected or abused as a child
    • have a serious physical illness
    • have a mental health issue such as anxiety, depression, a compulsive disorder or a psychotic illness
    • have a personality that tends to make everything seem worse than it is

    Certain activities can trigger an episode of serious concern in someone who is susceptible to hypochondriasis, including:

    • reading about diseases on the internet
    • watching something on television
    • knowing someone with a serious medical condition
    • feeling unwell or noticing lumps or bumps

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    Create A Bedtime Routine

    If you cant talk yourself into a calmer mindset before bed, the right bedtime routine might get you there. It is not possible to go from our energetic, productivity-focused days to sleep in the blink of an eye, says Dr. Robbins. Sleep takes time. She recommends setting aside at least 30 minutes to wind down.

    My favorite way to unwind is to take a shower, do my skin care routine, meditate for 10 minutes, then read a book until Im ready to sleep, says Kelly Smith, yoga and meditation teacher and host of the Mindful in Minutes podcast.

    Make A Sustained Mental Effort To Tolerate Risk

    Sometimes people have anxiety about a health condition that is realistic for them. For example, someone with a family history of a certain cancer may worry excessively about getting that cancer. Similarly, someone with a history of heavy smoking may worry about getting lung disease. So how can you cope with those situations?

    Working to tolerate some risk is part of the solution. Health anxiety thrives when we have no tolerance for risk. This means that the more we accept even negative possibilities, the less anxiety we will have. Accepting these risks involves making a conscious effort to give up hope of guaranteed health. None of us are guaranteed good health, so accepting negative possibilities is just accepting reality.

    RELATED: Accepting Things As They Are: Why and How to Do It

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    What Kind Of Anxiety Disorder Do You Have

    As with every health issue, an accurate diagnosis is essential. A few common anxiety disorders include:

    • Generalized anxiety disorder: A pattern of excessive worry about a variety of issues on most days for at least six months, often accompanied by physical symptoms, such as muscle tension, a hammering heart, or dizziness.
    • Social anxiety disorder: Feeling significant anxiety in social situations or when called on to perform in front of others, such as in public speaking.
    • Phobias: A particular animal, insect, object, or situation causes substantial anxiety.
    • Panic disorder: Panic attacks are sudden, intense episodes of heart-banging fear, breathlessness, and dread. Its the feeling youd have if you just missed being hit by a Mack truck but for people with panic disorder there is no Mack truck, says Dr. Beresin.

    What Is Health Anxiety

    How to cope with anxiety | Olivia Remes | TEDxUHasselt

    Health anxiety is worry or concern about having a medical condition that is disproportionate to the actual risk. Sometimes health worries are the only topic someone is anxious about. For others, health is just one of several focuses of worry. At its worst, health anxiety can be quite impairing.

    If worries about your health dont stop you from enjoying your life, then it probably doesnt need to be addressed. However, if you notice some of the following, you might consider addressing the problem:

    • Frequent doctor visits or emails to medical providers
    • Repeatedly checking your body for signs of illness
    • Skipping necessary medical visits due to anxiety
    • Significant time spent researching possible significant health conditions
    • Asking loved ones for reassurance over and over about your health
    • Frequent checking or awareness of heart rate, blood pressure, etc.
    • Avoiding people with serious illness, due to fear of catching it from them or fear of seeing the illness effects
    • Preoccupation with ones health or frequently discussing ones health

    If health anxiety has gotten out of control for you, consider using any of the following strategies that are commonly used in cognitive-behavioral therapy for this problem:

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    Does Testing Ease The Nerves

    While testing may seem like a quick, easy way to alleviate health-related worries, for people in whom health anxiety has become uncontrollable, testing rarely provides lasting relief. “Repeated testing is unable to reassure people with health anxiety people don’t feel calmed when they get new information that disproves their fear,” says Dr. Scarella. Doctors often fall into this trap, thinking “What’s the harm in doing a test to reassure this person?” It seems like a reasonable approach. But, ultimately, no amount of testing ends the worry, Dr. Scarella says, and in fact, it may only serve to reinforce the anxiety.

