The vicious cycle of health anxiety

If you have serious health AnxietyMaybe you have dysfunctional beliefs about health and illness. These are known as core beliefs. Core beliefs are formed early in life by personally significant life experiences.

Perhaps you have watched a sick family member grow up or a loved one suffer from an illness. Or maybe because of certain experiences you don’t feel safe in your life and therefore learn to be alert to potential threats and dangers. Your experiences have caused you to view health and illness in a certain way.

How distorted beliefs about health and illness develop.

Now, once your health-related beliefs are solidified, the consolidation process begins. Basically, you start scanning your environment and picking out all the “evidence” that supports your belief system.

They may have paid extra. Attention to situations when a loved one is struggling with an illness. You may have read all about various diseases online or in medical literature. You may have watched movies or read books about people struggling with illness. You probably pay more attention to stories of illness and death than to the people and situations around you that represent health and wellness.

Because of all this, they have developed a very distorted and distorted view of health and illness. Eventually, your dysfunctional beliefs are reinforced because they have been reinforced by years of selective attention.

How dysfunctional beliefs can make health anxiety worse

There is a process by which dysfunctional beliefs about health increase health anxiety. Your dysfunctional beliefs cause you to worry about pain and therefore engage in what is called “body awareness.” Body awareness is when you pay attention to all of your body’s sensations and signals.

Then they misinterpret ambiguous or weak symptoms as indicators of some health problem, and so on.”put off” or come up with dire scenarios about spoken symptoms or bodily sensations (ie, “This heart palpitation is the beginning of a heart attack”). These conclusions naturally increase your anxiety, and you engage in safety behaviors to reduce the anxiety. past physical examination), which exacerbates anxiety, which in turn reinforces your distorted beliefs, and then the cycle begins again.

How to improve health anxiety

The key to overcoming health anxiety is to disrupt this dysfunctional process. with Cognitive behavior Treatment (CBT), we each target these components. We challenge stereotypes through Socratic discussion or logic-based questions. We practice exposure to improve tolerance of bodily sensations and reduce the use of safety behaviors. We transform dysfunctional core beliefs into correct and adaptive beliefs. CBT to the rescue!

To find a therapist near you, visit Psychology Today Medical Directory.