Many people all over the world suffer from health anxiety, more commonly known as hypochondriasis. Although many people will make fun of those with this disorder, it is certainly no laughing matter. Many people are under the illusion that health anxiety is simply when the sufferer believes that they are sick all of the time. However, the reality is much more serious. A person with health anxiety often find themselves living within their own personal hell, and it can often stop them living a normal healthy life.
Health anxiety is more than just thinking you are sick. For example, when you have a headache, what do you think? Well, the majority of people would just brush it off as tension and take some pain killers. However, those with health anxiety would find a regular headache much more serious, and would think along the lines of brain tumour or aneurism. If you have a sore throat you would probably just think that you are coming down with a cold or the flu, but for the health anxiety patient a sore throat has numerous possibilities, with the majority of sufferers thinking along the lines of throat cancer.
As mentioned above, health anxiety is more than just perceiving innocent symptoms to be something deadly. Sufferers of health anxiety often get trapped in a vicious cycle where they actually create symptoms by constantly thinking about bodily symptoms that they may have experienced at some point, thus making the body experience these symptoms. These cycles can last for days, weeks, months, and in some cases, even years. This then leads to panic and anxiety attacks, which, of course, create more bodily symptoms. As you can see, it can be very hard to get out of this pattern of thinking once it starts.
This isn’t the only problem. Because of all of the bodily symptoms and worries that a person with health anxiety has, they end up spending thousands of dollars on medical procedures and tests with the aim of proving to themselves that they are not actually sick, or in some cases, to prove to everyone else that the symptoms that they are experiencing are not just in their head. Of course, a person with health anxiety is not just imagining their bodily symptoms. They are all real, but they have a benign cause and are created by the sufferer over analysing things.
When it comes to treatment for health anxiety there are several options. However, the first thing that you need to do is figure out where all of your anxiety is actually coming from. You need to figure out the underlying cause before you can tackle the problem head on. This can either be done with the help of a professional therapist on your own. Many people will turn to medication for help, but the fact is, medication is only going to mask the problem, meaning that it is a temporary solution to a permanent problem.