“It’s all in your head.”
How many hypochondriacs have been told this? When you stress out about illnesses that you don’t actually have, it’s easy for people to dismiss what you’re going through as not real. But on top of the very real mental anguish that hypochondriasis can cause, it’s also been shown to manifest real physical symptoms.
All of this can be exacerbated by the Internet, which gives us access to all kinds of info about health conditions but without the nuance or personal insight that comes from a doctor’s professional diagnosis.
For most people, it’s normal to have minor aches or discomforts throughout the day: the aforementioned stuffy nose, or a headache, an upset stomach, sore muscles, bloating, or restlessness, among many others. Unless these symptoms are ongoing, unusual, or in combination with other symptoms, we can usually carry on with them in our daily lives. But when we compare these normal aches or discomforts to a list of symptoms online, it’s easy to convince ourselves that we have a serious condition.
Among people with illness anxiety disorder, there are two types: care seeking and care avoidant. A care-seeking person frequently consults a doctor concerning their symptoms, and will often seek out second or third opinions. On the other hand, a care-avoidant person won’t go to the doctor because they think the doctor won’t take them seriously or they’re scared of what the doctor will find. Both approaches can increase feelings of stress, and both approaches will often coincide with preventative behaviors taken to the extreme, such as handwashing or social isolation. In worst-case scenarios, this illness anxiety negatively affects relationships and careers.
What to do about it?
If you’re somebody who frequently finds yourself worrying about your health in self-destructive ways, you may need counseling or therapy to help you manage your behaviors. However, there are small steps you can take to manage your anxiety:
- Notice when you’re having negative thoughts and try to reframe them. If you start to worry about a symptom, ask yourself whether there’s another explanation besides a serious illness.
- Limit health-related information, especially from social media or other informal sources. Although it feels like this helps, it can make anxiety worse. If you seriously think you have a reason to be concerned, seek medical care.
- Keep a journal of times when you have worries about your health and how those worries play out in the days to follow. By paying attention to patterns, you can teach yourself to trust that not every little symptom is a serious cause for concern.
Worth noting:
What was once often called hypochondriasis is now referred to as illness anxiety disorder. This type of anxiety involves such excess vigilance and worry about possible health problems that it becomes debilitating, often mentally and sometimes physically. For example, consider this scenario:
- You get a stuffy nose or some sniffles from weather changes and the swing in temps or barometric pressure.
- Because of illness anxiety disorder, you start to worry the stuffy nose might be due to an infection.
- Anxiety over a potential infection makes you focus on your stuffy nose, which can exaggerate your perception of how bad the stuffy nose is—it feels worse because you’re paying so much attention to it.
- The stress from focusing on your stuffy nose causes you to experience other physical symptoms, such as mental fatigue or an upset stomach.
