03.24.25
How to Keep Health Anxiety From Ruining Your Life
BRB, just googling if I’m having a stroke.
Raise your hand if you’ve panic-searched, “Is chest pain bad?” and doomscrolled long enough that you went from WebMD to some random forum for heart attack survivors. Cool. If you also spend more time than you’d care to admit ruminating about whatever illness is currently trending on social media, then you’re probably familiar with what health anxiety feels like.
When you have health anxiety, you catastrophize aches and pains and often convince yourself that the scariest and rarest health outcome you can think of is actually inevitable. This can eff with your daily routine and take over your headspace. But how do you deal with this type of anxiety when you can’t escape being a person in a body? Here, we asked experts to explain.
One quick thing before we dive into the details: Mental health is complex and everyone has a unique experience, so don’t go diagnosing yourself just because you read a few articles on the internet (though, we do appreciate you stopping by to learn a few things). If this resonates with you, consider it a jumping-off point in your journey to getting care. OK, let’s get into it...
What is health anxiety?
The term “health anxiety” isn’t a diagnosis, but it can be a symptom of mental health conditions. It’s a broad term that means you have “excessive or inappropriate anxiety” about being sick, according to the American Psychological Association (APA).
People with health anxiety are hyperaware of bodily sensations or symptoms, says health anxiety coach and licensed therapist Britney Chesworth, PhD, LCSW. And they tend to interpret those sensations or symptoms—a lot of which are relatively normal—as serious and life-threatening. So, for someone with health anxiety, a strange-looking freckle is for sure melanoma, a headache is definitely a tumor, and forgetting something is probably early-onset dementia. You get the idea.
“It really just sucks the joy out of life entirely,” says Dr. Chesworth, author of Help, I’m Dying Again: Overcoming Health Anxiety with CBT. “If every day is potentially the last day of your life or the beginning of the end, how can you enjoy yourself?"
When those thoughts strike, health-anxious folks often try to feel better by googling their symptoms, checking their bodies for anything weird, and/or getting opinions from other people (family, doctors, etc.), says licensed psychologist Josh Spitalnick, PhD, ABPP. But since you can never be 100% certain about your health, that relief doesn’t last, explains licensed clinical psychologist Danielle Cooper, PhD. Thus, the health anxiety spiral persists.
Of course, everyone gets anxious about their health sometimes—whether you or loved ones are dealing with health scares or there’s a virus going around that you really don’t want to catch. That’s a reasonable response that helps keep you safe, says Dr. Chesworth. But if anxiety about your health consistently messes with your life (see: spending hours googling symptoms or ruminating about a mole you already got checked), this could be a sign of a mental health condition.
When health anxiety is severe and lasts at least six months, it might be illness anxiety disorder or somatic symptom disorder. Somatic symptom disorder involves excessive worry about one or more symptoms you have, whereas illness anxiety disorder involves excessive worry about having or developing a serious illness—whether or not you have any symptoms at all, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR). Health anxiety can also show up as part of OCD, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and specific phobias, notes Dr. Cooper.
That said, you don’t need to be diagnosed with one of those conditions to struggle with health anxiety. If a preoccupation with your health or getting sick is interfering with your life, you might be dealing with some health anxiety.
How to deal with health anxiety
While it would be nice to never feel anxious about your body ever again, that’s not the goal. Anxiety is bound to happen. Instead, the best way to manage is by getting into a more realistic headspace about your health. Here’s how to do exactly that.
1. Scroll responsibly.
Sure, the internet and social media can be great for staying informed about health news and connecting with other people navigating similar health struggles. But they can also be particularly triggering if you have health anxiety.
It’s hard to disengage from that kind of content when it feels proactive (better safe than sorry!). And it’s tough to look away when someone’s talking about your biggest fear, says Dr. Chesworth. For these reasons, it’s better to disengage as much as possible.
However, the internet is pretty much inescapable. So here’s how to be more mindful when using Google and social media, notes Dr. Chesworth:
- Don’t ask Google leading questions, like, “Is sore throat cancer?” Instead, try, “Common reasons for a sore throat.”
- Use trustworthy, reputable sites such as the National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic, and the CDC.
- When you see content that makes you anxious, mute or block the account or post. You can also click that you’re “not interested” in certain content when offered that option.
2. Raise your tolerance to uncertainty.
Not having 100% certainty about your health can be very scary, but it’s also just part of being human. If it feels impossible to entertain any amount of uncertainty when it comes to your health, remind yourself of all the ways you successfully tolerate it in other areas of your life, says Dr. Chesworth. You get into a cab despite not knowing the driver, you order food for delivery even though they could bring you the wrong thing, you apply for a job even though you may never hear back. Listing out the risks you take every day can shift your perspective, notes Dr. Chesworth. Maybe you can take the small risk of not figuring out every ache or pain and you’ll be OK.
