Reclaim peace of mind from health-related worry
Health Anxiety
Health anxiety—sometimes referred to as hypochondriasis or illness anxiety disorder—involves persistent and distressing worry about your health. You may fear having a serious medical condition, misinterpreting normal bodily sensations as signs of illness, even after receiving medical reassurance. These fears can feel overwhelming and lead to constant checking, avoidance, or seeking reassurance, all of which can disrupt your daily life and relationships.
You may find yourself:
- Frequently checking your body for signs of illness (e.g. lumps, pain, skin changes)
- Monitoring symptoms and interpreting them in catastrophic ways
- Repeatedly seeking reassurance from doctors, loved ones, or online sources
- Feeling unable to trust test results or medical opinions
- Avoiding healthcare altogether due to fear of receiving bad news
- Spending excessive time researching symptoms online (“cyberchondria”)
- Struggling to focus on anything else when a health worry is triggered
These behaviours may offer short-term relief but tend to intensify the fear and keep the cycle going.
Why Health Anxiety Feels So Real
People with health anxiety often hold strong internal beliefs such as:
- “If I don’t check, I could miss something serious.”
- “Doctors sometimes get things wrong—what if this time they did?”
- “This doesn’t feel normal—what if it’s cancer or a hidden illness?”
Because health is something we all value, these worries feel rational. However, in health anxiety, the perceived threat typically far outweighs the actual risk. Normal bodily sensations—like muscle tension, light-headedness, digestive changes, or a racing heart—are frequently misinterpreted as signs of illness, rather than natural responses to stress or everyday fluctuation.
Research shows that individuals with health anxiety often experience increased bodily awareness, meaning they are more finely attuned to subtle internal sensations. While this sensitivity can be useful in some contexts, it becomes problematic when ordinary sensations are filtered through a lens of threat.
This heightened awareness can make harmless changes in the body—like a skipped heartbeat, tingling, or bloating—feel deeply alarming. As attention intensifies, physical symptoms often increase (e.g. due to adrenaline or muscle tension), creating a feedback loop:
Anxiety increases bodily sensations → sensations increase anxiety → more checking or reassurance → short-term relief → more doubt and worry.
Over time, this loop reinforces the belief that the body cannot be trusted, and that constant monitoring is necessary to stay safe.
How Health Anxiety Develops
Health anxiety doesn’t come out of nowhere. It often develops over time and may be linked to:
- A personal or family history of illness
- Childhood experiences of anxious or health-preoccupied caregivers
- Traumatic experiences such as sudden illness or bereavement
- Periods of stress, transition, or emotional overwhelm
- Messages growing up that the world—and the body—is not safe
In essence, health anxiety is a learned response to vulnerability. The mind begins to treat uncertainty about the body as a danger signal, and through repetition, builds strong habits of checking, reassurance-seeking, and avoidance.
These coping strategies are understandable—but they come at a cost: reduced confidence, increased fear, and a life increasingly restricted by anxiety.
From Anxiety to Values-Based Living
The goal of therapy isn’t to remove all worry—some health concern is natural. Instead, the aim is to shift from anxiety-driven behaviour to a values-based approach to living. That means helping you reclaim your time, focus, and energy from the grip of fear, and move towards what genuinely matters to you.
Together, we work on:
- Recognising when health anxiety is leading your decisions
- Building the ability to pause and choose your response
- Learning to live with uncertainty, rather than trying to eliminate it
- Focusing on what’s meaningful—relationships, creativity, work, rest
- Developing a more compassionate relationship with your body
This shift creates space to build a life based on values—not symptoms.
Effective Treatment for Health Anxiety
Health anxiety is highly treatable with evidence-based therapy. I use an integrative approach grounded in:
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) – to address distorted thinking patterns and reduce compulsive behaviours
- Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) – to help you build tolerance for uncertainty and reduce checking
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) – to support values-led action and increase psychological flexibility
- Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) – to soften shame and internal pressure, especially in those who fear being burdensome or dramatic
- Mindfulness and grounding techniques – to develop a calmer relationship with the body and physical sensations
Our work is collaborative, paced to suit your readiness, and focused on helping you feel more empowered in both body and mind.
Begin Your Healing Journey
If health anxiety is dominating your life, draining your energy, or impacting your relationships, therapy can help you move forward. You don’t need to wait until things get worse—and you don’t need to go through it alone.
I offer sessions in-person at Peckham Levels, London, and online, and I work with clients from diverse backgrounds, including those navigating complex trauma or overlapping mental health difficulties.
You can learn to live with greater confidence, clarity, and ease—even with uncertainty. Let’s take the first step together.
Get in touch today to book a free 30-minute consultation.