Recovering From Health Anxiety

Woman covering her face with her hands

Before I begin this post, I want to issue a number of disclaimers.

1. I am not a mental health professional. Mental health is something that I struggle with to a chronic degree and I have received my fair share of treatments and therapies for it over the years. The recommendations I’m about to share are a combination of my personal recovery experiences and the advice given to me by mental health professionals, condensed into a helpful guide to anyone struggling with health anxiety.
2. I have not recovered from health anxiety — but I am on the way there. I am in the right place to be discussing the road to recovery and I know what I need to do to help myself get onto the right path with my recovery, and in this sense, I’m happy to share that path with you.
3. Everyone’s experiences are different. What worked for me might not work for you, but that is ok. We all heal in our own way and your triggers might be vastly different to my own, but the aim of this post is to simply describe the process of recovery and the steps involved in it — without the waiting lists of the NHS or the high fee of private treatment. This information is available to you now, here, for free from my own experience and what you do with it is up to you.

*Trigger warnings, mentions of cancer, illness, blood tests and OCD.

It’s important to me that these disclaimers are acknowledged and understood, and that the purpose of this post is to simply give you a rough outline of what the treatment for health anxiety involves. I’m not making any promises of a miracle recovery or a quick-fix turnaround, but what I am doing is helping you to start your own journey — even if it’s just making that first call to the doctor to start your treatment.

My History

Some days I feel like health anxiety is all I talk about. The people around me must be sick of hearing me fret over small lumps and bumps on my body, panicking over the occasional head rush and hyperventilating over unexplained bruises on my legs. Even on the days where I have nothing to worry about, I spend my time dwelling on how tough health anxiety is and how difficult my life is going to be if I can’t get over it.

It can be crippling, isolating and absolutely terrifying to experience, setting you apart from those in your life who can simply book a doctor’s appointment without crying or go for a blood test without vomiting. You can feel like your life is about to end with every single stomach cramp and you can be sitting in the most wonderful place in the world, imagining the very worst conditions happening to your body.

My health anxiety reached its peak in February when a family member had to have some standardised tests for some minor symptoms and I had a breakdown. I couldn’t imagine any possible positive result coming out of those tests and every single time I heard about it, I would burst into tears. I was so deep in the spiral of anxiety that nothing could distract me from it and all I wanted to do was talk about it. It became an obsession and that was finally when I began to accept that my anxiety was no longer generalised, but now specific — focused on the notion of health and cancer and my all too imminent death. I had developed OCD around my health, and my compulsions were numerous.

I would Google everything, even when people told me not to. I would lie to myself, telling myself I was just ‘ruling things out’ rather than seeking them, and it wasn’t true. I wanted that tiny moment of relief when I spotted a symptom I didn’t have on a list for ovarian cancer, and I needed it like a drug. The rush would fade of course, and I would be left anxious once again.

I would avoid absolutely everything to do with cancer, even if it meant missing out on things. I refused to read good books, I missed out on cinema trips, I wouldn’t watch certain TV shows and I braced myself every time the News came on.

I would check myself, obsessively. I would check my breasts, my neck, my stomach and my legs far more than anyone would recommend. I would look at my moles and my partner’s moles every night before bed and I would even get panicked by a slightly swollen gum or broken fingernail. But I would also have days where I simply could not check myself and would avoid touching my body as much as possible. I wouldn’t want to be touched or looked at for the rest of the day and would wear long jeans and jumpers to prevent myself from spotting something suspicious.

I would seek reassurance from almost anyone. I would be asking estranged family members to check new freckles over the breakfast table, I would demand my boyfriend to tell me he didn’t think I had a brain tumour and I would overshare with everyone I could about my digestion problems to the point of disgust. It’s annoying and frustrating and everyone just wanted to help me, and so they provided the comfort that would only make my condition worse.

It took me a long time to understand the link between these compulsions and my obsession, and even longer to truly recognise just how much my own behaviour was damaging my mental health. The actions we think seem perfectly rational at the start of our condition are often the compulsions we need to break to truly recover. But health anxiety is more than just our actions, it lives in our thoughts and our physical symptoms. Treating health anxiety requires so much mental effort on our behalf and a lot of physical homework that can, at times, feel counterproductive.

This blog post will take you through the different factors involved in my own journey to recovery from health anxiety, and explore how they’re helping me to reclaim control over my mental health.

