Fear for your loved ones. How to get rid of fear for loved ones? I'm very worried about my family

Almost all of us worry about our health from time to time, especially if certain physical symptoms suddenly appear. Usually fears are quickly dispelled, but some people may worry for quite a long time, believing that they have a serious illness. This fear has a significant impact on their lives and can cause panic attacks, feelings of helplessness or depression.
Unfortunately, just recently, such excitement or anxiety for health was perceived as something not entirely understandable. People to whom it is characteristic were most often called hypochondriacs. Hinting that there are no real reasons for concern, they exist only “in the head.” However, the symptoms observed in such people are quite real and sensitive. In this article we will tell you how excessive concern about your own health occurs, why it can be long-lasting, and how you can deal with it. So, the goal is to help you or a family member understand this mysterious stress condition and give hope for change.

What is excessive health anxiety?

Let's start by describing two people who suffer from what we call excessive health anxiety, and here we can see if they have any problems.

Story No. 1. Sergei quit smoking 10 years ago. Last year he realized that he was very concerned about the possibility of heart disease. At work, he was constantly under stress as he had to cope with more and more responsibilities. Trying to cope with stress, Sergei started drinking. He felt pain in his chest and went to his family doctor. He did several tests, advised the man not to worry and referred him to a cardiologist, who also did several tests and said that Sergei’s heart was quite healthy. This seemed to help, but soon the pain returned. Sergei became increasingly worried because his symptoms were exactly the same as those of his father, who died of heart disease. Therefore, Sergei consulted the doctor again and again. During each visit, the doctor assured Sergei that he had found no signs of heart disease. He also suggested that Sergei undergo additional examinations. In the hospital, Sergei felt relief. But when he returned home, he was again overcome by doubts. Sergei went to the doctor every now and then to once again receive assurances that everything was fine with him. He also
asked Lisa, his wife, if she thought he was developing heart disease. Sergei listened intently to the pain in his chest and sat down as soon as they began. The man stopped doing his usual activities and left the house less and less. On the anniversary of his father’s death, Sergei felt so bad that he thought he was about to die. Not only did his chest hurt, he was shaking, sweating and barely breathing. Lisa was so worried that she called a doctor. After carefully examining Sergei, the doctor realized that he had suffered a panic attack. But despite all the physical symptoms, Sergei was not really sick. Therefore, the doctor advised him to see a psychologist. Sergei was afraid that he was gradually losing his mind. In fact, what he was diagnosed with was that he was not sick. Therefore, the doctor advised him to see a psychologist. Sergei was afraid that he was gradually losing his mind. In fact, he has been diagnosed with what we call “excessive health anxiety” or “health anxiety,” a psychological problem that he can help with. What did we learn from the story about Sergei?
— He had physical symptoms (chest pain, sweating, trembling, difficulty breathing) through which he was very worried.
— Sergei checked his body for signs of illness and began to behave as if he were sick.
— He asked for reassurance that he was not sick (mainly from the doctor, but also from his wife), which gave him relief, but only for a short time.

