Health Anxiety

Health Anxiety is characterised by an almost constant pre-occupation with your own health and that you might be ill.

For many sufferers this will take the form of constantly reviewing of how you feel.

This problem was previously known as Hypochondria.

You may become hyper-vigilant and spend hours in a state of high alert monitoring your body for signs such as heart palpitations, aches and pains, headaches and so on.

Additionally, you may also make frequent visits to your local accident and emergency hospital in the belief that you need urgent medical attention.

These visits will often end with reassurance from hospital staff that there is nothing wrong with you and that you are safe to go home.

Despite these reassurances, however, you may continue to believe that you have something wrong with you that the doctors are missing.

It is always possible, of course, that the doctors ARE missing something, but most of the time, this will not be the case.

health anxiety hospital operating theatre banner

Health Anxiety Symptoms

Because health anxiety is primarily focused on physical health it often involves symptoms that involve monitoring and checking which may, at times, become obsessive in nature.

Your symptoms may include:

Persistent feelings of general anxiety.
A constant pre-occupation with your health.
Frequent checking of body shape for any lumps, bumps or skin problems.
Constantly seeking reassurance from friends, family or health professionals that you are not ill.
Spending lots of time researching signs and symptoms on the internet.
Avoid physical activity so as not to put a strain on your heart.
Worrying about the idea of dying (Thanatophobia).

You may have some or all of these symptoms or you may have other symptoms that are not listed here.

What Causes Health Anxiety?

The answer to this question depends on how we think about health anxiety as a problem.

The psychiatric system regards health anxiety as a disorder that is caused by some sort of underlying biological fault that produces the symptoms, although this cause has never been identified.

The psychological modelling of emotional distress regards health anxiety as being caused by things that have happened during a person’s life and how they have made sense of them.

Consequently, almost any experience can be interpreted in a way that leads to worries and anxiety about our health, for example:

Losing a close relative to illness or accident.
Early childhood ill health.

and so on.

Despite these different ways of thinking about health anxiety, psychological therapy and counselling provide drug-free solutions to the problem and are generally regarded as effective.

Health Anxiety sufferer in therapy session

Therapy & Counselling for Health Anxiety

We offer a number of different types of therapy and counselling for Health Anxiety and anxiety-related problems.

Choosing the most suitable therapy depends on a number of different considerations including factors such as:

How long you have had the problem.
Your personal preferences.
How your problem is affecting you today.

You can read more about the different types of therapy for health anxiety on the following links:

Although all therapies use slightly different approaches, the one thing they all have in common is the relationship that is formed between the client and therapist.

Furthermore, research also suggests that therapy relationship may be the most important factor in achieving a good therapy outcome.

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.