"I feel like it is such a risk to stop worrying about my health. It is like jumping off a cliff. It does not make sense."

If you have ever felt this way, you are not alone. And there is logic to this fear—your brain has convinced you that the worry is keeping you safe.

But what if I told you that the exact opposite is true? What if the worry is not protecting you from the cliff—what if the worry IS the cliff? What if the anxiety itself is the concering problem you need to address?

A central issue with all anxiety is that it convinces us that it is necessary.

Our anxiety wants to protect us. And, sometimes, anxiety in a reasonable amount—a manageable amount—makes sense. It encourages us to examine the problem, search for solutions, and take appropriate action.

But anxiety is driven by a very ancient part of our brain—our survival response—and it becomes entangled with our logic. We struggle to distinguish between reasonable concern and problematic anxiety.

In working with clients as a psychotherapist over 20 years, this inability to distinguish helpful concern from destructive worry was at the core of most health anxiety I encountered.

Let us look at the logic of the statement "I cannot stop worrying about my health," because it does have logic:

    • I have to stay vigilant about my symptoms. If I stay vigilant, I will catch something early before it becomes a much worse problem.

    • It is not responsible to ignore my health issues.

    • Worrying means I am being responsible and taking my health seriously.

    • If I stop, something will slip through.

Your brain feels like it is supposed to do this. 

The worry itself feels functional. The worry actually feels like action - it makes you feel that you ARE doing something to address a problem.

For many people with health anxiety, once they take action—see a doctor or research something more thoroughly online—they feel momentary relief. We will talk more in a moment about how that momentary relief actually feeds the anxiety cycle.

I also want to mention that many people with health anxiety actually avoid the issue entirely. They avoid thinking about their health. They avoid going to the doctor.

Anxiety can cause one to be hypervigilant OR to avoid.

However, I am assuming that most readers here are hypervigilant about their health (as those who avoid will avoid this blog!).

(If you are an avoider - let me know here or on my YouTube channel and today's video- I can create a video and blog to address that). 

Research shows that the healthiest people occupy the middle ground—neither hypervigilant nor avoidant. They follow up with preventative care, see their doctor regularly, and adhere to general health guidelines. But they do not see their doctor constantly or worry excessively between visits.

Health anxiety trains your brain to constantly scan for any possible problem, any potential symptom. When you engage in reassurance-seeking activities—consulting a doctor for confirmation that nothing is wrong, requesting additional tests, or researching symptoms online—that brief relief perpetuates the cycle.

The relief itself reinforces the behavior. Your brain learns that this is the correct response, that this is what provides temporary comfort. The cycle becomes self-reinforcing and increasingly difficult to break.

The protection your anxiety promises is an illusion. It is not keeping you safe; it is maintaining your distress.

This is what I mean when I say the anxiety itself is causing you to fall off the cliff. The anxiety itself has become the problem that requires treatment.

If this is resonating with you, I have a free webinar called Rewire Your Brain for Joy and Confidence. In that webinar, I talk more about how we develop these patterns in our brain, how our neurobiology is reinforced by the patterns of our behavior and thinking, how those fit together with particular situations, and the best ways to change it so you can rewire that. Many people have found it incredibly helpful.

This applies to many anxiety disorders, not just health anxiety. When we focus on worrying about a problem, it feels counterintuitive—even reckless—to stop.

But consider how your brain—the primitive, survival-oriented brain—has been conditioned to seek that momentary relief. Once you understand this conditioning, it becomes clear why it feels so dangerous to stop the hypervigilance.

You are asking a brain that has been trained in one direction to reverse course entirely. Your amygdala interprets your attempt to stop hypervigilant activities as a threat.

This bears repeating: Just because it feels dangerous to stop the compulsive behaviors that fuel health anxiety does not mean it is actually dangerous.

This principle applies to numerous anxiety disorders. Many people who experience panic feel their panic symptoms are life-threatening. The feeling of danger does not make the danger real.

