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Being a hypochondriac isn’t fun. From the racing heartbeat to the compulsive Googling and checking to the intrusive thoughts that keep you up late at night, health anxiety worrying can often feel like a (very unwelcome) full-time job. While it’s important to stay healthy and aware of new symptoms that may indicate the presence of a serious disease or health problem, there is also a fine line between being vigilant and being overly obsessive.
Here are ten easy hypochondriac treatment ideas:
Find a Trusted Primary Care Physician.
Our first and foremost recommendation in beating your hypochondria is to find a trusted primary care physician. We recommend letting them know that you have struggled with health anxiety in the past, so they
You could be worried that you’re contacting your physician too much, but that is what your physician is there for. If your physician knows you struggle with health anxiety, they will be able to help when your hypochondria flares up.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: what if I’m the girl/boy who cried wolf? What if they stop taking my health concerns seriously and they miss a cancer diagnosis/rare brain tumor/degenerative spinal cord disease/something else that will indicate a painful and horrifying death?
Medicine is absolute. You either have something or you don’t. Doctors and physicians are great at ascertaining whether or not you are showing signs and symptoms of a specific disease.
If your physician feels as though there is a true medical concern, they can refer you to the appropriate specialists, bloodwork, or imaging. However, establishing a relationship with them will help you as they will know your baseline. From your baseline, they will be able to establish whether or not the symptoms you are noticing or experiencing are indicative of a real disease or are yet another symptom of your pesky hypochondria.
Although it’s tempting to bounce around from physician to physician so you can get the tests and/or bloodwork that you want, it’s truly best to find a trusted primary care physician.
If you want to find a trusted primary care physician, we recommend looking at Zocdoc. It’s completely free to sign up, and they will be able to help you find a primary care physician in your area that has availability.
Undergo Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.
One of the best proven treatments for hypochondria is cognitive-behavioral therapy. You may have heard the term before, but we’ll go into it a little bit and tell just how cognitive behavioral therapy (also known as CBT) can help you resolve some of your health anxiety.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a form of talk therapy that explores the connection between your thoughts and your actions. Cognitive-behavioral therapy strives to undo your harmful thoughts by intercepting the actions that are associated with said thoughts.
One of the most helpful types of CBT is Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy. Exposure and Response Prevention is a form of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, but it’s very specific in how it can help you with your health anxiety. Exposure and Response Prevention (sometimes referred to as ERP) exposes you to your fears…and then, quite literally, prevents you from responding to your fears out of anxiety. Obviously, ERP is a challenging form of therapy, but it is one of the most effective types of therapy currently in existence for severe hypochondria.
So, what would this look like for a severe case of hypochondria? Well, an exposure and response prevention session might start with you telling the therapist what sort of health anxiety you are currently experiencing. For example, you may have found a mole on your body that you think looks suspicious…or, you may have had a horrible headache that has lingered for days and could possibly be a sign of a brain tumor. Either way, the therapist will have you sit in the possibility that you could have skin cancer or a brain tumor. Sounds uncomfortable? That’s because it is.
But make no mistake, because exposure and response prevention therapy is worth it for hypochondriacs. Eventually, you will A) realize that your worries are likely unfounded, and B) will come to the headspace that, even if something is wrong, that you will deal with it at that time, with the help of medical professionals who have your best interest in mind.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many therapists have switched to online therapy to provide a safer experience for their patients and themselves. Personally, I love online therapy because 1) I don’t have to leave my house and 2) it doesn’t take that much time out of my work day. That’s why we recommend signing up for a trial of OnlineTherapy.com or BetterHelp.
Practice Mindfulness.
Mindfulness is easier said than done. I know that, whenever I try to practice mindfulness, I end up thinking about the fact that I can’t not think about anything, which just ends up with me thinking about the fact that I’m thinking about not thinking…and then it just turns into a disaster.
So, if you have a hard time not thinking about anything, try thinking about something – something other than your health anxiety, that is. One good way to practice mindfulness, if you have a hard time clearing your mind, is to make observations about the settings around you. This will help ground you and keep you in the present instead of drifting off into worrying about health anxiety.
Need an example? Say you’re sitting outside in your backyard. An effective form of mindfulness would be to notice everything around you. So, that would include the feel of the grass in your hands. The feel of the temperature on your skin. The heat and light of the sun, or the feel of the rain.
Stuck inside? That’s okay; you can still utilize mindfulness to notice everything around you. You can notice the weight of your body in your chair or on your couch. You can notice all of the pieces of furniture in your home or office. You can observe the temperature inside and how it feels on your skin.
Though some of these mindfulness exercises may seem silly, they’re all helping to do the same thing: to get you to stop thinking about things outside of your control like health anxiety.
Try Talking To Yourself Like You Would Talk To a Friend.
This is a good tactic for people who suffer from frequent health anxiety. If a friend came to you worried about a suspicious mole, or an ongoing headache, what would you tell them?
“Oh, that’s definitely cancer. You’re going to die a long and painful death, and there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do that.”
No, of course you wouldn’t say that. Because you have no way of knowing whether or not your friend has a serious health condition. Even if you thought your friend might have cancer, you would try to keep their hopes up through a potentially stressful situation. You might say something like:
“I’m sure it’s nothing, but it still wouldn’t hurt to go get checked out at a doctor.”
If they further persist with their worrying, you would likely meet them with compassion and positivity, and say something like:
“I’m sure everything will be fine, but if it’s not, I’ll be here for you every step of the way.”
Right?