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The Two Week Log

If you’re someone who struggles with noticing symptoms and either rushing to the doctors for reassurance or avoiding the doctor at all, this is a good system for you. This was a process recommended to me by a fellow health anxiety sufferer and it has really helped me to break away from my initial panic at a new bodily sensation.

Grab a spare notebook and draw up a chart with four different columns. In column one, write the date you noticed the sensation. In column two, write the sensation down i.e. lump on the neck, stomach cramp, headache, eye twitch… In column three, write down what the date will be in two weeks time. In the final column, write down what your next step will be if the sensation isn’t gone in two weeks. This doesn’t have to be immediately visiting your nearest healthcare provider, it could simply mean checking it again or mentioning it to someone you trust. For me, I tend to try and sit with the sensation for two weeks before I’ll mention it to my boyfriend for him to take a look at and we can take it from there. If it’s still bothering me for another week, I’ll make the first call to my doctor.

When you have health anxiety, every sensation feels urgent and life-threatening and our body reacts to it as if we’ve just been given a terminal diagnosis. In reality, we always have more time than we think to process our bodily sensations and the space we give ourselves to calm down and re-process could give you a clearer perspective of your symptoms. In many cases, the problem will simply disappear within two weeks and you’ll have forgotten about it in that time. But even if it still persists, then you have a smart and logical timeframe to give to your doctor for them to assess.

Realistic Perspective Thinking

CBT is the act of changing how you think and how you perceive certain situations. It takes an initial trigger i.e. a new bodily sensation and then asks you to write down an alternative and rational perspective for it.

For example, ‘I feel dizzy today and I’m worried it’s a brain tumour or a blood clot’. You can write down how this feeling makes you feel, both physically and emotionally, and you can explore the thoughts your mind is providing about it.

Then you have to challenge it. You have to come up with a list of reasonable and rational alternatives to your worst-case scenario, such as ‘I could feel dizzy because I haven’t drunk enough water today. It could be because I didn’t sleep well last night. It could be anxiety. It could be low blood sugar, which is a very common and normal condition. It could be any number of benign conditions that won’t drastically affect my life.’

You need to give your mind the chance to fight against the instinctive intrusive thoughts with logic and reason before spiralling into panic. Over time, this thought challenging behaviour will become natural, making it easier to counter uncomfortable thoughts before they begin.

Exposure Therapy

If you decide to try exposure therapy, I really do recommend doing it alongside a mental healthcare provider as it can be distressing and uncomfortable at first. They can support you and recommend the right amount of exposure for your particular mental health condition.

However, in my experience, exposure therapy was one of the biggest breakthroughs I experienced throughout my treatment. My mind had brought up an imagined story of what having cancer would be like and the images in my head were constantly frightening, embarrassing, degrading and distressing. Exposure therapy helped me to understand the realities of living with illness, the facts and the stats behind it and the day-to-day experience of having cancer treatment — one of my biggest health anxiety fears. It broke down my terrifying expectations and allowed me to challenge my own perception of the illness I feared the most, making it less scary and easier to manage in my own life.

Personally, I found that TikTok actually provided a great platform for me to challenge my expectations of cancer, through following accounts of girls my age going through treatment for it. These girls are strong, funny, frustrated and normal. They go rock climbing and sing at gigs and go to Starbucks and go camping — they’re completely different to the images of cancer patients in my head and this discovery was such a huge moment for both me and my health anxiety. I try to challenge myself with this at least two times a week and I’m no longer running from tv shows or films featuring cancer any more. I can read a book with cancer in it without having a panic attack and actually enjoy it. Exposure therapy is removing that fear from me and changing the way my body reacts as well.

Avoiding Compulsions

Once you’ve identified what your personal health anxiety compulsions are, the first stage is to simply stop them. Obviously, it isn’t simple and the journey to breaking down any compulsion is complex and difficult, but it absolutely can be done. I’ve tried so many different methods of fighting my compulsions, so why not try something off this list next time you get a health anxiety urge:

• Telling my partner or friends: ‘I’m getting the urge to X. I don’t want to do it’. By announcing it to them, I’m holding myself accountable and also verbalising the urge rather than trying to fight it all internally.
• Making a tally or drawing on a sheet every time the urge comes up. I usually find that the effort of having to find the pen, find my piece of paper and make the tally frustrates my brain enough to squash the compulsive urge.
• If I’m struggling with the urge to Google, I like to Google ‘health anxiety recovery’ instead. It draws my focus away from the compulsion and onto my desire for treatment and recovery.
• Physical hobbies i.e. trying (and failing) to knit, drawing, painting, doodling, stitching, jigsaws…anything you can do with your hands and your mind to keep you distracted.
• Distraction. I’ll turn on a Youtube video, start reading a book, message my friend or play a game on my phone to try and take my mind off it.
• Shower! Showering is something I have grown to love more and more throughout my process of recovery. I always find it a really comforting and soothing experience to hop in a shower, regardless of the time of day, as the warm water soothes my anxiety and calms my breathing. Plus it’s impossible to Google when you’re in the shower! If you’re worried about body checking in the shower or looking for something on your skin, why not try showering in the dark with only a small light from your phone or a single candle for some sensory deprivation instead.