    While some people constantly consult their doctor and request testing, in other cases health anxiety causes people to avoid the doctor entirely, which can lead to treatable conditions going undiagnosed. “There are real risks in not going to the doctor for example, not getting appropriate cancer screenings,” says Dr. Scarella. This avoidance can become very dangerous when someone has a real condition but is afraid to get checked out for fear of bad newssuch as a person who has appendicitis but puts off going to the doctor.

    How The Pandemic Is Impacting Health Anxiety

    In March 2020, I felt surprisingly calm and prepared for this level of panic. It was like a lifetime of health anxiety had made me uniquely qualified to navigate this new normal. Denise R., a recent heart transplant recipient from Northern California, felt the same way monitoring her vitals and wearing a mask in certain situations was already something she had been doing since her transplant surgery in 2018. ” 2020, to me, wasn’t super anxiety-producing, because now everybody’s wearing a mask everywhere, everybody’s kind of joining me, everybody’s elbow bumping instead of hugging,” she told Health. “Everybody was conscious about how to respect other people with illness issues.”

    But as the pandemic persisted and shifted, so did many people’s concerns about their health, their bodies, and their ways of copingmine included. The experts I interviewed for this piece shared anecdotes from their practices though some patients experienced similar feelings to what I felt at the beginning of the pandemic , others experienced mounting anxiety about getting sick or dying while home alone, which I eventually began to feel, too.

    That can be tough advice for people with health anxiety and OCD, whose treatment often includes facing fears around things like illness or contamination in a safe and controlled setting.

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    How Is Illness Anxiety Disorder Diagnosed

    To diagnose illness anxiety disorder, healthcare providers refer to the criteria listed in the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , 5th edition. Your provider may make a diagnosis or they may refer you to a behavioral health specialist, such as a psychologist or psychiatrist.

    A persistent fear about having a serious illness or developing one is the top symptom of illness anxiety disorder. Your provider may diagnose illness anxiety disorder if you have health anxiety for six months or longer even after tests show that youre not sick.

    Helpful Tips To Overcome Health Anxiety

    Copings skills to use to cope with anxiety about coronavirus ...

    Its normal to be concerned about your health if you notice something unusual. But for some people, that concern is persistent and intense even if theyre otherwise healthy.

    Once called hypochondria, health anxiety creates unwarranted concern or worry, and it can make you fearful of having a serious health condition.

    Health anxiety is a type of mental health condition, and it can sometimes cause significant distress. Its important to know that health anxiety can be treated, and Psychology Beverly Hills can help.

    Our psychologists and therapists are here to offer a few helpful tips to manage and overcome health anxiety so that you can enjoy your life more fully.

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    When Is My Anxiety Harmful

    Identifying what sort of anxiety youre dealing with can be somewhat challenging because how ones body reacts to perceived danger can be entirely different compared to another person.

    Its likely you heard anxiety as a blanket term for that general feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease. Its often a feeling in response to an upcoming event that has an uncertain outcome.

    Every person deals with it at one time or another, because its part of our brains response to a perceived danger even if that danger isnt real.

    That said, there are times anxiety can get serious and turn into anxiety attacks that initially feel manageable and then gradually build up over a few hours.

    Quick Ways To Cope With Anxiety

    If your anxiety is sporadic and getting in the way of your focus or tasks, there are some quick natural remedies that could help you take control of the situation.

    If your anxiety is focused around a situation, such as being worried about an upcoming event, you may notice the symptoms are short-lived and usually subside after the anticipated event takes place.

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    Illness Anxiety Disorder Can Come With Other Health Conditions

    IAD isnt always accompanied by other medical conditions, but when it is, its commonly alongside obsessive-compulsive disorder because of the ruminating nature of ones thoughts and depression.