Story No. 2. Our next story is about Katya. Katya is a 20-year-old secretary, a fragile-looking girl who has always taken care of her health. Katya was quite sickly as a child,
so her mother was very worried about her. Katya remembers being ordered: “Dress well, you know how vulnerable you are.” Although she was rarely sick as a child, she did not attend school during flu epidemics or when it simply became cold. Therefore, Katya suggested that by avoiding sick people, she would protect herself from illnesses that her body could not cope with. Recently Katya left her parents' house and moved to a rented apartment in the city. She sought self-realization and began to make friends. The flatmates tried to involve her in their hectic social life. However, Katya’s head heard the words of her parents that she shouldn’t stay late and drink alcohol. One day, after a long and stressful day at the office, the girl returned home with a headache. She felt very sick and went to bed. Lying in the dark, I remembered a story I had once read in a newspaper: that a young woman had an incredibly strong
headache and died a few hours later - she had meningitis. Katya thought that the same thing was happening to her and was very scared. The headache seemed to be getting worse. To feel better, she asked her neighbors to reassure her that she was fine. The next day, Katya took the day off and went to the library to read about the symptoms of meningitis. She still had a headache, which was getting worse from reading. Since then, Katya has been especially attentive to what she does and where she goes. If she felt a slight headache—and this happened quite often—she would go to bed and carefully write down her symptoms. When the symptoms became particularly severe, she called the doctor, who always assured her that it was not meningitis. Katya completely refused to communicate and became quite withdrawn and depressed. She, like Sergei, believed that she was doing exactly what was needed to cope with the problem and help herself, but she was getting worse.
What is similar in the stories of Sergei and Katya?
“She was also stressed.
“She had a physical symptom—a headache.”
“She was very worried about this symptom. I focused on it and “controlled” it, for example, thinking like this: “How bad is my pain? Perhaps you should see a doctor? »
“She asked for assurances that would give her short-term relief.

Physical symptoms have a number of causes. One of the reasons, obviously, may be illness. However, there are other reasons that cause the same physical symptoms, such as normal changes in the body, stress and anxiety. When we worry or feel anxious, adrenaline enters the bloodstream. This hormone causes changes in the body and psyche that allow
us to cope with danger - prepares us to escape or to fight the threat. These changes are called the stress response, and they manifest themselves in muscle tension, increased breathing, increased heart rate, and sweating. Thoughts concentrate exclusively on this problem, so the person does not notice anything else. In the short term, such changes are useful because they enable us to act in a certain way - to run away from danger or to fight it. When the threat passes, the stress response turns off. However, the human mind cannot distinguish between a real threat—such as running away from a wild animal—and an anxious thought like, “I’m sick, something terrible is going to happen to me.” When under stress or anxiety, a person experiences symptoms caused by this condition: shortness of breath, chest pain, tingling in the fingers, and then interprets these symptoms as signs of a serious illness and thinks: “I am really sick.” These thoughts contribute to increased anxiety, which exacerbates the corresponding symptoms - and the circle closes.

The physical symptoms are very real. Symptoms caused by stress are just as real as those caused by illness. The problem lies in how a person interprets symptoms.

What makes excessive health anxiety last longer?

Sergey and Katya, like other people who are worried about their health, are taking certain steps to cope with the problem. They do what seems important to them, but in the long run only further “cycles” the problem: they demand assurances that they are not sick; check symptoms and monitor their development; spend a lot of time studying the disease; behave as if they were sick and avoid anything that could worsen their condition. This behavior may be effective for a certain time, but, unfortunately, it only aggravates the problem - the mentioned methods of dealing with anxiety in the end only increase, rather than reduce, worries.

Seeking Reassurance

Sergei and Katya asked their doctors, family and friends whether everything was really okay with them. As a rule, they were told that no disease had been detected. This quickly improved their well-being. But the reassurance doesn't last forever, and health worries return, especially if people notice symptoms of illness again. Reassurance may help with anxiety in the short term, but it will only increase anxiety in the long run.

Why is this happening? People are asking for reassurance because they are concerned about their health. They think about it constantly, notice symptoms and become increasingly concerned about their condition. And having noticed the symptoms, they are no longer inclined to believe the assurances. However, their anxiety makes them ask for reassurance again and again.