So, then, why do you insist on talking to yourself like you’re not your own friend? You are your own friend, and you should insist on talking to yourself like you would talk to a friend.
The results will be immediate: you’ll meet yourself with compassion, positivity, and the understanding that you’re a strong person who will be able to handle whatever is thrown your way.
Stop Googling Things.
If your Google Search History looks like the below, signs are that you Google too much:
How do you know if you have cancer
Do I have cancer
Could I have have a brain tumor
First of all, you need to understand something: you will never know whether or not you have something by Googling it. The only way to know, for sure, whether or not you have a specific ailment, is to talk to a doctor and (possibly) get diagnostic tests done.
Now, sure, it’s tempting to Google your symptoms right away, in hopes that you will get a clear and definitive answer that you do not have that particular ailment. But, the tricky thing about health is that so many symptoms overlap with one another. So, the chances that you will rule something out (or diagnose yourself with something) via a Google Search is very unlikely.
So, it’s best to not do any Googling at all…actually, no, scratch that. The only Googling you should be doing is Googling to find a trusted primary care physician (see Point #1) so you can ask them your questions.
Find an Accountability Partner.
If you have another friend who suffers from hypochondria, consider yourself lucky! Well, obviously, being a hypochondriac is hard, but at least now you can have an accountability partner. Having an accountability partner is great because it keeps you, well, accountable.
For hypochondriacs, having an accountability partner may look something like this:
The person who is currently suffering from health anxiety can reach out to the other person and let them know that they are worried about something pertaining to their health. The accountability partner can then encourage the health anxiety sufferer to not Google their symptoms or catastrophize their thinking.
It’s very important that the accountability partner not reassure the health anxiety sufferer that they don’t have that specific illness or ailment, because (as we learned in Point #2) it will actually make their hypochondria worse. Instead, hypochondriac accountability partners should focus on supporting, encouraging, and empowering each other to push past their fears.
Be Aware of Magical Thinking.
Magical thinking sounds fun, but when it comes to hypochondria, it’s actually the opposite of that.
What is magical thinking?
Well, magical thinking is when you think you can influence the outcome of something by doing things that don’t actually relate to that outcome. Technically, it’s a cognitive distortion that can lead to some undue mental suffering. For hypochondriacs specifically, there tends to be a lot of magical thinking surrounding symptoms:
If I Google my symptoms, I’ll be able to prevent kidney disease from happening.
If I don’t Google my symptoms, I will be diagnosed with cancer.
If I look up the symptoms of cancer, I will find out that I have cancer.
…and so on, and so forth.
However, logic states that your health outcomes simply cannot be influenced by whether not not you Google your symptoms, think about your symptoms, or obsess about your symptoms. Your health outcomes can be influenced by your diet, level of exercise, and/or genetics…but not by what you think.
If you are aware of magical thinking, you can start to recognize when you are participating in it, and therefore, can start to remedy it.
Understand the Overestimation Theory.
The overestimation theory is a subset of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is a cognitive bias where people with “limited knowledge in a given intellectual domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence…to the performance of their peers or of people in general.”
What does this mean?
Well, if you are a hypochondriac, you tend to overestimate how much you know about medical diseases. You saw a lump on your stomach, so therefore, it must be cancer, right? There’s no possible way that it could be a benign growth or a pimple, right?
With health conditions, you may have to consider that you may not know what you may not know. Though letting go of this (illusion of) control can be difficult for sufferers of health anxiety, you can actually find some relief in the fact that you won’t be able to have any real answers unless you see a medical professional who can diagnose you (or not diagnose you) with whatever it is that you think you have.
In the meantime, there is no use in obsessing, because you know that you are not the expert…as much as you may want to be.
Consider Evidence AGAINST Hypochondriac Thoughts.
This is often easier said than done, but instead of thinking the worst…try thinking the best. Instead of thinking the pain in your leg is a blood clot, try thinking that it could be from that walk you took yesterday or that you may have moved weirdly in your sleep. Now, granted, there are some medical circumstances in which you may not be able to find any positive benefits (say, you have a suspicious mole).
However, you can still consider evidence against hypochondriac thoughts. For example, if you have a suspicious mole, consider the fact that it’s actually a completely normal mole. In the off-chance that the mole is cancerous, consider the fact that it may be a fairly non-advanced type of skin cancer. In the chance that you get diagnosed with the most deadly form of skin cancer, consider the fact that you may have caught it early enough and have faith in your medical providers to get it taken care of for you. See? There’s a lot of evidence against your typical, run-of-the-mill hypochondriac thoughts that convince you that every single ailment you have will kill you in a long, slow, and torturous death.
Don’t Ask For Reassurance.
The absolute worst thing a hypochondriac can do is to ask (or Google) for reassurance. Asking for reassurance will provide temporary relief, yes, but then your health anxiety thoughts will actually get worse. How does this work? Well, every time
Common forms of reassurance are contacting your doctor’s office frequently, asking your friends and family for their thoughts, and excessive Googling.
So there you have it! Ten different ways to beat your hypochondria. Hopefully, at least one of these ideas will jive with you and give you some relief from obsessing over your health anxiety thoughts. Readers, comment below! Which of these proven tactics have you tried, and which one(s) are the most effective tactics for you?
Disclaimer: THIS WEBSITE DOES NOT PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE.
If you are currently experiencing medical concerns, it’s important to talk to a doctor to rule out any underlying medical conditions. HypochondriacHQ does not substitute professional medical advice or consultations with healthcare professionals. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read or seen on this website.
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