Health worries, when they are unrelated to any physical problem, are a cause of considerable personal distress. If you are concerned all the time that you have a terrible and undiagnosed illness, then you are going to be seeking help all the time. You are going to be calling on the doctor, searching the internet for some cause for your symptoms. And then once you have found the illness that matches the symptoms, the worries will increase because the doctor doesn't agree with the self-diagnosis. The technical name is health anxiety disorder and 10% of people attending hospital have it.
The good news is that cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy is a very effective treatment, requiring no risky invasive procedures.
One of the characteristics of health anxiety is hypervigilance and body scanning. A sufferer will be constantly on the lookout for uncomfortable bodily sensations. They pay close attention to them, and scan the body for supporting symptoms. As a result of this constant self-focus, the perception of the symptoms increases.
Hyperventilation is often a bedfellow of health anxiety. It is the source of many of the symptoms - chest pains, tingling, numbness, and many more. Just learning that you can recreate these symptoms at will, demonstrating that they are temporary phenomena and not at all dangerous, can be a source of considerable comfort.
Imagine you can hear a party going on while you're trying to sleep at night. The more you pay attention to all the noises, the music, the laughing, the cars revving, the more annoying it becomes and the more you focus on it and you feel it is getting louder and louder. You just can't stop noticing it. As the sounds get louder, so your distress increases. It is the same with health anxiety. The more you focus on the symptoms, the worse they feel. This self-focused attention becomes constant and distressing so that the person just can't shift their attention to anything else.
The approach in cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy aims to shift the focus away from the self. The techniques are simple and effective, with plenty of evidence to back it up. Mmm, evidence. That is something you tend to discount if you have health anxiety! No matter what the doctor tells you, you just don't believe it. And so to a bit of doctor shopping in search of someone who takes your symptoms seriously. The symptoms are distressing, and cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy will help you get rid of them. Well worth a try!!
The good news is that cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy is a very effective treatment, requiring no risky invasive procedures.
One of the characteristics of health anxiety is hypervigilance and body scanning. A sufferer will be constantly on the lookout for uncomfortable bodily sensations. They pay close attention to them, and scan the body for supporting symptoms. As a result of this constant self-focus, the perception of the symptoms increases.
Hyperventilation is often a bedfellow of health anxiety. It is the source of many of the symptoms - chest pains, tingling, numbness, and many more. Just learning that you can recreate these symptoms at will, demonstrating that they are temporary phenomena and not at all dangerous, can be a source of considerable comfort.
Imagine you can hear a party going on while you're trying to sleep at night. The more you pay attention to all the noises, the music, the laughing, the cars revving, the more annoying it becomes and the more you focus on it and you feel it is getting louder and louder. You just can't stop noticing it. As the sounds get louder, so your distress increases. It is the same with health anxiety. The more you focus on the symptoms, the worse they feel. This self-focused attention becomes constant and distressing so that the person just can't shift their attention to anything else.
The approach in cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy aims to shift the focus away from the self. The techniques are simple and effective, with plenty of evidence to back it up. Mmm, evidence. That is something you tend to discount if you have health anxiety! No matter what the doctor tells you, you just don't believe it. And so to a bit of doctor shopping in search of someone who takes your symptoms seriously. The symptoms are distressing, and cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy will help you get rid of them. Well worth a try!!
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