    People get very down because they get stuck in the loop of not being able to master their symptoms and thinking that theyre dying of a horrible disease every day, Kirren said. It completely drains the life out of people so they withdraw into themselves.

    Panic disorder is another common condition that some people with IAD share.

    A smaller percentage of people with IAD will have body dysmorphic disorder, which is the obsessive focus on an imagined or minor flaw in appearance. These patients could believe they have a lump in their breast, for example, and constantly monitor it despite nothing being there.

    Some people may have substance abuse disorders, but this is rare, Kirren said, because most patients are scared of losing control, so they dont take medications as theyre not sure what itll do to their body.

    Then theres the fear of death, medically known as thanatophobia.

    Death anxiety is not a recognized disorder in the DSM, but psychologists say many IAD patients core fear is death itself. For others, its suffering.

    What theyre doing with this worry is theyre trying to get rid of uncertainty, Cassiday said. Because they cant tolerate it, they want to handle that with a better safe than sorry strategy by just focusing on the worst outcome.

    Focus On What You Can Change

    How to Deal With Anxiety – The Step-by-Step Guide

    Many times anxiety stems from fearing things that havent even happened and may never occur. For example, even though everything is okay, you may still worry about potential issues, such as losing your job, becoming ill, or the safety of your loved ones.

    Life can be unpredictable and no matter how hard you try, you cant always control what happens. However, you can decide how you are going to deal with the unknown. You can turn your anxiety into a source of strength by letting go of fear and focusing on gratitude.

    Replace your fears by changing your attitude about them. For example, stop fearing to lose your job and instead focus on how grateful you are to have a job. Come to work determined to do your best. Instead of fearing for your loved one’s safety, spend time with them, or express your appreciation of them. With a little practice, you can learn to pick up a more positive outlook.

    At times, anxiety may actually be caused by a real circumstance in your life. Perhaps youre in a situation where it is realistic to be worried about losing your job due to high company layoffs or talks of downsizing.

    In this situation, taking action may be the answer to reducing your anxiety. For example, you may need to update your resume and start job searching.

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    Is It Health Anxiety

    So how do you know if you are sick, or if you’re just anxious about being sick? Here are some telltale signs of health anxiety:

    • You have no symptoms, but still fear that you are sick.
    • When a doctor reassures you that you don’t have an illness or a test shows you’re healthy, it doesn’t relieve your nervousness.
    • You find yourself constantly seeking health information online.
    • If you read a news story about a disease, you start worrying that you have it.
    • Your worries about your health are interfering with your life, family, work, or hobbies and activities.

    Most often, people with health anxiety have a pattern of this behavior that a primary care physician may begin to notice over time. “I talk to people who call their doctor five, six, or seven times a week,” says Dr. Scarella. “Every three or four months they may go to their doctor looking for an HIV test despite the fact that they haven’t had any new sexual partners or any experiences that would elevate their risk.”

    Identify And Learn To Manage Your Triggers

    You can identify triggers on your own or with a therapist. Sometimes they can be obvious, like caffeine, drinking alcohol, or smoking. Other times they can be less obvious.

    Long-term problems, such as financial or work-related situations, may take some time to figure out is it a due date, a person, or the situation? This may take some extra support, through therapy or with friends.

    When you do figure out your trigger, you should try to limit your exposure if you can. If you cant limit it like if its due to a stressful work environment that you cant currently change using other coping techniques may help.

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    Write Down Your Thoughts

    Writing down whats making you anxious gets it out of your head and can make it less daunting.

    These relaxation tricks are particularly helpful for those who experience anxiety sporadically. They may also work well with someone who has generalized anxiety disorder when theyre in a bind!

    However, if you suspect you have GAD, quick coping methods shouldnt be the only kind of treatment you employ. Youll want to find long-term strategies to help lessen the severity of symptoms and even prevent them from happening.

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