Identifying and checking physical symptoms

Sergey and Katya very carefully monitored the slightest changes in their physical condition. For example, Sergei recorded every attack of chest pain, and Katya tracked the severity of her headache. It's like looking at your own body under a powerful microscope, looking for any problems. Yes, of course, taking care of yourself and your condition is a necessary thing, but focusing only on health 24 hours a day, seven days a week is not at all useful. Recording every symptom is useless, because the state of the body naturally changes during the day and night, over time. For example, during the day a person is usually alert, and in the evening he is tired. Sergei and Katya noticed these changes and were worried about them. And the unrest caused additional physical symptoms, which worried Sergei and Katya even more. The more worried they became, the more acute the symptoms became and the more closely they monitored them. In other words, researching and monitoring symptoms too closely makes health anxiety a cyclical and long-term phenomenon. Let's give another example: trying to buy a car of a certain brand, you begin to notice the same cars on the roads, and it seems to you that the city is teeming with them. However, these cars were actually there all along, you just didn't notice them before. The same thing happens with physical sensations.

Delay in seeking information about the disease

Some people are so concerned about their possible illness that they read a lot about it and compare their symptoms, for example, with information on the Internet, magazine articles, television shows, and in conversations with others. As mentioned earlier, paying attention to your health is good, but excessive attention is a problem. Sooner or later, a person will discover that he allegedly has symptoms of the disease about which he has learned so much. But this happens not because he is really sick, but because the human body is constantly undergoing changes: mild pain, twitching, rumbling in the stomach, etc. there is always. The person begins to notice them and gets worried. In addition, knowing more about the disease, he focuses on a specific part of his body and begins to feel more, notice every change and worry about it. Despite everything, the Internet can be a very unreliable source of information, although some sites contain verified medical information.

Behavior of pretending to be sick

When Katya had a headache, she went to bed; Sergei sat down when his chest hurt. In general, people try to limit their mobility (walking, exercise) in the mistaken belief that this will protect their heart. This behavior not only makes life difficult and uninteresting, but also weakens the body. A weak body gets tired faster, this makes a person worry more and limit himself even more in his movements, trying to protect his body, treating like a sick person, you only weaken yourself and give yourself grounds for endless worries that will last for a very long time.

Avoiding anything related to illness

We know that Sergei stopped watching television programs in which they could talk about heart disease, because it upset him. This avoidance relieved his anxiety for a short time. People may also stop reading newspapers or talking about illnesses that concern them. This behavior allows you to get rid of worries here and now, but in the long run the anxiety will not disappear anywhere. On the contrary, such dosed anxiety has a pronounced negative effect. If you deliberately try not to think about something, you will still know what you are doing, and the anxious thoughts will not go away. In addition, it is impossible to completely isolate yourself from information about the disease, so sooner or later health anxiety will still return. And it will be more terrible than before.

Bottom line. So there are five factors that make health anxiety lasting: 1) the desire for reassurance; 2) identifying symptoms; 3) searching for information about the disease; 4) patient behavior; 5) avoidance of everything that somehow reminds of the disease. By asking for reassurance, you increase anxiety, causing physical symptoms to worsen. Knowing the symptoms, you begin to check them. Checking these symptoms leads to the accumulation of information about the disease, and consequently - a deepening of knowledge about the symptoms. You begin to act as if you are sick, lose mobility and weaken your body, then the symptoms worsen even more. Therefore, you gradually avoid everything related to the disease, and fear further intensifies the initial excitement. And the circle closes, and anxiety about health
becomes longer.

How can you overcome excessive health anxiety?

There is one very important thing to remember when dealing with health worries: The goal of dealing with excessive health anxiety is not to eliminate symptoms . After all, the human body is constantly changing, and a number of physical symptoms are completely normal. As we've already said, the human body changes throughout the day, from day to day, from week to week, as we age—and that's normal. You may feel more tired one day, less tired another. As you age, your skin changes. Pain of varying intensity may occur in different parts of the body. Therefore, hoping for complete disappearance of symptoms is simply unrealistic. But the goal of treatment is to help a person worry less about his health. After all, we have already shown how various physical symptoms make us worry. And anxiety itself causes numerous symptoms. Once you get rid of anxiety, you will feel much better. Therefore, below we provide ways to achieve this.

