Have you ever noticed a strange sensation in your body and immediately reached for your phone?
Perhaps it’s a headache that feels slightly different, a flutter in your chest, an ache you haven’t noticed before or a small change in your body that suddenly feels impossible to ignore.
You tell yourself you’ll just have a quick look online for reassurance.
Twenty minutes later, you’ve read about several serious illnesses, you’re checking your symptoms repeatedly, and instead of feeling reassured, you’re considerably more anxious than when you started.
If this sounds familiar, you’re certainly not alone.
Health anxiety can create a powerful cycle in which the very things we do to make ourselves feel safer — Googling symptoms, checking our bodies and repeatedly seeking reassurance — can sometimes keep the anxiety going.
What is health anxiety?
Most of us worry about our health occasionally. That’s completely understandable.
Health anxiety becomes more problematic when worries about illness begin taking up significant amounts of time or affecting everyday life.
You might find yourself frequently checking your body for lumps, changes or unusual sensations. You may repeatedly search symptoms online, ask other people for reassurance or struggle to believe reassuring medical results.
And sometimes, even after you’ve been reassured, another thought appears:
“But what if they’ve missed something?”
That can send you straight back into the cycle again.
Why does Googling symptoms sometimes make anxiety worse?
When we’re frightened, our minds naturally look for information that will help us feel safe.
So Googling a symptom can initially feel reassuring. You are doing something about the uncertainty.
The problem is that an internet search can’t take into account your complete medical history or properly assess what’s happening in your individual circumstances.
Search results can also expose you to frightening possibilities that may be unlikely to apply to you.
Suddenly, a relatively ordinary sensation can feel much more significant.
You become anxious, and that anxiety can make you even more aware of what’s happening in your body.
So you check again.
And the cycle continues.
The health-anxiety cycle
It can look something like this:
Notice a sensation → Worry about what it means → Google/check/reassurance → Feel better briefly → Notice another sensation → Worry again → Check again
The important word here is briefly.
Reassurance can certainly make you feel better in the moment. But if your mind begins to learn that checking is the only way to feel safe, you can become increasingly reliant upon it.
Before long, you may find yourself monitoring your body far more closely than you used to.
Anxiety can make normal sensations feel much more noticeable
Think about what happens when somebody tells you to pay attention to your breathing.
Suddenly you’re extremely aware of something your body had been doing automatically all day.
A similar thing can happen with health anxiety.
The more closely you monitor your body, the more sensations you are likely to notice.
Anxiety itself can also produce very real physical sensations. A racing heart, sweating, trembling, nausea, dizziness, muscle tension and changes in breathing can all occur when we’re anxious.
Those sensations can then become something else to worry about.
It’s easy to see how the cycle can become exhausting.
So should you stop checking symptoms completely?
No — and this is an important distinction.
New, persistent, severe or concerning symptoms should be appropriately assessed by a healthcare professional. Seeking medical advice when it’s warranted isn’t the same thing as health-anxiety checking.
The aim isn’t to ignore your body.
It’s about beginning to recognise when sensible health awareness has turned into repetitive checking primarily intended to reduce anxiety.
One useful question to ask yourself is:
“Am I looking this up because I genuinely need new information, or am I looking for reassurance about something I’ve already checked?”
That little question can help you recognise the pattern.
Breaking the reassurance cycle
If you’ve become accustomed to immediately Googling every sensation, changing the habit can take practice.
Rather than automatically reaching for your phone, give yourself a moment.
Notice what you’re feeling.
Notice the thought that’s appeared.
And instead of immediately trying to make the uncertainty disappear, allow yourself to recognise:
“I’m having an anxious thought about my health.”
That’s different from telling yourself that the frightening thought must be true.
You might also notice your particular triggers. Perhaps health anxiety becomes stronger when you’re stressed, tired, scrolling online late at night or after hearing about somebody else’s illness.
Understanding your own pattern can be incredibly valuable.
Why can health anxiety feel so powerful?
Sometimes what we’re experiencing today isn’t just about what’s happening today.
Our minds are constantly learning from previous experiences.
Perhaps illness affected somebody close to you. Maybe you experienced a frightening medical event yourself. Perhaps you grew up around someone who worried considerably about health.
Or there may not be one obvious event at all.
Over time, we can develop beliefs and associations around health, safety, uncertainty and control without consciously realising it.
And this is one of the areas I find particularly interesting in my work.
Where can RTT and hypnotherapy fit in?
Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT®) uses hypnotherapy alongside therapeutic techniques to explore thoughts, beliefs and patterns that may be contributing to the way somebody feels or behaves today.
Rather than simply saying “stop worrying” — something anybody with anxiety knows isn’t particularly helpful — the work can involve exploring the thoughts and associations sitting underneath the anxious response.
The aim is not to tell you that a physical symptom is “just anxiety,” nor is hypnotherapy a substitute for appropriate medical investigation.
Instead, the focus is on your response to anxiety and the patterns of thinking and behaviour surrounding it.
For somebody caught in the cycle of checking, worrying and seeking reassurance, understanding those patterns can be an important part of changing them.
You are allowed to feel safe without constantly checking
Health anxiety can take up an enormous amount of mental space.
A tiny sensation can become an hour of searching. A passing thought can become an evening of worry.
But patterns can change.
Learning to recognise the difference between appropriately looking after your health and repeatedly seeking reassurance because you’re frightened can be an important first step.
And perhaps next time you feel the urge to reach immediately for Google, you can stop for just a moment and ask:
“Do I need information right now — or am I looking for reassurance?”
That one pause might be the beginning of a very different response.
Would you like to find out whether RTT could help you?
If health anxiety is affecting your everyday life and you’d like to explore the thoughts and patterns behind it, I offer a free 30-minute discovery call where we can talk about what’s happening for you and whether RTT may be an appropriate option.
