Health Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket
Recently a client with health anxiety was telling me how he couldn’t even put the TV on listen to the radio without coming across several mentions of health-related issues. There’s an almost constant stream of adverts and stories about illness, heart disease, cancer and other health issues. And, of course, over the last couple of years, all the mention of COVID-19, long covid and death from the pandemic has presented a challenge to anyone who struggles with health anxiety.
When I work with health-anxiety clients, they often tell me how any slight physical sensation or niggle gets magnified and amplified inside their imagination. Rather than being able to calmly consider and assess that slight pain, discomfort or niggle, their health-anxiety quickly escalates to a worst-case scenario where it is something serious like cancer (and then there are the fearful thoughts about everything that would come with that from impacts on them and their loved ones, to uncomfortable treatment, anxiety and the panic over their potential death).
Whilst the internet is a wonderful thing, with health-anxiety it can become a source of vague information that always points to a serious health condition (just about any physical symptoms can probably be directed towards something catastrophic like cancer).
And, of course, anxiety itself can cause physical sensations, for example in your stomach, chest or muscles, which adds more fear and anxiety to an already racing mind. Your health anxiety can lead to more sensations and aches, tension and pains, which then only adds to your worries about your health and maintains the things you are feeling in your body.
Now, of course, we shouldn’t just ignore every physical sensation and put it all down to anxiety. Yet, like my clients, you can develop the ability to calmly assess what you are feeling, to consider what may have caused it and to decide upon and calmly take any actions that may be needed to treat it. And, of course, the calmer you are able to be, the more clearly you can think, the better your decision-making processes will be and the easier it will be to consider what you are experiencing (without anxiety creating or exacerbating it). And so rather than thinking that twinge in your chest is a sign of a heart issue, you can calmly recognise that you probably strained a muscle exercising.
COVID-19 and the pandemic have certainly added to the health-anxiety levels of many people, whether from a rise in stress or anxiety about catching the virus and being seriously affected. And health-anxiety and the fear of contracting COVID-19 is something I’m covering here today.