1. Think about other possible explanations for your symptoms. One of the first steps to combating excessive health anxiety is to accept the idea that symptoms may not be signs of illness that are caused by other reasons, such as worry. Typically, people who are concerned about their health spend time talking about how serious their illness is, although they try to convince themselves otherwise. However, it would be worth looking at the problem from a different angle: the fact is that worries harm you more than a seemingly serious illness. Anxiety causes many problems. And instead of trying to overcome the symptoms, you should focus on overcoming anxiety. The identified symptoms may be signs of a serious illness, but most likely they are not. Many symptoms are caused by natural changes in the body, which is normal and does not threaten you in any way. Anxiety and worry can cause a person to feel sick and experience a range of symptoms such as:
- headache;
- chest pain;
- tingling in the arms and legs;
- labored breathing;
- fatigue;
- dizziness
- cardiopalmus.
Anxiety can cause a variety of physical symptoms, causing discomfort and stress. But they do not indicate illness. We advise you to remember the following: most symptoms are absolutely harmless. In legal terms, they should not be accused of anything until proven guilty.

HOW...find other explanations for symptoms

Write down any evidence that makes you think you are sick or sick. Then ask yourself if these symptoms could be caused by something else, particularly worry or anxiety. Write down other possible explanations for your symptoms. Consider which explanation is most likely. Assess the likelihood of each explanation. Remember: if you have been examined by a doctor and assured that everything is fine with you, then your symptoms do not indicate anything serious. For example, Katya wrote down the following: She had a headache when she was worried that she had meningitis. Taking advantage
Our advice, Katya concluded that the likelihood that she actually has meningitis is about 1%, and the likelihood that the headache is caused by stress and anxiety is 99%. Her anxiety decreased significantly.

2. Stop looking for confirmation of your fears. No one can tell a person with complete confidence that his health is absolutely fine. But the doctor can quite accurately
diagnose a disease based on the results of examinations, tests, manipulations, etc. If the results are negative, we can say that a particular disease in this particular person is unlikely at the present time. However, medical tests, although very accurate, are not always completely reliable. Unfortunately, the media often talks about those rare cases when “Doctors were wrong,” and almost never mentions the vast majority of cases when they “weren’t wrong.” The difficulty is that the absence of illness during a certain period does not mean that a person will not get sick later, because under certain conditions the disease can develop in anyone, even in a healthy organism. However, the chance of getting infected than usual is much lower than we think. Therefore, given the fact that everyone gets sick, every person is faced with a choice: spend their time worrying about a possible illness or move on with their lives in peace. Understanding that the risk of getting sick is quite low will help you come to terms with uncertainty about your health, but the likelihood that everything will be fine is much higher. Just because something might happen doesn't mean it will happen, or that you need to waste time worrying about it. You must decide on your priorities: what is more important to you - what you are doing now or what may happen in the future?

HOW... to deal with uncertainty about your health

Write down the answers to these questions. You can discuss them with someone else.

 What exactly is bothering me? For example: “I worry that I have heart disease,” “I am afraid that I will not be able to take care of my family.”

 Or am I sure that I really have this disease (as the doctor told me about it)? If your answer is yes, then follow your doctor's advice. If your answer is “no” (because you are not sure or exactly
know that you do not have a disease), then ask yourself the following:

 Or is there something that can help me cope with my anxiety, such as changing my diet or lifestyle? If your answer is yes, do it now. If your answer is no, then stop worrying.

3. List ways you have tried to help the problem; How effective were they? People who worry about their health experience different ways to cope with anxiety. Some of them may help in the short term, but make you more worried in the future.

HOW... to think about what was useful and useless

Make a list of everything you have done to help yourself. Think about what activities or remedies have been helpful in coping with anxiety. Rate each item on the list with a number from 0 to 10 (0 means not at all useful, 10 means very useful) and write down in two columns how practical each method was in the short and long term. Sergei's list:

From this list it is clear that certain methods that Sergei used to cope with anxiety (for example: going to the doctor or talking to his wife) helped him worry less in the short term, but in the long term they turned out to be practically ineffective. So our next point is about how to stop doing things that fuel excessive anxiety.

