The problem with health anxiety is how do you know whether it is "just anxiety" or genuine illness.
This is a question that no one wants to get wrong because if you do put it down to just anxiety
and it's actually a real illness you feel the consequences could be deadly. So how do you know?
Welcome to the anxiety attic where I make self-help videos for anxiety disorders. For those
who are new to my channel I'm building a huge resource of anxiety videos which teach you the
tools used in cognitive behavioral therapy, the most effective treatment for anxiety disorders.
So make sure you subscribe and click on the notification button as I believe there are
not many anxiety channels that go into the depth that I do with my videos.
So how do you know whether a symptom or set of symptoms is anxiety or real illness. What most
people who have health anxiety do is seek reassurance. They will Google symptoms,
buy various monitors to check their pulse, blood pressure, heart rate blood, oxygen levels, and
whatever else they can check. They will ask other people what they think is causing their symptoms.
In fact I get a lot of people asking me in the comments if I think their symptoms are
anxiety or something else, but there's no way I can diagnose you as I'm not a doctor.
However what I can do is give you the tools to help you make decisions about your symptoms.
A big part of managing health anxiety is building the confidence to make decisions
about your health by yourself, rather than seeking reassurance from external resources or people.
The problem with seeking reassurance is that it fuels the anxiety cycle. Regular viewers will
be very familiar with the anxiety cycle but for those who are new it goes something like this.
You get the thought 'what if I have a heart attack' It makes you feel anxious. This makes your
heart beat faster so you check your heart rate with a monitor. It's 160 which makes you think
you might have a heart attack so you feel more anxious which makes your heart go even faster.
You start sweating and finding it hard to breathe so you take your blood pressure but that's high
also and so the anxiety cycle goes around and around until you're convinced that you are having
a heart attack. So how do you stop this cycle. The first thing to do is to find a better way to
deal with these thoughts before you start seeking reassurance and fueling the anxiety cycle. CBT has
a great tool for doing this called the thought record. You can download this form for free from
a great website called getselfhelp.co.uk. I've put a link in the description. I will show you how you
can use this tool to deal with anxious thoughts. When you feel anxious about your health get a pen.
In the first column write where you are and what you were doing. Maybe you're watching a medical
drama on TV and see someone having a heart attack. The emotion you feel is probably fear or anxiety.
Rate how strong it is in the second column. Let's say 80 percent. Also note any body sensations like
racing heart, sweating, difficulty breathing. In the third column write the thoughts that are
coming into your mind. Maybe there's something wrong with my heart or I'm having a heart attack.
Now the easy bit. In the next column write down the evidence that supports these thoughts.
You can probably think of lots. A racing heart can indicate heart problems, difficulty breathing is a
sign of a heart attack, you heard about an athlete dropping dead from over exerting his heart. Now
the difficult bit. Write some facts that provide evidence against the unhelpful thought being true.
Most people struggle here so I'm going to help you. Here are some questions that you should ask
yourself. Is this likely to happen at my age. Is there a family history of heart disease.
Do you smoke what has the doctor said about your state of health. Have you had any tests or scans
in the recent past? Do you suffer from anxiety? If you have had similar symptoms in the past what
caused it? Have you had a heart attack before? Can anxiety cause these symptoms. By the way I have a
video which explains 20 common anxiety symptoms which I've linked at the end of this video.
In the thought record write your answers in the evidence against column.
Then weigh up the evidence for and the evidence against.
If you place the evidence on these anxiety scales which side would the scales point to?
If you're old with no history of anxiety, no recent health checks and have had previous
heart attacks, then I think you would likely conclude that you'd better get a hospital
urgently but if you were young with a history of anxiety and similar anxiety symptoms and a doctor
has confirmed with tests and scans that your heart is fine then you will likely conclude that you
don't need to rush to hospital because as awful as it feels you know that it's just anxiety. Of
course it may not be as straightforward as this. Maybe like me you're in your 50s and have had some
minor heart problems in the past so the scales will balance differently but they will still
help you think in a more balanced way and help you decide whether you need to take any action or not.
So let's go back to our thought record. Look at what you've written in both the evidence for
and the evidence against column. Try to come up with a balanced perspective. Start with
the words even though and then summarize the evidence for and evidence against.
For example, even though some of my symptoms match a heart attack I'm young,
recent scans have shown no heart problems and I know it's always been anxiety in the past.
An exercise like this can put things into perspective and lower your anxiety
so in the final column rewrite your anxiety after doing this exercise.
It usually will drop. Also in the last column write what you could have done differently. Maybe
you shouldn't have checked your pulse or took your blood pressure as that made the anxiety worse.
However stopping reassurance seeking can be very difficult so if you are struggling
with this watch this video which teaches you CBT tools to help reduce reassurance seeking
and if you want to know what causes so many different anxiety symptoms watch this video here.