7 Signs You Have Health Anxiety

Anxiety is pervasive and treacherous, and it carries a hefty emotional toll that may eventually wear you down. Anxiety disorders are widely known to be the most common mental disorders—affecting close to 30 percent of adults in the United States. Though several diagnostic types of anxiety disorders are classified by the most current edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, anxiety itself can manifest in numerous ways, and many of the ways it affects individuals are challenging to categorize. A common manifestation of anxiety is frequently referred to as health anxiety.

More Than Worry

Worrying about your health to some extent is normal—but anxiety goes far beyond worry. Anxiety involves pervasive, life-altering patterns of ruminating thoughts, at times accompanied by behaviors (seeking reassurance from others, rituals, etc.) that may help lessen the impact of anxiety. Anxiety can often lead to physical illness as well, and its role in inflammation has been firmly established.

Anxiety is disruptive to everyday routines. It causes its victims to spend astronomical amounts of time and energy trying to put out the fire stemming from their minds. The thoughts that accompany anxiety are constant ongoing battles that sooner or later will leak out into the drudges of daily life—and, without intervention, can take over every action, every relationship, and every breath.

Health Anxiety Warning Signs

Health anxiety goes far beyond efforts to make healthy choices and improve your physical well-being. Health anxiety can become an epidemic in and of itself, suffocating and overpowering its victims if left unchecked. Recognizing some of the common signs that you may be struggling with health anxiety can be crucial to intervening early on—and hopefully stopping the cycle before it becomes unbearable.

1. You have an intense fear that you have or will develop a deadly disease. Health anxiety involves constant thoughts that revolve around developing a dangerous disease. Any twinge, pain, ache, sniffle, or other possible symptom becomes a ticking time bomb in your mind, and you may start attributing very normal physical symptoms to only one horrific outcome. Imagination is a powerful tool, but in the hands of health anxiety, it can quickly convince you the future is frightening.
2. You automatically believe you have it when you hear or read about an illness or disease. The power of suggestion is very real and none more so than with anxiety. If you’re struggling with health anxiety, your brain zeroes in on finding information that supports your ongoing worry. Reading about a new illness, hearing from an acquaintance they have been diagnosed with a certain disease, watching television programs that feature different ailments—all of these can feel as if they’re directly happening to you when paired with health anxiety.
3. You’re constantly looking for reassurance from professionals or loved ones. Needing frequent outside confirmation that you aren’t sick can be a result of health anxiety. However, hearing that your fears are unfounded tends to be a Band-Aid instead of a permanent solution. You may find yourself seeking the same relief over and over again, which can eventually put a strain on your relationships and finances.
4. You avoid doctors, hospitals, and anything related to medical situations. Health anxiety can cause irrational fears that going to the doctor, even for a routine checkup, will reveal a dreadful illness. That trepidation often leads to an avoidance of any possible triggering stimuli.
5. You constantly seek out medical advice. On the flip side, some health anxiety sufferers will return to medical clinics and professionals repeatedly for examinations and tests—even when none of them have been recommended by a physician or medical practitioner. When a victim of health anxiety experiences what they believe to be a symptom of a disease, they will frequently pursue medical checkups in excess, requesting unusual (and often unnecessary) tests in the process—all of which can drain finances and create unwarranted worry.
6. You are preoccupied with bodily functions and/or physical sensations. Health anxiety causes an obsession with finding out “what’s wrong” with your body, even when nothing serious is going on. Victims can become fixated on minor physical aches and pains that bloom into something sinister in their minds. Unfortunately, the more you worry about whether a bodily function (heartbeat, blood pressure, etc.) or sensation is normal, the more your brain will key in on it—and, eventually, you may become hypersensitive to it, whereas someone without health anxiety would be unlikely to notice the same feeling.
7. You refuse to believe medical professionals. For those anxiety sufferers who routinely seek medical help, it may be surprising to know that being told there is nothing wrong with your body may not be the blanket reassurance you were hoping for. In fact, many victims of health anxiety find it nearly impossible to believe practitioners who give them the “all clear”—and they end up pursuing alternate opinions or ruminating on their general mistrust of the results. Anxiety has a particular way of dangling an answer to your worries in front of you, only to use that as more fuel for the fire in the long run.

Once anxiety keys in on specific diseases, it’s very challenging to intervene and stop the thought process from escalating. The more you sit and ruminate on the likelihood of symptoms A, B, or C being an indicator of your feared disease, the harder it will be to get yourself out of the never-ending cycle of despair. The catch to these endless thought loops is that, eventually, they will impact your physical health by causing added stress and inflammation.

Anxiety has a funny way of taking what an outside perspective may recognize as irrational and making it vividly real and believable. Anxiety victims can typically distinguish their illogical fears from more well-founded worries, but that doesn’t make them any less real in the moment. The seeming validity of these fears is what gives anxiety such power over its victims—in many ways, you are living the reality you most fear, even when it’s not actually happening.

There Is Hope

Though it’s a huge undertaking, health anxiety can be conquered. There is hope, whether you’re just learning about these issues or if you’ve struggled with them for the majority of your life. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to reduce the thoughts that drive health anxiety significantly. Thought-stopping techniques and reframing obsessive, unhealthy thought patterns are just some of the many interventions CBT offers anxiety victims—and CBT is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to useful tools to combat anxiety.

The first step in overcoming anxiety is recognizing that it exists. Understand the power it has over your thoughts, emotions, and life in general. Only when you fully grasp anxiety’s force can you take the steps to subdue it.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.