4. Break the cycle that creates constant anxiety. There are five ways to escalate your health worries. Let's recall them again:
- desire for reassurance;
- identifying symptoms
— searching for information about the disease;
- patient behavior;
- avoidance of everything that somehow reminds of the disease.
This means that you can overcome anxiety by breaking the vicious maintenance cycle of anxiety and solving these five problems.

a) Learn not to ask for reassurance. From time to time we all need reassurance that our health is fine. Therefore, we go to doctors, medical consultation centers or
talking about our fears and worries with friends and family. However, if a person needs reassurance too often, this means that:
- he becomes overly concerned about his health;
- he no longer trusts assurances, demands them more and more often in order to ease the unrest;
- he expects others to constantly reassure him that everything is fine, instead of reassuring himself.
And most importantly, most people who worry about their health say that reassurance does not work, but rather worsens their worries. This is because the desire for reassurance, as can be seen from the diagram, is the factor that perpetuates the problem rather than helping to solve it. After all, even frequent visits to the doctor can have a negative effect: a person will be sent for more and more examinations, which will only increase his worries.

How to... stop asking for reassurance

Every time you worry too much about your health, try not to ask someone else for help. For example, don't ask your partner or relatives for reassurance. If you couldn’t resist and nevertheless started a conversation, then ask them to help you not with reassurances, but, perhaps, by changing the topic, to distract you from thoughts about the state of your health. This may not work at first, so try another very good way to solve this problem - find yourself a hobby or some other useful activity. A walk, cleaning the house, watching a good movie, or reading are great distractions from worries. Choose what is right for you; and immediately take up this matter, as soon as you feel the temptation to talk and worry about your health. It can be helpful to keep a record of how often you ask for reassurance. Without receiving reassurance one and two, you will notice that you gradually ask for it less and less. In other words, you worry less.

b) Stop identifying and checking your symptoms. Taking care of yourself and knowing how you feel is a necessary and useful thing. You have read and know about specialized examinations and simple checks at home (for example, for women this is a breast examination once a month in order to detect any changes in the tissues in the early stages and prevent the development of cancer or cervical smears during a visit to the gynecologist). However, worrying about your health every minute of the day seven days a week is not healthy at all. Excessive worry about health forces a person to know in detail everything about the slightest symptoms and the smallest changes in the body. You find yourself under a giant microscope, where all the little things take on unprecedented proportions. This only exacerbates the unrest. Therefore, checking every bump or bruise on your body several times a day is stupid, to say the least. Repeated compression or palpation will only cause the lump to swell and become painful, and the person will worry even more. After all, excessive attention to symptoms, as shown in the diagram, is also one of the factors of focusing on worries. In this case, you should turn off the microscope and hide it away.

How to... stop showing and checking symptoms.

 Decide how many checks are reasonable. You can find out about this by asking your doctor, family, and friends.
 If you feel the urge to check or if there is nothing wrong with you... don't do it! If you fail to check it at least once or twice, your worry will be short-lived. You can try to cope with worries without thinking about your health, distract yourself with a hobby or other useful activity, or use the suggested ways to overcome anxious thoughts, which are described below.
 Stop checking symptoms - it's like breaking a bad habit. Ask friends or family members to help you overcome it with distractions: general activities, talking about something interesting, etc., so that you are not focused on every symptom.

c) Stop looking for information about the disease. We already know that too much information about health and illness can be harmful. It forces a person to concentrate on all the symptoms and
the slightest changes in the body. After all, to correctly understand medical information you need to have considerable experience: a specific symptom can be caused by many different problems. Trying to diagnose yourself is a rather risky business that can lead to unnecessary worries.

