Perinatal Health Anxiety Support
Health anxiety, also known as hypochondria or illness anxiety disorder, is a condition in which a person is excessively worried about themselves, or their loved ones, having a serious illness, despite having no presenting ,or only mild, symptoms. Find out the causes for your health anxiety and how I can support you to overcome it here:
You may constantly check your body for signs of illness and frequently need medical advice and support to put your mind at rest.
One of the biggest symptoms of anxiety many of the women I work with are experiencing, especially after going through a global pandemic and as they become mothers, is health anxiety.
It is an anxiety condition that is often housed within the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) spectrum of disorders. Those affected by health anxiety can have a preoccupation with the idea that they are currently (or will be) experiencing a physical illness.
What is health anxiety?
Health anxiety seems to grip people in a way that general anxiety doesn't.
But your health anxiety is an emotional reaction to something that has made you feel in danger, threatened and unsafe.
If you are struggling with health anxiety you may be convinced that harmless physical symptoms are indicators of serious disease or severe medical conditions.
The impacts of health anxiety?
With health anxiety you become so tuned into your body and every sensation, but all those feelings are heightened by your thoughts, and so you slip into a cycle of catastrophising and second guessing. But then the physical feeling of anxiety in your body leads you to believe those sensations are in fact true and happening right now, and what you fear is coming true.
Or your health anxiety may be more focused on your baby or child and every raised temperature, skin change, cough or sneeze feels like a sign that serious illness is on it’s way.
Either way you are in a state of hypervigilance, sensitivity and stress, waiting for that next bad thing to happen. Except it doens’t happen, or things turn out better than expected. But you can’t help but pre-empt the next episode or emergency.
Health anxiety can cause significant distress and seriously impact the quality of your daily life and ability to function. It will impact your contentment, lifestyle and habits as a result.
It feels like tuning into every bodily sensation or fluctuation in yourself, or others, means you will catch things early, avoid emergency situations or be one step ahead, but you won't.
The mind body connection is strong.
The more you think, the more you feel (or see if you are more worried about your baby).
The more you feel physically within your body, the more you believe what you are thinking is true.
Treatment and support for health anxiety:
Your first step towards overcoming health anxiety is take control of your thoughts in order to reduce the physical feeling and stop being beholden to what you think is going to happen. Rarely does what you think transpire onto what actually happens, so all your fears do is keep you stuck in a cycle of negative expectation and heightened and prolonged stress and anxiety which impacts your health and wellbeing.
Treatment for health anxiety requires mental and emotional health support to help you break the cycles of anxiety, alter your thoughts, and disconnect from the perceived threat around you.
This treatment can take a while as your habits and behaviours are so ingrained, but it can be done in as little as 8 sessions.
The Mother Nurture Method programme will help you overcome your health anxiety as well as other fears, anxieties and phobias you may have that have been created as a result.
To find out more, book in for your FREE health anxiety support call here:
Support available in North Herts (Stevenage, Letchworth, Hitchin, Baldock, Knebworth, Royston) and online nationwide across England.