When your mind won’t stop checking

Health anxiety is when worry about your health takes up more space in your life than it should. It might start with a headache that makes you think of a brain tumour. A heart flutter that sends you to Google. A mole that you cannot stop checking. The worry feels rational in the moment — but the relief you get from a doctor’s reassurance or a negative test result never seems to last.

If that pattern is familiar, you are far from alone. Health anxiety — sometimes called illness anxiety disorder or hypochondria — affects a significant number of people. It is not a sign that you are weak or irrational. It is a specific form of anxiety with well-understood patterns, and it responds well to the right kind of support.

What makes health anxiety particularly exhausting is that the checking and reassurance-seeking that are supposed to make you feel better often end up making things worse. Each Google search, each doctor’s visit, each body scan provides a moment of relief — followed by another wave of doubt. Counselling can help you understand that cycle and find a way out of it.

At the heart of health anxiety is a behaviour pattern that feels helpful in the moment but maintains the problem over time. It works like this: you notice a symptom or have a frightening thought about your health. The anxiety spikes. You do something to reduce it — google the symptom, check your body, ask your partner if they think you look okay, or see your GP.

The relief is real, but temporary. And each time you seek reassurance, you reinforce the belief that the anxiety was justified — that you needed to check, that the symptom really was something to worry about. Over time, the threshold for what triggers the anxiety gets lower, and the reassurance lasts for shorter and shorter periods.

This is not a character flaw. It is a well-documented anxiety pattern, and understanding it is the first step towards changing it.

Health anxiety and the body

There is a painful irony at the centre of health anxiety: the anxiety itself produces physical symptoms. A racing heart, muscle tension, dizziness, digestive problems, fatigue — all of which can then become the focus of the next wave of worry. The anxiety creates the very sensations you are most afraid of.

Many people with health anxiety have had extensive medical investigations — blood tests, scans, specialist referrals — all of which come back normal. This can be deeply confusing. If nothing is wrong, why do you feel this way? The answer, usually, is that anxiety is generating the sensations — but the sensations feel indistinguishable from something more serious.

If you have been told to “stop worrying” or “just relax,” you know how unhelpful that advice is. Health anxiety is not a choice. The worry feels real because, in the moment, it is real. And the physical sensations are not imagined — they are your body’s response to a mind that is on constant alert.

You do not need to have a formal diagnosis. You do not need to have stopped all your checking behaviours before you reach out. You do not even need to be sure it is health anxiety. A free 15-minute consultation is simply a conversation — a chance to talk about what you have been experiencing and to find out whether we can help.

If any of this has felt familiar, book a free consultation or call us on . We answer the phone 9am to 9pm.