Health Anxiety Treatment Recommendations

[Beachlady]

A list of do’s and don’ts for those suffering from HA. Which ones do you struggle with the most?

Do:

1. Learn the truth about yourself. For example, are there particular physical symptoms do you characteristically develop, over and over again, in the face of your anxiety?

2. Learn about the illnesses you fear. Don’t cherry-pick information that confirms your fear.

3 .Confront your fears. Play a game: What IF you have cancer/heart disease/etc? Think about your work schedule, child care, etc. Having a plan of action diminishes fear and puts you in control.


Don’t:

1. Seek reassurance from others as a knee jerk reaction to your anxiety. Try to reassure yourself first.


2. Do not seek absolute certainty or safety. Learn to live with ambiguity. Take others with you to doctor’s appointments. They can be your objective ear and rational voice.

[KeeKee]

I struggle with number 3 the most. This is what I was told to do during therapy and it made me much worse. I don't want to think about my daughter growing up without me and no amount of planning will change that. It is even worse that I have depression and am just not a very happy person, so all of her memories of me would be of me being unhappy, quiet, miserable etc.

For me though, I believe time helped with my HA. I still get the odd Blip but no longer do I go into a complete meltdown. I think for a lot of people, that constant worry gets boring and you actually start expecting your worries to be nothing so can handle them. I still feel stuck on when to go to the GP or not though (for example a consistent pain, a perceived lump etc).

[axolotl]

Good tips, but I question number two, because it depends what you fear. Some diseases you will find information that it's very very rare, or it doesn't fit your symptoms, or you'd be very ill (or worse) by now, etc., so you can let a bit of logic poke through and eventually tell you you're fine.

But I think self-learning about illness is very dangerous sometimes, because we're not qualified to understand what we're reading, and you'll find horror stories, worst case scenarios, symptoms you have no way of fully understanding, and no medical context for. I think suggesting HA sufferers learn about illness needs to be done with caution, because if this is taken to be "pop on the Internet and research it" when people aren't in the right frame of mind it can go down a rabbit-warren of misunderstanding.

Your tip to not cherrypick what makes you scared is spot on, but sometimes it's a case of not cherrypicking, but not having the medical knowledge to know what a term exactly means, what you'd actually be feeling if you had a symptom, and how to understand the probability of something being the case, even when faced with cold statistics.

[Beachlady]

I struggle with number 3 the most. This is what I was told to do during therapy and it made me much worse. I don't want to think about my daughter growing up without me and no amount of planning will change that. It is even worse that I have depression and am just not a very happy person, so all of her memories of me would be of me being unhappy, quiet, miserable etc.

For me though, I believe time helped with my HA. I still get the odd Blip but no longer do I go into a complete meltdown. I think for a lot of people, that constant worry gets boring and you actually start expecting your worries to be nothing so can handle them. I still feel stuck on when to go to the GP or not though (for example a consistent pain, a perceived lump etc).



I’m happy to hear that you’ve got your anxiety under control. Baby steps. :)

---------- Post added at 11:19 ---------- Previous post was at 11:01 ----------


Good tips, But I think self-learning about illness is very dangerous sometimes, because we're not qualified to understand what we're reading, and you'll find horror stories, worst case scenarios, symptoms you have no way of fully understanding.
.

That’s not learning. Learning is acquiring knowledge through legitimate means. Googling perceived symptoms doesn’t qualify. :)