Health Anxiety

Health Anxiety is characterised by an almost constant pre-occupation with the physical well-being of one’s own health – most frequently this will take the form of constant reviewing of how one feels.

This hyper-vigilance (a constant attention) of “feedback” from the body, for example, heart palpitations, headaches and so on can become very obsessive.

People suffering Health Anxiety will almost certainly make regular visits to the local A&E when they experience one of their symptoms and will invariably be assured that “there is nothing wrong with them” by the medical staff there!

Despite the reassurances, however, Health Anxiety sufferers will continue to believe that they genuinely have something wrong with them that the doctors are missing.

Health anxiety was previously known as hypochondria.

Why Do I Suffer Health Anxiety?

The majority of people who we have consulted with for Health Anxiety issues seem to have two common characteristics:

1. An obsessive personality type or a very high desire for control, and
2. High use of Catastrophic language patterns

This has led us to believe that in most cases the bodily symptoms that sufferers tend to present with are almost certainly the result of unhelpful thinking or cognitive distortions (known as ‘limiting beliefs‘) rather than as a result of real physiological problems.

Psychological Therapy for Health Anxiety

Tranceform Psychology can offer a range of different psychological therapy solutions for health anxiety problems which you can read about below.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Health Anxiety

If you’re committed to overcoming your Health Anxiety problems then we highly recommend following our Advanced Tranceformental CBT programme with Paul which is available as an Online Therapy as well as a self-directed programme.

The Tranceformental programme is a highly successful & pragmatic mental health counselling course, run over 10 sessions, that will teach you everything you need to know to understand your problem, identify how unhelpful thinking and limiting beliefs might be reinforcing the issue, and then show you how to make any changes to your unhelpful thinking styles or maladaptive safety behaviours that you may have developed as part of your coping strategies.

Our Tranceformental CBT programme is an evidence-based, research supported approach used by mental health practitioners around the World.

Alternative Therapy Options for Health Anxiety

Although our preferred form of mental health counselling for Health Anxiety is Tranceformental CBT we also offer alternative psychotherapies for those who might prefer a different approach.

These include:

Psychodynamic therapy which focuses more on emotional problems and relies on the Therapeutic Relationship to bring about change. Available with Paul.

General Counselling which is less structured but still provides a safe and non-judgmental environment to discuss issues which is therapeutic in its own right.

Hypnotherapy is an alternative form of therapy that can be applied to a very wide range of problems and is available with Joan.

Free Initial Consultations for Health Anxiety

We offer all prospective clients an initial consultation to discuss your health anxiety problems prior to commencing any counselling.

The consultation is free and lasts around 50 minutes.

During this consultation we will discuss the various types of psychological therapy that are available to you and make a considered recommendation based on your individual personal circumstances.

Initial consultations are also available as part of our online counselling service.

At Tranceform Psychology we emphasise the importance of the therapy relationship in helping people to bring about effective change, so its important to be able to ‘meet’ to discuss our change programmes BEFORE proceeding.

Our policy is to help people make a fully balanced & considered decision about undertaking mental health work with us, including both the financial and personal implications.