skippy66
21-11-13, 20:29
STOP!
Looking for reassurance is the single worst thing you can do when you have health anxiety. It is the basis of cyberchondria, the obsessive reassurance-seeking behaviour that only serves to make your health anxiety worse in the long run.
When I had full-blown health anxiety I would check the internet for reassurance every waking hour of every day. Sometimes it worked in the short term, but it never lasts. I remember googling ‘lower chest pain’ once and finding a Yahoo! Answers result with several reassuring comments as I scrolled down the page. “Lower chest pain is not heart-related” said one unqualified anonymous person. “More than likely indigestion” said bobcat123. I kept scrolling, feeling better and better about my lower chest pain until I got to the very last answer on the page:
“Get to the ER immediately. My husband had lower chest pain and was dead within an hour from a heart attack”.
BOOM – reassurance gone, hello panic attack.
This is typical of what happens when you scour the internet for reassurance about your symptoms. You skirt over any logical, reasonable, benign explanations for your pain until you find one which suggests you’re going to die from whatever you have very soon, and you feel worse. It’s a vicious cycle which leads to more and more reassurance-seeking behaviour.
When Dr Google scares you (which he inevitably will), you usually go to your real doctor for some real reassurance. But then you discover that your local doctor is not an expert on MS or a cardiologist. He will do tests, but even if the results are normal you’re left thinking that he hasn’t covered all the bases. You feel like because of all the internet research you’ve done, you’re more of an expert than him on the subject. At this point he will probably refer you to a specialist for some cast-iron real reassurance.
Specialists vary – some are better than others. Some know more than others. A cardiologist may not know much about strange heart palpitations unless he’s studied electrophysiology. They may provide verbal reassurance, but they may not order all the tests you feel you need so you can guarantee you don’t have what you think you have. For instance, you may have a brain MRI from a neurologist, but it may not be the one where they inject a dye into your bloodstream – from your internet research you know that a simple brain MRI could miss an aneurysm.
It’s not uncommon at this stage to go back online and start googling ‘what can brain MRI rule out?’ Then you’ll worry that you have whatever a brain MRI can’t rule out.
YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR APPROACH
We’ve established that reassurance-seeking does not work. It only makes health anxiety worse. The first step in curing your health anxiety is to stop looking for reassurance. This is extremely difficult to do, but it is possible. I still get the occasional urge to ask Dr Google for reassurance, but my outlook has changed to the point that I can easily resist the urge.
I have hopefully convinced you that seeking reassurance is only going to do one thing – make your health anxiety worse. The next step is to change your outlook on life, and in particular on illness. The human body is not perfect, but when you have health anxiety you think it should be perfect. Things can and do go wrong with our bodies. It’s not restricted to humans. The other day my dog woke up and she wasn’t well. She cowered behind the sofa for a couple of hours, which is something she does when she’s ill. By lunchtime she was fine, running around, barking at rabbits. No obvious reason for her short illness, and her body recovered very quickly before we had time to consider a visit to the vet. These things just happen. It’s nature. It’s normal.
Once you realise that your body isn’t perfect and that strange things will happen to it from time to time for no apparent reason, you can begin to understand how reassurance-seeking isn’t helping anyone. Then you must come to the realisation that life is short, and it’s more important to have quality of life than quantity of life. Constantly researching and worrying about any symptoms you may have is not conducive to a good quality of life. When you realise this, you are not far from being cured of health anxiety and you’re ready to start getting your life back on track.
Hope this helps.
Looking for reassurance is the single worst thing you can do when you have health anxiety. It is the basis of cyberchondria, the obsessive reassurance-seeking behaviour that only serves to make your health anxiety worse in the long run.
When I had full-blown health anxiety I would check the internet for reassurance every waking hour of every day. Sometimes it worked in the short term, but it never lasts. I remember googling ‘lower chest pain’ once and finding a Yahoo! Answers result with several reassuring comments as I scrolled down the page. “Lower chest pain is not heart-related” said one unqualified anonymous person. “More than likely indigestion” said bobcat123. I kept scrolling, feeling better and better about my lower chest pain until I got to the very last answer on the page:
“Get to the ER immediately. My husband had lower chest pain and was dead within an hour from a heart attack”.
BOOM – reassurance gone, hello panic attack.
This is typical of what happens when you scour the internet for reassurance about your symptoms. You skirt over any logical, reasonable, benign explanations for your pain until you find one which suggests you’re going to die from whatever you have very soon, and you feel worse. It’s a vicious cycle which leads to more and more reassurance-seeking behaviour.
When Dr Google scares you (which he inevitably will), you usually go to your real doctor for some real reassurance. But then you discover that your local doctor is not an expert on MS or a cardiologist. He will do tests, but even if the results are normal you’re left thinking that he hasn’t covered all the bases. You feel like because of all the internet research you’ve done, you’re more of an expert than him on the subject. At this point he will probably refer you to a specialist for some cast-iron real reassurance.
Specialists vary – some are better than others. Some know more than others. A cardiologist may not know much about strange heart palpitations unless he’s studied electrophysiology. They may provide verbal reassurance, but they may not order all the tests you feel you need so you can guarantee you don’t have what you think you have. For instance, you may have a brain MRI from a neurologist, but it may not be the one where they inject a dye into your bloodstream – from your internet research you know that a simple brain MRI could miss an aneurysm.
It’s not uncommon at this stage to go back online and start googling ‘what can brain MRI rule out?’ Then you’ll worry that you have whatever a brain MRI can’t rule out.
YOU NEED TO CHANGE YOUR APPROACH
We’ve established that reassurance-seeking does not work. It only makes health anxiety worse. The first step in curing your health anxiety is to stop looking for reassurance. This is extremely difficult to do, but it is possible. I still get the occasional urge to ask Dr Google for reassurance, but my outlook has changed to the point that I can easily resist the urge.
I have hopefully convinced you that seeking reassurance is only going to do one thing – make your health anxiety worse. The next step is to change your outlook on life, and in particular on illness. The human body is not perfect, but when you have health anxiety you think it should be perfect. Things can and do go wrong with our bodies. It’s not restricted to humans. The other day my dog woke up and she wasn’t well. She cowered behind the sofa for a couple of hours, which is something she does when she’s ill. By lunchtime she was fine, running around, barking at rabbits. No obvious reason for her short illness, and her body recovered very quickly before we had time to consider a visit to the vet. These things just happen. It’s nature. It’s normal.
Once you realise that your body isn’t perfect and that strange things will happen to it from time to time for no apparent reason, you can begin to understand how reassurance-seeking isn’t helping anyone. Then you must come to the realisation that life is short, and it’s more important to have quality of life than quantity of life. Constantly researching and worrying about any symptoms you may have is not conducive to a good quality of life. When you realise this, you are not far from being cured of health anxiety and you’re ready to start getting your life back on track.
Hope this helps.