Health Anxiety: When Checking Your Symptoms Makes Anxiety Worse
Health Anxiety: When Checking Your Symptoms Makes Anxiety Worse
It starts with something small.
A headache that feels different. A strange flutter in your chest. A lump you’re fairly sure wasn’t there yesterday.
You tell yourself you’re not panicking. You’re just checking.
So you Google it.
Three minutes later, you’ve gone from probably dehydrated to a rare neurological condition last seen in a medical journal in 1987.
You close the browser.
Then open it again.
You compare symptoms, check your body, ask your partner what they think and perhaps book a GP appointment. You feel reassured for a while, but then another thought appears:
What if the doctor missed something?
This is the exhausting cycle of health anxiety.
And the frustrating part is that the things you do to feel safer—checking symptoms, Googling and seeking reassurance—can actually make health anxiety worse.
What is health anxiety?
Everyone worries about their health sometimes.
Bodies make strange noises. Symptoms appear unexpectedly. We hear about someone becoming seriously unwell and suddenly become more aware of every sensation in our own body.
Health anxiety becomes a problem when fears about illness are frequent, difficult to control or begin interfering with daily life.
Signs of health anxiety can include:
repeatedly checking your body for lumps, marks or changes
Googling symptoms for long periods
monitoring your heart rate, temperature or oxygen levels
frequently asking other people for reassurance
repeatedly seeking medical tests or appointments
doubting reassuring test results
avoiding doctors or health information because it feels too frightening
assuming normal body sensations could be signs of serious illness.
Health anxiety doesn’t mean your symptoms are imagined.
The sensations are real. The distress is real.
The problem is the frightening meaning the anxious brain attaches to those sensations - and the cycle that follows.
Why checking symptoms can make health anxiety worse
Imagine you notice a pain in your side.
Your brain immediately asks:
What if it’s something serious?
Your anxiety rises, so you press the area, search online or ask someone for reassurance.
For a moment, you feel better.
But your brain has also learned something:
Checking kept me safe. I need to do that again.
The next time you notice a sensation, the urge to check arrives even faster.
Relief from checking doesn’t last because checking can’t provide complete certainty.
Instead, it teaches the brain that the symptom was dangerous enough to require investigating.
The more closely you look, the more you notice
Bodies are noisy.
Muscles twitch. Heart rates change. Skin changes colour. Digestion causes pressure, movement and discomfort.
Stress, poor sleep, hormones, caffeine, exercise and dehydration can also create physical sensations.
Most of the time, the brain filters these sensations out.
But when you’re anxious about your health, your attention zooms in. You begin scanning your body and noticing sensations you would previously have ignored.
Anxiety can also create physical symptoms, including:
dizziness
nausea
headaches
tingling
muscle tension
breathlessness
sweating
chest tightness
a racing or pounding heart.
You notice the anxiety symptom, interpret it as evidence that something is wrong and become even more anxious.
This doesn’t mean you should dismiss all your symptoms as anxiety. It means anxiety can become part of the symptom cycle.
Why reassurance never lasts
Reassurance often helps - but only briefly.
Someone says, “I’m sure it’s nothing,” and you feel calmer.
Then the questions return:
But how can they know?
What if I didn’t explain it properly?
What if the test was done too early?
What if this symptom is different?
Health anxiety wants absolute certainty.
Unfortunately, absolute certainty is an impossible goal.
Each answer creates another question. This is why health anxiety isn’t usually resolved by finding the perfect piece of reassurance.
It involves learning to tolerate some uncertainty without repeatedly trying to make it disappear.
How to Stop the Health Anxiety Cycle
1. Notice when the spiral begins
Before checking, pause and name what is happening.
Try saying:
“I’ve noticed a sensation, and my anxious brain has interpreted it as a threat.”
Then ask yourself:
What did I notice?
What am I afraid it means?
What do I feel compelled to do?
Have I been through this cycle before?
The aim isn’t to prove that nothing is wrong. It’s to recognise when anxiety may be influencing your response.
2. Separate medical care from anxiety-driven checking
Reducing health anxiety doesn’t mean ignoring new or concerning symptoms.
Appropriate care might involve seeing your GP, discussing the symptom and following their advice.
Anxiety-driven checking might involve repeatedly examining the same area, seeking multiple opinions or continuing to investigate after receiving appropriate medical guidance.
