If you have ever experienced health anxiety before, you have probably felt some degree of powerlessness or lack of control over your health or your body. This is especially amplified when we experience any sort of chronic illness or sudden health event. Throw in our recent experiences with COVID, it is understandable that we would feel powerless and uncertain about how to manage our health conditions. Health anxiety is a unique challenge because you cannot remove yourself from your own physical experience in your body, and it can be very difficult to not think about it.
Here are some strategies I find helpful to combat health anxiety, when you don’t know where to start:
Try not to focus on finding the “silver bullet” for your condition, and instead make sure you are doing as much of the basics as you can. It is easy to go down the rabbit hole finding the exact cause or the one reason for your condition, but we lose a lot of time and energy that could be spent just doing the basics. If basic sleep, nutrition, and stress management needs aren’t met, it is a lot harder to get better, regardless of what may have been the original cause and what kind of other treatments are offered to you.
Try not to Google! This is so so hard in today’s day and age. We get caught up with Googling symptoms, trying to assign meaning to bodily functions or research new treatments. Nearly every supplement or diet or treatment will have both positive and negative research on it, and its difficult to figure out which information is the most “true”. Repeatedly researching your condition may temporarily relieve anxiety in the moment, but will not stop more anxiety from showing up.
Keep an accurate timeline of your prescriptions, procedures that were done, and bloodwork that was tested. We live in a province that does not have a centralized database for these records- which means the onus is on us to be good record keepers. When we have an accurate understanding on what was tested or prescribed, it is a lot easier to communicate this information to a healthcare professional, and streamline treatment.
Talk to a therapist or counsellor about anxiety in general. It is quite rare to have health anxiety in isolation and no anxiety in any other facet of life. Two types of therapy are particularly helpful: namely CBT- which focuses on identifying how you think about your health, and ACT- which focuses on accepting negative thoughts and feelings as a part of life.
I know how scary and frustrating it can be to feel like you have been left in the dark when it comes to your health. So commonly I see patients, scared or frustrated, who are looking for alternatives because they were told their only option was taking a pill or getting a surgery. Ultimately, the antidote for anxiety is action. Gaining your power back starts with focusing on the things you can control, and following through with them. Most of the time, You can control your bedtime, how much screen time you get, how much water you drink, veggies you eat, and exercise you do. Whatever conventional method you pursue, my job is to make sure that you are exploring and entertaining all lifestyle and nutrition strategies for your condition. Giving you your power back is one of my favourite parts of this job.
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