How to overcome worrying about your health | Psyche Guides

Illness anxiety disorder is a chronic and disabling mental disorder that can interfere with school, work, sleep, and relationships, and can lead to depression and suicidal thoughts.

• People who are comfortable with uncertainty about health tend to think: 'I must be tired or stressed, so I will forget about this symptom.'
• But when you have an intolerance of uncertainty, your mind tries to take a better-safe-than-sorry approach to the infinite possibilities of illness and health: imagine the worst-case scenario.

Reassurance-seeking and avoidance give you a momentary escape from the worry and anxiety, but in the long run, they make it worse by convincing you that you cannot tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing your future health - yet this is an uncertainty with which we must all ultimately live.

• Identify the triggers that sustain your health anxiety - identify the triggers for your worries about illness and all the ways you try to get rid of them
• Practice illness-related exposure therapy - exposure therapy involves gradually reducing (and ultimately ending) your worries and anxieties.