3. Find a happy medium.
People with health anxiety tend to fall into two camps: the ones who go to the doctor a lot and the ones who avoid the doctor as much as possible. Managing health anxiety means finding a spot between those extremes, says Dr. Chesworth.
If you avoid the doctor because you’re scared of bad news, you can face that fear gradually. For example, before a preventive screening, read up about what happens at a physical, call to make the appointment, drive to the doctor’s office a few days before, and then actually go, says Dr. Chesworth. Each step is a little more nerve-racking, but getting through them builds confidence. Then, when you get to the appointment, you’ll see it’s not as bad as you thought.
On the other hand, if you visit doctors all the time, use the three-day rule: Wait three days to make an appointment after noticing a physical symptom that isn’t an emergency, suggests Dr. Chesworth. What you're stressing over will probably subside within that time frame. And, if not, you can give your doctor a call.
4. Ground yourself.
Picture this: You’re running errands and you feel your heart skip a beat. Alarm bells ring to the tune of holy fucking shit and, thanks to the power of the mind-body connection, your heart starts racing. Your breathing quickens, your palms sweat. Now you’re worrying about all of these things.
In an ideal world, you would immediately recognize you’re jumping to conclusions and reverse course. But when you can’t, grounding techniques can help you calm down enough to use a little more logic.
Dr. Chesworth suggests shifting your attention to what's happening around you. Try the 5-4-3-2-1 method, she says. Identify five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. Or just describe what’s around you—no numbers necessary.
5. Challenge your thoughts.
While you can’t control what pops into your head, you can suss out which thoughts are valid. When you’re jumping to the worst-case scenario, try listing other possibilities that don’t end horribly, says Dr. Spitalnick, author of The Complete Guide to Overcoming Health Anxiety: How to Live Life to the Fullest...Because You're Not Dead (Yet). Yes, that stomach ache could theoretically be an ulcer. But what are the more likely possibilities? Could you be hungry? Have you been stressed lately? Have you had stomach aches like this before that were just gas? Coming up with other possibilities may soothe your catastrophizing mind.
6. Consider how you would talk to a friend.
Another way to change your perspective is to reflect on what you’d tell a pal. Even people with health anxiety are usually able to see a friend’s health concerns way more logically than their own, explains Dr. Chesworth. Let’s say your friend is convinced they should go to the emergency room for a bloody nose. You’d probably tell them to slow down, wait for it to stop, and go to the ER if it gets worse.
7. Learn your “safety behaviors”—and then gradually ditch them.
A safety behavior is any action you take to reassure yourself that things are fine when you’re feeling anxious. You might google, head to urgent care, ask a friend’s opinion, do a TikTok deep dive, etc. But reacting this way is a trap. It proves the symptoms you’re worried about are dangerous and you need external sources of security, Dr. Chesworth says.
Again, the tricky thing is you might feel better at first, but it doesn’t last. You start to stress about another ache or you worry that you should keep checking…just in case. It’s an endless cycle.
Putting yourself in triggering situations and not doing anything about it can break this cycle though, says Dr. Cooper. You could power walk for 10 minutes without checking your pulse, grocery shop without hand sanitizer, or read an article about a new virus going around without googling anything else.
This is a kind of exposure therapy that you’d do with a mental health professional, but you can do it on your own if you’re comfortable, says Dr. Chesworth.
With practice, you’ll “learn to accept the presence of these ambiguous bodily sensations without trying to get rid of or fully understand them,” explains Dr. Cooper. And, with time, you’ll see that the things you thought were helping you don’t work in the long run, she adds. You are more resilient than you think.
8. Seek mental health help.
If your health anxiety is overwhelming, mental health professionals can help you manage the catastrophic thoughts that influence your behavior (and vice versa), Dr. Chesworth says.
They’ll go even further too. For example, they can help you understand how past trauma may have contributed to your health anxiety, says Dr. Chesworth. And, together, you'll unpack the fears at the core of your health worries (like fear of death), Dr. Cooper says.
The experts Wondermind spoke to recommend finding a therapist who has experience treating disorders where health anxiety shows up, such as OCD and anxiety disorders, using cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy.
Start your search in directories from Psychology Today, the Anxiety & Depression Association of America (you can filter for health anxiety under "disorders treated & specialty"), the International OCD Foundation, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and the APA.
Mental health professionals can teach you how to live with fear, not in fear all the time, Dr. Spitalnick says. And that sounds pretty damn nice.
Wondermind does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a replacement for medical advice. Always consult a qualified health or mental health professional with any questions or concerns about your mental health.
