7 Ways to Regain Perspective When You Can’t Stop Worrying About Your Health
Worrying about your health can result from being especially attuned to your bodily sensations. Experiencing symptoms of physical ache or discomfort can lead you to worry that something is very wrong.
The increased anxiety that this brings can aggravate symptoms further. This makes you feel worse and starts to convince you that you are seriously ill. When these thoughts take hold, it is often hard for anyone to convince you otherwise.
If worrying about your health has become time-consuming, distressing and disruptive to your daily routine, I hope this newsletter edition helps you to understand the key reasons why you may worry so that you can get things more into perspective and can get back to enjoying your life.
7 reasons why you may worry about your health
First and foremost, if you tend to worry in general, you are more likely to worry about your health also. Where there are unprocessed anxieties and frustrations that you don’t feel totally safe to express for whatever reason, your health often becomes a seemingly safe ‘vehicle’ (or outlet) of expression. I have seen this lack of rightful expression play out so many times with my other clients over my twenty-five years in practice.
If your self-esteem is low, you may perhaps feel undeserving of all that you have, compared to others who are less fortunate than you. You may obsess that you’ll become ill or that some other catastrophe might happen, because it all feels too good to be true.
In many instances, you may have experienced, heard or seen something tragic or thought provoking to make that first connection – ‘what if that was me? or what if that happens to me.’ This fear then attaches itself to a symptom within your body and you teach yourself to question everything unusual; you convince yourself that the same or similar drama is happening to you.
Stories in the press, TV documentaries and dramas concerning health issues and medical opinion may be exaggerated or biased, which in some circumstances verify your worst fears.
If someone you know experienced devastating circumstances and yet your life continues to flourish, you may feel guilty and undeserving for being happy just now. Many clients I’ve helped tend to have convinced themselves that sooner or later something bad will happen to them to bring an end to their happy life in order to ‘right’ the imbalance. Just as with low self-esteem, death can feel a natural ‘corrective’ response.
If you tend to think negatively or are closed in your thinking, you are more likely to expect that you are the one to get ill. This makes you more vulnerable to worrying about your health.
If you have had a period of real fear, emotional or physical stress or indeed a real health worry, maintaining your good health can feel a high priority for you going forward. This can make you more prone to question any other symptoms that may arise; you’ll perhaps tend to think of the extremes of what could happen to you.
It might be that you find it difficult to assert yourself in order to get the right help, which would reassure you early on. This leads you increasingly to dwell on any symptoms. You may also wonder if medical investigations were perhaps not thorough enough and that something has been missed, but not feel confident to raise your concerns.
Why being told, ‘you’re being irrational’ doesn’t help
It’s hard to know what to do – so you mull it over and over and over...
You google endlessly, especially in the early hours when you lie awake wondering. You sift through articles in newspapers and magazines…
All seeking to validate your fear or to reassure you that everything is OK.
Heaven help someone who glibly tells you ‘You’re fine and that there’s nothing to worry about!’ You’ll likely burst into tears or yell at them that they just don’t understand, hey?
Your head tells you one thing – “This IS irrational”
and yet what feels like your instinct tells you something else – “What if this time it’s real?”
Your persistence with this is teaching your subconscious.
It is always working benevolently to try to protect you. The problem is that this subconscious deeper part of your mind runs on emotion and imagination, with little logic. Logical reasoning belongs in the everyday conscious mind.
Your subconscious is learning that your preoccupation with your health is important to you. So, it stores the questions about your health in the background of your mind; to be brought up every time you get any vaguely related feeling or ache or symptom... or whenever it is simply time for you to switch off and rest.
This thought process becomes a habit which is strengthened when the feelings or symptoms return. This confirms your worst fears and an anxiety loop begins! The more you share your worries, perhaps the more dismissed you feel by those closest to you - who have grown weary of this un-evidenced and repeated pattern of angst.
The actual proper help you need
As a Consultant Psychotherapist and Advanced Hypnotherapist, I can help you in ways that are very effective to overcome health anxiety, but your first call must be to your GP.
Make a list of questions and discuss your symptoms fully. Get any tests your doctor feels are necessary to evidence you’re ok.
If your GP feels that there is no cause for concern, yet you still feel anxious, I can then help you to clear any underlying anxiety that is feeding the health anxiety. As we work together, I’ll help you to ease health anxiety and get things back into perspective.
It can be really helpful to understand what’s behind the fears and work out a plan, with my support, for how to tackle the real issue that has gone unaddressed. There is real value too, in exploring your tendencies to over-react and/or to jump to conclusions in different life situations generally.
Psychodynamic therapy helps you massively to introduce rational conscious thought so that you may differentiate what is true from what isn’t. This helps you to stop ‘catastrophising’ in your thinking and calm anxiety in your daily living. Plus, actively rehearsing new ways of thinking psycho-dynamically within hypnosis helps substantially to eradicate this form of anxiety.
What one of my other clients had to say...
“I have worked with Lisa on deeply rooted anxiety issues, particularly concerning my health. I couldn’t understand why as a rational, logical person, I couldn’t seem to control my overwhelming anxiety levels which were steadily and significantly worsening.
The process unlocks deeply held emotions and thought processes, so you need to be able to trust the person taking you through that process entirely. Lisa is easy to trust and her desire to help is genuine. Six months on and my anxiety levels are well under control and getting better all the time. I have also dealt with a number of critical underlying issues that were becoming a barrier to leading a fulfilling and happy life.” Louise, 41 – Business Owner.
I hope this helps you today. If you'd like a chat to discuss how I can help you, send me an email to support@empoweredmomentum.com or book a call here.
Until next time.
Warmly as ever,
Lisa x
Lisa Skeffington is a multi-award-winning consultant psychotherapist and self-esteem expert. She is the Founder of the Empowered Momentum Community, an exclusive membership for ambitious midlife women, and her latest book, ‘From Anxious to Empowered’, is out now.