Positive & Negative Reinforcement

Yep, sometimes we literally have to take our brains to puppy training classes. This is something my friend introduced to me fairly recently as I went through the anxiety-inducing process of trying to book a doctor’s appointment and blood test. She told me that every time I had to do something scary, I should do something nice immediately after I was finished. So after I’d hung up the phone with the doctor, I made myself a cup of tea and read my book in the sunshine for a while. Not only was it a great way to distract me from the anxiety about my future appointment, but it was also improving my mood and my self-love too.

I also had to have my first ever blood test recently and my boyfriend paid ahead for me to have my favourite iced coffee afterwards as a treat. If we start to associate completing scary things with nice rewards, our brains learn to enjoy them more and stop viewing them as a threat. We put more of our focus on the dopamine rush we get from the treat than the adrenaline we get from the frightening activity.

But it also works in reverse too. I have an arrangement with my partner that if I do any of my compulsions, he gets to choose what we watch on TV for a week. He’s threatened to pick the most boring shows as well, just to make the threat even worse. But there are so many other threats I could give myself as well — from extra cleaning work to time without my phone to locking my Minecraft account as motivation to resist my compulsions. I have to treat myself like an addict going cold turkey and put processes in place to keep me clean before I fall off the bandwagon.

They do work and they do help, and honestly, even just having the backing of my friends and family as they support me means so much more than the treat itself.

Support Network

Sometimes the people we love can enable us in the worst possible ways. Without meaning to, their comments and supportive attempts can increase our anxieties and cause us to feel more distressed and overwhelmed than ever. I’ve had to learn, through much trial and error, which friends to turn to when my health anxiety is high, and how I need to be spoken to to start to feel better.

I’ve informed my friends that when I come to them with a health problem, they aren’t allowed to reassure me that I’m fine. It won’t help. What they can do instead is point out that it is likely my health anxiety acting up and ask me to do one of my CBT sheets or a distraction activity to take my mind off it.

Over time, I’ve found that hearing ‘you’ll be fine’ doesn’t work. When you’re talking to someone with OCD or health anxiety, a more comforting response is ‘even if the very worst thing you’re imagining does come true, you will still be supported, you will still be loved and you will be able to handle it. It’s unlikely to happen, but if it does, you will be ok.’

Here are a few other things that are helpful if supporting a person with health anxiety:

• Encouraging them to do the things they’re scared of. Sometimes they will need to go to the doctor and this is terrifying, but they have to do it. Make this process as comforting and relaxing as possible for them by encouraging lots of self-care, quality time and support on their journey. Go with them to the appointments if they need it, make them hot drinks when they’re finished and respect their efforts to push themselves, no matter what.
• Support their recovery as much as possible. Don’t let them feel embarrassed for seeking professional help for their problem, and instead, work with them to the best of your abilities. If they want to carve out some time for journaling or CBT homework, bring them a cup of tea and work on something for yourself at that time. Schedule daily walks or weekly exercise sessions if it makes them feel better. Offer them rides to their therapy sessions or cups of coffee to debrief afterwards. Small acts of support will mean so much to them and can really help to accelerate their progress.
• Avoid assuming their triggers or trying to control them. Only the patient will truly know what’s going to trigger them and if something does, they will let you know. Try to avoid drastically changing your behaviour out of fear of a trigger, i.e. switching off a TV show that mentions cancer without them asking you to, hiding family news about illness or refusing invitations on their behalf. Whilst these can feel like protective behaviours, they can actually be incredibly frustrating for the individual suffering from health anxiety so it’s always best to trust them with their own triggers first.
• Distract them from their compulsions. If they come to you, explaining that they feel the need to carry out a compulsion, find small ways to distract them. For example, ask them questions about their favourite TV show, give them a small, repetitive chore, give them some math problems to do, play a board game with them…anything to keep their mind off their anxiety.
• Empathise with them. Until you’ve experienced it for yourself, you will never know just how it feels to suffer from OCD. Every day feels like the beginning of a bungee jump when your legs shake and you feel like you’re about to be sick and nothing feels normal anymore. You can feel isolated and strange and angry at yourself all the time. You want to get better so badly but your mind won’t let you and these intrusive thoughts just won’t leave you alone. You’re scared all the time and you can’t understand how everyone around can just go about their day without feeling the way you do. It’s crippling and blinding and to even make it through the week takes an enormous amount of effort. So show the sufferer in your life some love, empathy and pride for making it this far.

