Are you worried about health anxiety?

 

Are you worried about health anxiety?

Have you experience heart pain and related it to heart attack? Single thoughts are common but what if its like never ending recording in your head. Obsessive and irrational thoughts which not only affects your mind but also other aspects of life. In this condition that person worry excess about their health condition. Obsessive thinking without any as such physical condition. This excess worry leads to unnecessary testing.

Spend most of the time searching their health condition on google or YouTube. Its lead to increase their anxiety and sometimes lead to panic attack. People with health anxiety even a pain due to acidity leads to conclusion of heart attack. A small problem turns into big issue in their mind. They not only worry about their health but also about others. They waste their time in searching and doing testing about their problems. It affects their work and relationships as well. Person with health anxiety feels that they have serious illness.

A true story 

Shefali (Name changed) 19-year girl. Shefali is Smart looking, innocent and introvert. She visited to our clinic with extreme fear of heart attack. She stated that it is very difficult for her to leave with this overthinking of health.  Her mind continuously scans her body to find fault within. Even small pain due to acidity feels like extreme will happen to her. She uses to avoid going out with friends or family due to constant overthinking of heart attack.  It’s not the end she even uses to take care of her parents to extreme level. She uses to make sure they are taking their Blood Pressure medications on time. She uses to get panic if any of the day they go out without taking their medication.

Fear of dyeing due to heart attack was extreme. She visited 3 different hospitals for her heart check - up and report was normal. She stated that she has experienced heart pain many times. She avoids staying at home alone.

In her session she stated that she was normal before but it all started when her uncle died due to heart attack in front of her. She was shocked but normal after few days. But after few months she started experiencing symptoms of heart attack like chest pain heart palpitation. Her parents took her to many doctors and 3 hospital check-ups for chest pain but nothing came out. Family doctor suggested visiting psychologist.

 We started session with counselling, CBT and hypnotherapy. During her session after talking with her it was clear that her fear was extreme. Our fear lies in subconscious mind. Hypnotherapy is to communicate with the subconscious and change the way you feel and behave towards your fear. Hypnotherapy helps to change the response towards the fear.

After 2 months treatment her experience was different. Her anxiety was cured with Hypnotherapy. She was very happy with her results. She became more independent after treatment. She even said that now she can cope with her fear very well.