A headache becomes a brain tumour. A strange sensation in your chest makes you wonder whether there is something wrong with your heart. You notice a lump, pain, change in your body or something that simply feels different, and suddenly it is difficult to think about anything else.
You might search your symptoms online, check your body repeatedly or ask someone you trust whether they think you are okay. Perhaps you make a GP appointment and feel reassured when you’re told that nothing concerning has been found.
For a while, you feel better. Then another sensation appears, or a thought creeps in: What if they’ve missed something?
Health anxiety can be exhausting. The fear feels real because the possibility you are frightened of can never be completely ruled out. You may know that anxiety is playing a part, while another part of you continues to think: But what if this time there really is something wrong?
What Is Health Anxiety?
Health anxiety is persistent worry about having, developing or being diagnosed with a serious illness. You may previously have heard it called hypochondria, although health anxiety is generally a more helpful way of describing the experience.
Having health anxiety does not mean that you invent symptoms or that physical sensations aren’t real. Anxiety itself can produce very real physical sensations. Understanding what happens in your brain when you’re anxious can help explain why the experience can feel so physically convincing.
The difficulty is often what happens after you notice the sensation.
A headache isn’t simply a headache. Your mind immediately begins searching for a more serious explanation. A skipped heartbeat becomes evidence of a heart problem. Tingling becomes a neurological condition. Tiredness becomes a sign that something has been missed.
Once that possibility enters your mind, it can become extremely difficult to let it go.
Why Does Health Anxiety Feel So Convincing?
One of the reasons health anxiety can become so powerful is that it involves something none of us can have complete certainty about: our health.
You can have tests, examinations and reassurance from medical professionals, but nobody can promise that you will never become ill. If your mind has become focused on eliminating uncertainty, even a very small possibility can feel impossible to tolerate.
You may find yourself thinking, They said the tests were normal, but what if the test didn’t pick it up? or The doctor wasn’t worried, but what if I didn’t explain the symptom properly?
This can create a cycle in which you keep trying to achieve certainty but never quite feel you have enough of it. It can become particularly difficult when you find that you can’t stop overthinking everything.
The Health Anxiety Cycle
Health anxiety often develops into a repeating cycle.
You notice a physical sensation or hear about an illness. Perhaps somebody you know becomes unwell, you see a story online or simply become aware of something happening in your body.
Your mind interprets this as a possible threat: What if this is cancer? What if I’m having a heart attack? What if I have the same illness?
Anxiety rises, and because you’re frightened, you naturally try to find reassurance. You might Google the symptom, examine your body, ask your partner what they think, arrange a medical appointment or repeatedly check whether the sensation is still there.
If you find reassurance, your anxiety falls. The problem is that the relief often doesn’t last.
Because checking or reassurance reduced your fear, your brain learns that checking is what kept you safe. The next time you notice something, the urge to check can become even stronger.
Over time, the very things you’re doing to reduce your health anxiety can unintentionally help to maintain it.
Why Googling Symptoms Can Make Health Anxiety Worse
When you’re worried about your health, searching online can feel like the obvious thing to do. You want information that will tell you whether you need to be concerned.
Unfortunately, internet searches rarely provide the certainty someone with health anxiety is looking for.
Search for almost any common symptom and you can usually find both a harmless explanation and a frightening one. If you’re already anxious, your attention is naturally drawn towards the more threatening possibilities.
You might start with one symptom and, half an hour later, have read about several serious conditions. You may then notice additional sensations simply because you are paying much closer attention to your body.
This doesn’t mean you should never look for reliable health information. The question is whether you are looking for useful information or repeatedly searching in an attempt to make anxiety disappear.
If you notice that you’re searching for the same reassurance again and again, the problem may no longer be a lack of information.
Checking Your Body and Seeking Reassurance
Health anxiety doesn’t always involve Google. You may repeatedly feel a lymph node, check your skin, monitor your heart rate, examine a mole, take your temperature or compare one side of your body with the other.
Other people repeatedly seek reassurance. You may ask your partner whether something looks normal, return to your GP, request further tests or describe the same symptom to several different people.
None of these behaviours means you’re doing anything wrong. When you’re frightened, it makes sense to want reassurance.
But reassurance can become part of the same cycle as checking. It reduces anxiety temporarily without addressing the fear underneath it.
The aim isn’t to ignore genuine health concerns. It is to begin recognising when appropriate attention to your health has shifted into repeated checking that is being driven by anxiety.
“But What If There Really Is Something Wrong?”
This is often the hardest part of health anxiety.
Nobody should dismiss a new or concerning physical symptom simply because they experience anxiety. If you have symptoms that concern you, seeking appropriate medical advice is sensible.
The difficulty comes when you have received appropriate medical assessment or reassurance but find yourself unable to accept it.
