Hypnotherapy for Health Anxiety – Evidence-Based Support to Break the Cycle of Worry
Feel calmer, in control, and free from constant health-related fear with solution focused hypnotherapy.
What Is Health Anxiety?
Health anxiety is the excessive fear of being or becoming seriously ill, with a condition such as cancer, heart disease, or Alzheimer's.
Health anxiety can be all consuming and significantly affect quality of life. Health anxiety can feel overwhelming, especially when it starts taking over your thoughts and daily routine. Individuals suffering from health anxiety misinterpret harmless physical symptoms (like a fast heart rate, muscle twitches, or a headache) as signs of a serious disease. They will repeatedly ask family, friends, or doctors for reassurance that they are not ill and they will constantly checking their body for signs of illness, such as lumps or strange sensations.
The anxiety may extend to avoiding situations or information related to illness, like medical TV shows, or conversely, compulsively researching illnesses online.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy is particularly effective in dealing with health anxiety because it helps calm the brain’s threat response, reducing those intrusive “what if” spirals, and building a more balanced and rational perspective. We focus on helping you regain control, rather than getting stuck in the cycle of checking, reassurance seeking, or worst-case thinking.
What Causes Health Anxiety?
Health anxiety can develop as a result of experiencing or witnessing a serious illness or period of ill health. There can also be no identifiable trigger and health anxiety can follow a period of stress.
A stressful life event can cause physical symptoms that are then misinterpreted as signs of serious illness.
Health anxiety can also often co-occur with other conditions like depression, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The distress from constantly worrying about one's health can lead to depression, which can, in turn, worsen health anxieties.
The beauty of Solution Focused Hypnotherapy is that we don’t need to know how or why you have health anxiety. We do not focus on the past and we work on where you are now and how you would like your preferred future to be.
What Is Emetophobia?
Emetophobia is the excessive fear of being sick or unwell. It can extend to avoiding being in situations where there will be germs (i.e. a nursery or soft play area) or situations where people are more likely to vomit (such as a a pub where people are drinking heavily)
Health anxiety can be all consuming and significantly affect quality of life. Health anxiety can feel overwhelming, especially when it starts taking over your thoughts and daily routine. Individuals suffering from health anxiety :
Harmless physical symptoms (like a fast heart rate, muscle twitches, or a headache) are misinterpreted as signs of a serious disease.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy is particularly effective in dealing with health anxiety because it helps calm the brain’s threat response, reducing those intrusive “what if” spirals, and building a more balanced and rational perspective. We focus on helping you regain control, rather than getting stuck in the cycle of checking, reassurance seeking, or worst-case thinking.