Health Anxiety Symptoms can manifest themselves in behavior changes and mood swings. Learn how to overcome these at www.anxietybridge.com
Health anxiety is an anxiety disorder which comes under the scope of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
This condition often involves a person becoming increasing obsessed and fixated upon their state of physical (and at times, mental) health.
Health anxiety fears often centre on severe conditions such as cancer, HIV, AIDs etc, although the sufferer may attach their anxiety onto any type of illness. This condition is often labelled as health anxiety, illness phobia or hypochondriasis.
The tendency of those affected by health anxiety is usually to blow harmless physical symptoms out of proportion.
By misinterpreting harmless symptoms, those experiencing health anxiety tend to turn something like a headache into an indicator of a brain tumour.
The most prevalent symptom of health anxiety is obsessively checking the body for signs of illness, often with a mind to self-diagnose a more serious condition. This can also include sufferer's believing that they are developing mental illnesses.
Often individuals then seek to obtain a diagnosis from their doctor, which can lead to a patient 'doctor-hopping' in order to seek further opinions from other doctors. Sometimes this can stretch from second medical opinions into the realms of six or seven.
Health anxiety sufferers might even go so far as to request multiple tests, such as MRI scans and even surgery, in order to get confirmation of the diagnosis they have already determined for themselves.
Often, doctors end up telling patients that they can't medically explain what the person is feeling or experiencing, which tends to leave the sufferer feeling as though their concerns have been dismissed.
On the flip side, there are some health anxiety sufferers who display symptoms of social withdrawal. Meaning that they tend to avoid medical experts or people in general who might exacerbate their state of anxiety over their health.
In extreme cases it can lead to agoraphobia. Sufferers will avoid coming into contact with medical experts or anyone who might confirm or worsen their perceived state of sickness.
Other symptoms of health anxiety include the sufferer carrying out extensive and excessive research into illnesses, symptoms of illness and medical conditions.
They will also usually engage in obsessive self-checking behaviours to see if they match any of the symptoms.
This obsessive behaviour tends to increase physical symptoms of anxiety (palpitations, chest pain, dizziness, sweating, confusion etc.).
This exacerbates the sufferer's belief that they are suffering from a physical or mental illness.
Health anxiety can affect both men and women of any age. It can develop at any stage in a person's life. It may last a long while or there may be periods where the sufferer is symptom-free.
