{"id":107528,"date":"2020-09-03T13:24:26","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T17:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/107528"},"modified":"2020-09-03T13:24:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-03T17:24:26","slug":"two-tips-for-health-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/107528","title":{"rendered":"Two Tips for Health Anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Two Tips for Health Anxiety\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rhy2R1BLdxY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><\/p>The clinical term for health anxiety used to be hypochondriasis, but now it\u2019s been split into two disorders, somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder.\n\nWith health anxiety you are oversensitive to body sensations and fear you have a serious illness. The fear of having that illness overwhelms you and leads to you engaging in behaviors that keep the anxiety going. Many people realize their fears are irrational to some degree, but it\u2019s like you can\u2019t break out of the cycle of fear about it. \n\nThe key to getting past the health anxiety is being able to focus on the problems as being anxiety out of control rather than on getting proof or reassurance that you don\u2019t have an illness. That reassurance is always short-lived. It\u2019s like taking short cuts to avoid work. You may feel better in the short-term when you hear you don\u2019t have the illness, but your distress eventually comes back because the real problem is your anxiety, not whether or not you have an illness.\n\nSome researchers out of Sweden did a clinical trial testing CBT delivered by the internet. The results were that the internet therapy was equally effective as therapy delivered by face to face with a therapist. With the internet therapy, the participants worked with a therapist through brief email communications. But the bulk of the work was done by doing exercises.\n\nTwo strategies that are included in the CBT program are\n\n1. Practice mindfulness for 10 minutes a day. \n2. Practice response prevention\nTwo sources of mindfulness meditations are the UCLA Mindfulness podcast and my website were you can download a Body Scan meditation here http:\/\/markspsychiatry.com\/two-tips-for-health-anxiety\n\nWith response prevention, you want to restrict how much you engage in the behavior that reinforce your anxiety.  So an example may be that you will only check your pulse three times a day instead of the usual 20.  Or you when you start to feel worried, you will wait at least 1 hour before you talk to your partner about your concerns. By waiting, you may find that you don\u2019t have as strong of a need to talk to them.\n\nPractice this each day. You can set aside a certain time of day to review your list of behaviors and track your progress. If you\u2019ve spent the day holding back on your behaviors, you may be tense. And this may be when you do a mindfulness exercise. \n\nOther parts of the therapy involved gradually exposing yourself to anxiety provoking situations while you resist engaging in your usual behaviors. This is really where you make the progress in reducing your anxiety and breaking the connection between physical sensations and anxiety. The exercises expose you to actual situations as well as imagined situations to purposely trigger your anxiety while you suppress your response.\n\nThrough these gradual exposure\u2019s you become desensitized to the trigger. We call it habituation. The exposure exercises are best done under the supervision of the therapist but even with this Internet model the therapist intervention is minimal compared to what would be required if you were seeing a therapist in person for a full psychotherapy session. So it\u2019s good to know that the cognitive behavior therapy can be modified to be a hybrid of self-help with some therapist intervention.\n\n\nReference \nAxelsson E, Andersson E, Lj\u00f3tsson B, Bj\u00f6rkander D, Hedman-Lagerl\u00f6f M, Hedman-Lagerl\u00f6f E. Effect of Internet vs Face-to-Face Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Health Anxiety: A Randomized Noninferiority Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online May 13, 2020.\n\nWant to know more about mental health and self-improvement? On this channel I discuss topics such as bipolar disorder, major depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder (ADHD), relationships and personal development\/self-improvement. I upload weekly. If you don\u2019t want to miss a video, click here to subscribe. https:\/\/goo.gl\/DFfT33 \n\nDisclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific\/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments\/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The clinical term for health anxiety used to be hypochondriasis, but now it\u2019s been split into two disorders, somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder. With health anxiety you are oversensitive to body sensations and fear you have a serious illness. The fear of having that illness overwhelms you and leads to you engaging in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/107528\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Two Tips for Health Anxiety<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":886,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[409],"tags":[41221,471,41119,52813,43299,43297,43303,43298,34588,43293,43291,43295,43301,43290,33837,43292,43306,43294,43296,38676,43305,43302,43304,43289,43300,40487,40488],"class_list":["post-107528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-dr-tracey-marks","tag-health","tag-health-anxiety","tag-health-anxiety-relief","tag-health-first","tag-health-fusion","tag-health-warrior-chia-bar","tag-health-workers-infected-worldwide","tag-healthy","tag-healthy-banana-bread","tag-healthy-breakfast","tag-healthy-breakfast-ideas","tag-healthy-cookbook","tag-healthy-dinner-ideas","tag-healthy-food","tag-healthy-food-near-me","tag-healthy-food-recipes-free","tag-healthy-lunch-ideas","tag-healthy-meals","tag-healthy-recipes","tag-healthy-sexy-hair","tag-healthy-sleep-habits-happy-child","tag-healthy-snack-box","tag-healthy-snacks","tag-healthy-snacks-for-kids","tag-mental-health-channel","tag-mental-health-education"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/886"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}