If your life is dominated by worrying about your health, googling symptoms and being convinced that
some illness is going to take you away from your loved ones then you probably have hypochondria,
also called health anxiety or illness anxiety. And you probably want to stop it. In this video
I'm going to take you through 10 steps used in CBT to get your health anxiety under control.
The first step is motivation. This video is packed with useful information so it's quite long
so you're going to have to be motivated to watch it all, but that is nothing compared to the
motivation you will need to overcome your health anxiety. You see, there is no magical instant cure
for hypochondria so it's going to take a lot of hard work over a prolonged period. So how do you
motivate yourself? You can start by getting a pen and answering the following questions.
Where will I be in five years if I don't change how I manage my health anxiety? How
does my hypochondria affect my relationships? What would life be like if I didn't have health anxiety
?What does my health anxiety prevent me from doing that I would like to do now.? Put this list
somewhere you will see it regularly to motivate yourself to keep working on your health anxiety.
Step two is accept and understand that your symptoms suggest anxiety.
Instead of googling signs of a heart attack or is my headache a brain tumour,
google physical symptoms of anxiety or watch my video '.20 anxiety symptoms explained' This will
help you see your symptoms with a different and less scary perspective. It will also help you
challenge the anxious thoughts which we will talk more about later. Step 3 is understanding
the anxiety cycle. I have covered this in many of my videos but it goes like this. You get a thought
like what if I have a heart attack. The thought makes you feel anxious and the anxiety causes
your heart to beat faster and stronger. To try to reassure yourself you check your pulse. It's fast
which makes you think there is something wrong with your heart so you feel more anxious, making
your heart go even faster and you start to notice other symptoms like faster breathing and sweating
so you feel more compelled to reassure yourself that you are safe. You take your blood pressure
but it's high or you think it might be high which reinforces the anxious thoughts even
more. And so it goes on. Let me know in the comments below if this sounds familiar to you.
Step 4 addresses the thoughts part of the anxiety cycle. CBT identifies thinking
errors. Common thinking errors in hypochondria are emotional reasoning and catastrophization.
In emotional reasoning you conclude that a thought is true because of how you feel despite evidence
to the contrary. In catastrophization your anxious thoughts escalate into imagining a
catastrophe. Practice spotting these thinking errors. See my video on catastrophization for
tips on how to deal with it. Once you've spotted the thinking errors, start to challenge them.
Filling in the health anxiety thought record sheet can really help you can print out the sheet from a
great website called getselfhelp.co.uk. I've put a link to this thought record in the description.
This thought record helps you challenge your negative thoughts by rating how it affects your
anxiety, looking for an alternative perspective and then rewriting your anxiety after challenging
the thought. Use this form regularly until being able to challenge your thoughts becomes natural.
The questions at the bottom of the form are particularly helpful.
The thought record also has a column for behaviors. These are what is known as safety
behaviors. In CBT safety behaviors are the things you do to try and make yourself feel
safer. These are things like googling symptoms, constantly checking your body
or seeking reassurance from friends and family that you are not seriously ill.
But as we saw from the anxiety cycle these behaviors don't make you feel safer. They
just fuel the anxiety, so step 5 is reducing your safety behaviors but how do you do this.
First make a list of all your safety behaviors and then each day keep a tally
of how many times you use them. At the end of the week count up how many times you've used
each one. For the first week don't try to reduce them just get used to counting them.
In the second week just try to reduce them slightly. Don't try to stop them completely.
One, it's quite impossible and two, it can be counterproductive.
The anxious brain accepts small gradual changes it does not like big sudden changes. At the end
of each week rate how your health anxiety has been overall. It will take a few months but as
you successfully reduce your safety behaviors you should see your anxiety score reduce.
This is because you are removing the fuel that drives the health anxiety.
Step six is behavioral experiments. Your health anxiety safety behaviors reinforce your negative
thoughts but by experimenting with your behaviors you can disprove your negative thoughts which make
them lose their power. Getselfhelp.co.uk has a behavioral experiment form. Print it out using
the link I've put in the description. Here is an example. Let's say you notice the feeling of a
lump in your throat. You get the thought that it might be throat cancer. Normally you would
immediately make an appointment to see your doctor but instead you experiment by waiting
two weeks before you book an appointment and in that time you resist seeking any reassurance.
You write down what you predict will happen then two weeks later you write down what actually
happened. Then you reflect on what you've learned and rewrite your belief in the original thought.
Behavioral experiments can also be used to target avoidance behaviors which also fuel health
anxiety. For example despite the doctor confirming that your heart is fine you might avoid exercise
for fear of a heart attack. The experiment could be to go for a brisk walk or exercise at home.
When the experiment shows that you are not going to die, you can start increasing your exercise
which is good for both your physical and mental health.
Step 7 is STOPP. STOPP is a technique used in CBT to interrupt negative
thoughts before they take control of you. See my video on how to use STOPP.
Step eight is mindfulness. When worried about your health your mind goes to some
imagined future scenario. Mindfulness helps you bring your mind back to the here and now.
Accept that you've had an anxious thought about your health. Don't judge yourself.
It's just a thought. Now observe your environment. What can you see, hear, smell or touch.
If you're in the middle of doing something like washing the dishes, do it mindfully.
Notice the temperature of the water, the feel of the bubbles.
I will make a video on mindfulness soon but there is plenty of information on the internet.
Step 9 is worry postponement. If your health worry is really strong
just postpone the worry. You have promised your anxious brain that you will deal with its concern,
just later. When later comes you will often find that the worry has passed
or is no longer so strong. If it's still strong use the health anxiety thought record from step 4.
Step 10. Accept setbacks. Be patient with yourself and persevere. It takes
a long time to retrain an anxious brain. Safety behaviors will creep back in. Some
days your anxiety will feel as bad as ever but over time if you follow these steps regularly,
your health anxiety will reduce and you can get your life back.