It can help to develop a plan with a trusted GP about:
which symptoms require attention
how long to monitor a mild symptom
when follow-up is needed
when further checking is unlikely to be helpful.
A clear plan is much easier to follow than making decisions while highly anxious.
3. Delay checking
You don’t have to stop checking overnight.
Start by delaying it.
When the urge appears, wait five or ten minutes before acting.
Remind yourself:
“Checking may help for a moment, but it could strengthen the anxiety cycle.”
Over time, gradually increase the delay.
This helps you learn that an urge can rise and fall without needing to be obeyed.
4. Reduce reassurance seeking gradually
For a few days, notice how often you:
check your body
Google symptoms
ask for reassurance
check health apps or devices
reread medical results.
Choose one behaviour to reduce.
For example, instead of checking an area 15 times a day, aim for ten, then five.
Small reductions are often more achievable than trying to stop completely.
5. Stop Googling symptoms
Google can’t examine you, consider your full medical history or tell you which information applies to your situation.
It also presents possibilities, not probabilities.
Almost any symptom search can eventually lead to something frightening.
Try creating a rule like:
“I don’t Google symptoms. If I have a genuine concern, I will write it down and discuss it with my GP.”
Before searching, ask:
“Am I looking for useful information, or am I trying to make my anxiety disappear?”
If it’s reassurance you’re seeking, another search is unlikely to satisfy you for long.
6. Practise balanced thinking
Health anxiety jumps quickly from a sensation to the worst possible explanation.
Instead of forcing yourself to think positively, aim to think more broadly.
For example:
“This headache could mean something serious.”
could become:
“My mind has gone to the most frightening explanation. There are also many common causes of headaches, including stress, dehydration, poor sleep and muscle tension. I can follow my medical plan without continuing to investigate this right now.”
Balanced thinking doesn’t mean insisting nothing is wrong.
It means not treating the worst-case scenario as the most likely one.
7. Learn to tolerate uncertainty
Health anxiety will tell you:
Once I know for certain that I’m okay, I’ll relax.
But complete certainty is rarely available.
Try saying:
“I can’t have complete certainty, but I can make a reasonable decision based on the information I have.”
Or:
“I can allow this uncertainty to be here without checking again.”
The goal isn’t to feel perfectly calm before moving on.
It’s to move on while some anxiety is still present.
That’s how the brain learns that uncertainty can be tolerated.
8. Return your attention to your life
Health anxiety can turn your body into a full-time investigation.
Once you’ve made a reasonable decision about whether medical care is needed, redirect your attention.
Return to the conversation. Finish the task. Go for a walk. Play with your child. Call a friend. Cook dinner.
You may need to redirect yourself repeatedly.
That doesn’t mean the strategy is failing. It means you are practising a new response.
How family members can help with health anxiety
When someone you love is frightened, it’s natural to want to reassure them.
You might say:
“You definitely don’t have that.”
“The doctor said you’re fine.”
“That looks completely normal.”
But repeatedly answering the same question can unintentionally strengthen the health anxiety cycle.
A more helpful response might be:
“I can see that you’re scared. What did you and your GP agree you would do when this worry came up?”
Or:
“I don’t think another answer will help for long, but I can sit with you while the anxiety passes.”
This validates the distress without feeding the need for repeated reassurance.
When to get help for health anxiety
Consider speaking with a psychologist if health anxiety is:
taking up a large part of your day
affecting sleep, work or relationships
leading to repeated medical appointments or tests
causing you to avoid necessary medical care
making it difficult to trust appropriate medical advice
stopping you from enjoying everyday life.
Cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, is an evidence-based treatment for health anxiety.
It can help people reduce checking and reassurance seeking, respond differently to frightening thoughts and become more comfortable with uncertainty.
The goal isn’t to ignore your health
The goal is to care for your health without allowing fear to take over your life.
You can seek medical advice when it’s appropriate. You can take new symptoms seriously.
But you can also learn to recognise when checking isn’t giving you useful information - and is just feeding the anxiety.
The turning point often comes when you stop asking:
How can I be completely certain that I’m safe?
And begin asking:
“What is a reasonable response - and can I allow the uncertainty to be there without checking again?”
Each time you postpone a Google search, resist an unnecessary check or tolerate an unanswered question, you teach your brain something new:
I can feel uncertain without needing to investigate. I can feel anxious without being in danger. And I can return to my life before the worry has completely disappeared.
Our experienced clinicians can discuss your concerns - contact us to learn more.