Responsive Thinking

If you’re struggling with the quickfire intrusive thoughts that come with health anxiety, it can be really hard to shut them out of your mind. They can build up and spiral until it feels like someone is shouting your worst fears directly into your ear, and it’s impossible to get anything else done. On my bad days, the intrusive thoughts are constant streams of noise. They scream at me with images of treatments for illnesses I don’t have, surgery, needles, chemicals and sickness, my mum crying and my boyfriend leaving me — a traumatising production that sticks in my head for weeks afterwards.

But slowly I’m learning how to cope with those thoughts in a way that’s both gentle and firm and seems to be working so far. It might sound impossibly simple and potentially even a little childish, but the next time you have a frightening intrusive thought, just think or say to yourself ‘that’s not a helpful thought, but thank you.’

You’re not fighting against the thought or trying to squash it down and repress it, you’re acknowledging it in your mind and casting it away instead. You know your mind is only feeding you these thoughts because it’s frightened and so mentally shouting back isn’t going to help anyone. You need to be kinder to your brain and to understand why it’s giving you these horrible images, but by letting yourself know that the thoughts are unhelpful, it encourages them not to stick around any longer than they need to.

At first, it might feel incredibly repetitive to keep thinking the same thought over and over again, but before long it’ll feel routine and familiar. Your brain will grow to recognise this phrase as a dismissal and shut the thoughts down before they even start, making them so much more manageable and calm.

Quickfire Affirmations and Reminders

• Thinking about your physical symptoms won’t cure them or make them worse. It’s just thinking.
• Compulsions make your anxiety worse, not better.
• It is possible to get medical tests and scans and have a completely clean bill of health.
• Your anxiety level is not linked to the severity of your illness.
• You are more capable than you know and your brain will support you through even the worst-case scenario.
• You can recover from this and get better.
• You do not have to be 100% healthy to be happy and fulfilled in life.
• Be kind to yourself if you have a bad day. Your anxiety thrives on self-criticism and self-punishment.
• Exercise is a great way to prove to yourself that your body is functioning and working.
• The statement ‘1 in 2 of us will get cancer’ is often used in the wrong context. Many medical and mental health professionals I’ve spoken to have clarified this for me, describing that the statistic fails to represent those who will get cancer well into their 80s and 90s, those who get extremely mild forms of cancer, those who don’t seek out treatment for a problem before it becomes cancerous and those who live in countries without the resources to detect and prevent cancer in the first place. Don’t let yourself get worked up over a statistic on Celebrity Bake Off. It’s not worth it.
• The illness you fear does not have to ruin your life. It does not have to prevent you from achieving your dreams, reaching your goals or living a happy life.
• Your brain will tell you that dwelling is the only way to be prepared for bad news regarding your head. This is a lie. Whatever your results are, the amount of time spent dwelling on them beforehand will not make you feel better or worse when they arrive. Having good mental health, however, will.
• For the age group most likely to suffer from OCD and health anxiety, the biggest killer is, surprisingly, suicide. This means that our mental health needs to be a priority and is in fact the health condition we should be the most worried about. Whilst we should obviously be aware of our own physical health, our mental health needs to matter just as much too. Getting treatment for your mental health is possible if you’re willing to do the work.

My struggle with health anxiety is far from over, but I’m already so much further along than I ever imagined I would be. Even just knowing that recovery is possible drives me to keep pushing myself, to keep working, to keep writing and to keep challenging my thoughts — even if I’m tired, even if I’m scared and even if I’m frustrated. Healing is the most important thing to me right now and I’ve finally been able to carve out the space in my mind to work on it. Can you do the same?

I know this post was extraordinarily long but I really wanted to collate all of my thoughts and ideas down in one big guide to recovery that anyone can access and use. If you’ve found anything in this post useful or helpful, please don’t hesitate to let me know or if you’re still struggling and need someone to chat to, my inbox is always open.