Trying to PROTECT Yourself is Causing Your HEALTH ANXIETY | Dr. Rami Nader

Health anxiety, also known as hypochondriasis or Illness Anxiety Disorder, is associated with excessive, disproportionate worry about health that leads to a person experiencing high levels of anxiety. In previous videos, I discussed how past negative health experiences can lead to a person being at increased risk of developing health anxiety, due to a heightened sense of vulnerability. The health anxiety and heightened sense of vulnerability can lead to a person engaging in thinking patterns and behaviours to try and protect themselves and keep themselves healthy. They do this in a couple of ways. First by developing unhelpful rules and assumptions about health, health anxiety and health care system. In health anxiety, these rules and assumptions become problematic, in that they are inaccurate, rigid and inflexible. The second way that people try and protect themselves in health anxiety is to increase their sensitivity to health symptoms or health matters that they are concerned about. As a result, they pay close attention to concerning physical symptoms, which just causes the physical symptom to be experienced as more intense, reinforcing the anxiety and fear about the physical symptom itself. These factors lead to a person being at increased risk of developing health anxiety, in response to health anxiety triggers.

#Hypochondriasis #HealthAnxiety #IllnessAnxietyDisorder

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