How to... stop looking for information about the disease

 To eventually stop constantly searching for information about the disease, you may have to refrain from searching for articles on the Internet or watching every medical program on TV.
 If you feel tempted to read about an individual symptom, try not to. This may make you worry for a short time, but in the long run long urgent This will be useful in the long run.
 Use distractions and other methods to cope with anxiety.

 Ask your family to help you stop searching the Internet for information about your symptoms and encourage you to watch only shows on television that will bother you. Continue this pattern until you are able to better manage your anxiety.
 Keeping records, as with seeking reassurance, will help you gain control of the situation. By spending less time searching for information about the disease, you will significantly reduce your anxiety levels.

d) Stop acting like you are sick. Many who are overly concerned about their own health almoststop physical activity: they hardly strain and do not perform
no physical exercise because they are afraid of harming themselves. Eg, Sergei stopped doing many things that he did before because he was worriedand was afraid of harming his health or exacerbating his “heart disease.”Leading a sedentary lifestyle, a person achieves only what he losesphysical fitness and weakens the body, especially in older age. He becomes
clumsy and not so dexterous, therefore those things that were previously given to himeasily cause fatigue or pain, or feeling unwell. Therefore man may misinterpret this as a sign of illness and slow downlife is even larger, closing the circle more and more closely.

How to... stop acting like you're sick

 It is important that you restore normal activity levels gradually. If you have been little or inactive for a certain time, do not expect that you will be able to immediately do as much as before.
 Make a list of things you used to do and would like to do again. Arranging them - first what requires less energy, and finally what requires more effort.
 Spend some time every day on the activity you put first on your list. For example, this could be a 5-minute walk so that you don't have to force yourself or feel discomfort. When you feel that you are used to it and you feel good, increase the walking time.
 Once you are comfortable with one type of activity (for example, a 30-minute walk), move on to the next step. Be careful not to force or rush yourself too much.
 Stick to the list, turn the activity step by step.

e) Stop avoiding things related to illness. You may also avoid receiving health information because it upsets you. Sergei, for example, was very worried when he watched on television or read in newspapers about heart disease. He tried to avoid watching these programs and reading articles. This made him less anxious in the short term, but made him more anxious in the long term.

HOW. stop avoiding things related to illness

Make a list of ways you have avoided things related to the illness that are bothering you. Rate how intense the desire to avoid something was on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being the least intense, 10 being the greatest). Then, starting with what you avoided less, accustom yourself to this thing, action or story. Gradually you will be able to cope with all the items on the list.

f) Work on overcoming excessive health anxiety. Worry causes anxious thoughts, which in turn cause a certain psychological state in which a person tends to overestimate the danger, exaggerate the likelihood that something bad will happen, and underestimate his ability to deal with it. For example, when Sergei had an attack of chest pain, he said to himself: “This is it! I have heart disease. I will die. Because I’m simply unable to help myself.” People who worry about other illnesses, such as cancer, immediately think the worst, exaggerating the likelihood of developing cancer, believing that if they had cancer, it would certainly be the most difficult case and incurable type of cancer, and imagining how long and painfully they suffered before death. Such thoughts naturally cause great concern and make us overestimate the scale of the disaster: many cardiovascular diseases can be prevented or successfully treated; not all cancer diseases are incurable, and if a person gets sick, the body’s internal resources will help cope with the disease and the like. Therefore, it is very important to try to take control of anxious thoughts and not allow yourself to panic.

HOW... to cope with anxious thoughts

 Carefully describe your anxious thoughts and indicate how much you believe them.
 Then ask yourself what evidence there is to support your concern and what evidence to refute it.
 Try to look at your fear from a different angle: for example, what would you tell yourself if you weren’t feeling so anxious? What would you say to someone else if he or she talked about worrying? What would your partner or friend say about your worries? Determine what you could tell yourself: the most helpful and least disturbing.

This is where keeping a journal of your anxious thoughts and alternative responses comes in handy. Below is Katya's diary.

