If you have health anxiety, you likely seek reassurance about your health-related concerns from doctors and/or loved ones. In other words, you repeatedly seek the simple reassuring message that there is nothing wrong with your health. What does reassurance-seeking look like? You might ask your significant other, friends or family members whether they think a given symptom is concerning. Or you might go to one or many doctors and have a variety of medical tests and physical examinations in order to receive reassurance from the medical staff that the results of such tests show that your health is fine. In both types of situations, you feel a sigh of relief when you are told not to worry and that your health is just fine.
Great, so I feel relief. Then, why is this problematic? Because the relief you experience from reassurance-seeking is short-lived. Before long, you begin to worry again as either that symptom never went away or a new symptom or bodily sensation pops up. In fact, research studies have shown that people with health anxiety experience a calming effect immediately after being reassured but the health anxiety returns as soon as within 24 hours. Given the effort you likely put into this reassurance-seeking, that is not a big payout!
Let me explain why reassurance seeking is short-lived. No matter how many loved ones or doctors you talk to or no matter how many physical exams and tests you have done, there is no way to be 100% certain that you don’t have a health issue. Afterall, it is possible that a medical test isn’t accurate or that a doctor could miss something. Even though this is highly improbable, that sliver of possibility is enough to make you feel anxious. In addition, even if you trust the results from a test or a doctor’s conclusion based on a physical exam, a new symptom or bodily sensation could pop up and BAM, you are back to square one again.
Because of all of this, CBT therapists use cognitive restructuring and behavioral strategies to help you reframe the way you see your health and uncertainty in general. Some of these strategies include looking at probabilities of health issues, examining thinking errors and dysfunctional beliefs related to health as well as using imaginal exposure and behavioral experiments.