Health anxiety often demands a level of certainty that medicine — and life — cannot provide. The work therefore isn’t about convincing yourself that you will definitely never become ill. It is learning to live without needing absolute certainty before you can feel safe.
That is very different from ignoring your health.
Where Does Health Anxiety Come From?
There isn’t one cause.
For some people, health anxiety develops after an illness or frightening medical experience. Perhaps you or somebody close to you became seriously unwell, and afterwards you became much more alert to signs that something could be wrong.
It can also develop after bereavement, particularly when someone has died unexpectedly or from an illness that seemed to appear without warning.
For others, anxiety about health has existed for much longer. Growing up around illness, having an anxious parent, experiencing unpredictable events or learning that the world isn’t always safe can all influence how we respond to uncertainty and threat.
Periods of stress can also intensify health anxiety. When your nervous system is already on high alert, normal bodily sensations may feel more noticeable and more threatening. Our article on the impact of chronic stress on physical health explains more about the relationship between emotional stress and what happens physically in the body.
Sometimes there isn’t an obvious starting point at all. Understanding where your health anxiety comes from can be useful, but you don’t have to identify one particular cause before you can begin changing the pattern.
Health Anxiety and Real Physical Illness
Health anxiety can also affect people who genuinely have physical health conditions.
Having a diagnosed illness doesn’t make it impossible to experience anxiety about your health. In fact, living with symptoms, medical appointments and uncertainty can understandably make some people much more aware of what is happening in their body.
The challenge is often distinguishing between responding appropriately to your condition and becoming caught in a cycle of constant monitoring and fear.
We explore this in more detail in our article on anxiety and chronic illness.
How Can I Stop Worrying About My Health?
Trying to force yourself to stop thinking about illness rarely works. Telling yourself don’t worry can sometimes make you even more aware of the thought you’re trying to avoid.
Instead, it can help to begin noticing the pattern.
When you experience a health-related fear, ask yourself what happens next. Do you immediately Google? Check your body? Ask someone for reassurance? Cancel plans because you’re frightened something might happen?
You can begin experimenting with delaying those responses rather than automatically acting on them. That might mean waiting before searching online, reducing repeated body checking or noticing the urge to ask for reassurance without immediately doing it.
The anxiety may initially increase. That’s understandable. You’re removing one of the strategies you’ve been using to feel safe.
Over time, however, you can begin learning something different: anxiety can rise and fall without you having to resolve every uncertainty.
You may also find some of the ideas in 10 Effective Strategies to Manage Anxiety in Daily Life helpful alongside this work.
When Health Anxiety Starts Affecting Your Life
Health anxiety can gradually become much bigger than the original fear of illness.
You might avoid exercise because an increased heart rate frightens you. You may avoid medical programmes, conversations about illness or people who are unwell because they trigger anxious thoughts. Some people avoid doctors altogether because they’re terrified of what might be discovered, while others spend increasing amounts of time attending appointments and seeking reassurance.
Relationships can also be affected. Partners and family members may struggle to know whether to reassure you, encourage you to seek medical advice or avoid discussing health altogether.
Eventually, you may realise that a significant amount of your time is being spent trying to prevent something that hasn’t happened.
That’s often the point at which people say, Health anxiety is ruining my life.
Can Counselling Help With Health Anxiety?
Yes. Counselling can help you understand both the fears themselves and the cycle that keeps them going.
Therapy might involve exploring when your health anxiety began, what illness represents to you and why uncertainty feels particularly difficult. It can also help you recognise patterns of checking, reassurance seeking and avoidance, and begin responding differently when anxiety appears.
For some people, the work is very practical and focused on the current anxiety cycle. For others, health fears connect with earlier experiences of illness, loss, trauma, responsibility or feeling unsafe. Therapy can make space for both.
The aim isn’t to persuade you that nothing bad will ever happen. Nobody can offer that certainty. Instead, therapy can help you reach a point where uncertainty about your health no longer dominates your thoughts, choices and everyday life.
If you’ve never had counselling before, you may also find it helpful to read about what to expect from therapy for anxiety.
Getting Support for Health Anxiety
If worrying about your health is taking up a significant amount of your day, affecting your relationships or stopping you from doing things you would normally enjoy, you don’t have to wait until it becomes unbearable before seeking support.
At Cherry Tree Therapy Centre, our counsellors work with anxiety in different ways and can help you find an approach that suits what you’re experiencing. You can find out more about our individual counselling and psychotherapy, and we also offer low-cost counselling for adults where this level of support is appropriate. Sessions are available in person in Buckhurst Hill and online.
You don’t need to arrive knowing whether what you’re experiencing is definitely “health anxiety”. You can begin by talking about what has been happening, how it is affecting you and what you would like to change.