Distractions is a way that will allow you to focus on something else. If you worry less, your symptoms will also decrease. There are three main ways to distract yourself if you feel yourself getting anxious.

Do something. Physical activity will help relieve stress. Walking, swimming, gardening, and cooking will help. You can try reading a book, listening to the radio or music.
 Pay attention to something else. Pay attention to what is around you in the room or on the street. You can try to count how many red objects you see, or describe the picture in as much detail as possible. The more difficult the task, the more it will distract you from your worries.
 Do mental exercises. For example, mentally count to 3496 and back. Or remember what you did on your last vacation, or describe your favorite place. Remember sounds, smells, textures.

There are other ways to cope with health anxiety:
 For example, you can tell yourself that you will only worry at certain times of the day. This means that when you feel nervous, you can tell yourself that you shouldn't worry right now because it's not time yet and you'll do it later.
 You can also imagine that you are hiding your worries in a box. When the box is full, imagine throwing it away.

Other ways to deal with anxious thoughts: Realize that thoughts are just thoughts and that various symptoms in the body come and go. You can make a choice to ignore them. Mindfulness and inner calm exercises will help you deal less with anxious thoughts and physical symptoms. It is worth learning to treat anxious thoughts as if
they are clouds crossing the sky: you can watch them float, but don't try to stop them or focus on them. You can also train yourself not to study your body almost every second, but to pay attention to something else. To do this, the following exercises will be useful to you:

Exercises for training attention

 sit quietly in a comfortable position and close your eyes;
 listen carefully to yourself, how you feel;
 then focus your attention not on yourself, but on the room where you are sitting;
 then concentrate your attention on the sounds in the room; listen to see if you can hear sounds that you have not heard before, for example, the ticking of a clock;
 then expand your range of attention, focus on sounds that come from outside the room - you can hear the movement of cars or the distant voices of people;
 do this for a few minutes, again focusing on yourself before you open your eyes

If you do this exercise regularly, it will help you take your mind off anxious thoughts, excessive focus on your own body, and bring you back to the present rather than future worries.

What is not excessive health anxiety?

Worrying too much about your health doesn't mean you're losing your mind. This phenomenon is quite common and is explained by the fact that now a lot of attention is paid to health and illness in the media. It is now becoming fashionable to worry about health, although “fashionable” diseases change from time to time. For example, once upon a time the news often talked about HIV and AIDS. A lot of
people began to seriously worry that they might have this disease; if we were talking about the dangers of radiation, and various stories of people with cancer became top stories in the media, then among those who read these media, the fear of getting cancer came first; At the time of writing the book, bird flu and its consequences became the next “fashionable” disease. Of course, worrying about your health will not increase your chances of getting sick. However, a constant state of anxiety and tension weakens the body, worsens well-being and causes the appearance of various symptoms.

RESULTS

So, we have seen that people who experience certain physical symptoms fear that these symptoms may be a sign of a serious illness. However, fear and anxiety only worsen their condition and exacerbate their symptoms, and this can lead to what we call a vicious cycle (cycling) of worry. We've also seen that the ways people try to cope with their anxiety can actually make their anxiety worse and create a new cycle of worry. Most often, such unsuccessful methods are: 1) seeking reassurance; 2) identifying symptoms; 3) searching for information about the disease; 4) patient behavior; 5) avoidance of everything. One way or another, it reminds me of illness. However, despite the complexity of the problem, learning to overcome health anxiety and mentally neglecting disturbing physical symptoms is still possible. By publishing this article, we do not set ourselves the impossible task of making all symptoms simply disappear. Instead, we offer specific ideas to help people with excessive health anxiety reconsider their behavior and then learn to act differently. We also provide tips on how you can break the vicious supportive circle of anxiety by eliminating those factors that make it strong. These effective ways to reduce health anxiety come from cognitive behavioral therapy. However, they require hard work, so they may not be so easy to implement on your own. In this case, it is useful to undergo a course of psychotherapy!