What is Health anxiety?

In health anxiety we may be reluctant to even consider the possibility that anxiety may be part of the problem. Sometimes our relatives or health care practitioners suspect the "diagnosis" even before we recognise it ourselves. This is because in health anxiety we feel physically ill. Each of the actions we do is a sensible response in the face of illness. What marks out the problem as health anxiety is the fact that anxiety exaggerates the health-seeking behaviours to an unhelpful degree. The health fears dominate our thinking again and worsen how we feel. It causes us to react in ways that worsens the situation. We become overly aware of how our body feels. We may seek excessive reassurance from others, or spend all our time monitoring how we feel. This may include doing things like looking in the mirror, or constantly checking yourself for lumps etc. These actions can become part of the problem.

Health anxiety checklist:
Q. Do I feel very anxious whenever I think about my physical health?          
Q. Am I going to the doctor far more than I used to?
Q. Am I thinking again and again about how ill I feel, yet my doctors' tests seem to show no strong evidence of a physical illness?         
Q. Am I finding it difficult accepting that the physical tests and investigations show little or no strong evidence of a physical illness?         
Q. Am I constantly examining myself (e.g. taking my pulse or temperature or checking myself for lumps or looking at myself in the mirror)?
Q. Am I constantly aware of how my body feels and paying particular attention to symptoms that especially worry me?
Q. Has my own health care practitioner or someone else that I would usually trust told me that they think I am too worried about my health?
If you have answered Yes to several of these questions, then you may have problems of health anxiety.