Health Anxiety – Is it Cancer?
When I’m working with someone with health anxiety, perhaps the biggest concern is that any physical symptom being experienced could be a sign of having cancer. And with so many references to cancer around us, it’s perhaps no surprise that the anxiety heads in the direction of what is perceived to be the worst possible case.
In the last 24 hours alone, I’ve heard a cancer charity advert on the radio, seen a similar, watched a programme where a character had been diagnosed and heard about a relative receiving treatment. It can seem like it is all around us, impacting everywhere, and that is the fuel that anxiety needs to start imagining the worst.
And of course, ‘Doctor Google’ doesn’t help here because just about any symptom ‘could’ be a sign of cancer. Of course, it could be a sign of something else or even nothing at all, yet those nagging thoughts continue to grow stronger and ramp up the panic. The internet just isn’t that great at helping you to self-diagnose effectively.
Once you calm the anxiety down (and ditch trying to be an online doctor), your thoughts become clearer, more logical and more reasoned. You can make better decisions about what you should do next.
Just recently I’ve had my own reasons to be thinking about cancer and my own future health.