When you attempt new behaviors or discontinue repetitive patterns, resistance inevitably emerges. But behavioral change is precisely how we most effectively rewire the primitive parts of our brain.

What benefits both your physical health and your mental health is treating health anxiety as an anxiety disorder that requires the complete, integrated approach to recovery. Last week's video and blog provides a more thorough description of the Complete Approach to Anxiety Recovery (video here and blog here). 

1. Develop Your Observer Brain

The observer brain is the part of you that can step back and notice what is happening without being consumed by it. With health anxiety, the observer brain recognizes that the worry itself feels protective and safe to you. It observes the habitual patterns—the scanning for symptoms, the researching, the reassurance-seeking—without judgment.

This observer perspective allows you to see the cycle rather than simply being trapped inside it. You can notice: "I am doing that thing again where I convince myself this symptom means something serious." Or: "I am doing that again where I feel I HAVE to worry about this."

This awareness itself begins to create distance from the anxiety. 

2. Use Your Logical Brain for Problem Classification

Once the observer brain has created some distance, the logical brain can engage in what I call problem classification rather than problem dismissal. This means asking yourself: "Is this level of anxiety necessary to address this situation? Do I need to be this anxious, accelerating all of these anxious feelings in my body, in order to take care of my health?"

Or can I pause, regulate my nervous system first, and then assess the actual problem with greater clarity? 

Problem classification helps you distinguish between genuine health concerns that require action and anxiety that requires different treatment.

3. Implement Somatic Techniques

Somatic techniques work from the body up to calm the mind. These include progressive relaxation, grounding exercises, and nervous system regulation through diaphragmatic breathing. These tools directly counteract the physiological anxiety response that health anxiety triggers.

When you calm your nervous system, you reduce the physical sensations that health anxiety often latches onto. This breaks the cycle where physical anxiety symptoms get misinterpreted as evidence of illness, which then creates more anxiety.

4. Apply Cognitive Techniques

Cognitive techniques help you identify and challenge the thought patterns that fuel health anxiety. Ask yourself: Am I catastrophizing? Am I taking a minor symptom and imagining the worst possible outcome? Are there cognitive distortions happening—perhaps all-or-nothing thinking or overgeneralization? Am I ruminating, going over the same worries repeatedly without reaching any resolution?

All of these patterns indicate anxiety rather than genuine health concerns. When you can identify them, you can begin to respond differently.

5. Change Your Behaviors 

This is the component that often gets overlooked, but it is the most important for rewiring your brain. Behavioral change means actively doing something different from what the anxiety is telling you to do.

For health anxiety, this means stopping the reassurance-seeking behaviors: limiting how often you research symptoms online, resisting the urge to ask your doctor for yet another test when you have already been cleared, not seeking constant reassurance from friends or family members.

It also means engaging in healthy activities that redirect your attention and energy: taking a walk, spending time with a pet, pursuing meaningful engagement with hobbies or relationships. You are essentially teaching your brain a new pattern—one where you can feel a physical sensation without immediately spiraling into health catastrophizing.

This retraining process is cumulative. Change accumulates gradually. Your capacity for tolerating uncertainty and discomfort without resorting to compulsive checking strengthens with consistent practice over time.

The goal of recovery is not to stop caring about your health. Rather, it is to relate to your health the way someone without health anxiety does.

This means attending to preventative care, scheduling annual physicals, maintaining awareness of your body—but not scrutinizing every sensation, not transforming every ache into a terrible possibility.

It means understanding that anxiety itself generates numerous physical symptoms. Learning somatic techniques to regulate your nervous system. Approaching your health with appropriate concern rather than catastrophic thinking.

At its core, the fundamental insight about health anxiety is this:

The anxiety, however, requires treatment.

These are two separate concerns that require two different approaches. Once you can separate them, recovery becomes possible.

I recognize this is a complex, difficult issue. Please share in the comments what resonated with you, what questions remain, and what you would find most helpful to explore further.