Health anxiety

What is health anxiety?

Health anxiety is an ongoing fear of having or developing a serious illness, one that persists even after medical reassurance or normal test results. It can settle on a single symptom, such as a mole or a racing heart, or shift between parts of the body over months, and it is the worry itself that needs treating.

It often has a starting point: a health scare of your own, a frightening diagnosis in someone close to you, or a period of illness or bereavement that leaves the body feeling untrustworthy afterwards. Just as often, there is no single trigger, and the worry builds slowly until it becomes the background noise of most days. Either way, health anxiety is a recognised psychological difficulty, not a sign of weakness or exaggeration, and it responds well to structured support.

The severity varies widely. Some people notice a flare-up around a specific event, such as a hospital appointment for someone else, which fades again within weeks. Others find the worry has become a fixed feature of daily life, shaping which symptoms get mentioned to a doctor, which parts of the news get avoided, and which activities feel too risky to try. Wherever it sits on that range, it is worth taking seriously and worth addressing directly.

Symptoms of health anxiety

Health anxiety looks different from person to person, but the following patterns are common:

• Repeatedly checking the body for lumps, marks, changes in heart rate or other signs of illness
• Searching symptoms online for long stretches of time, often ending up more anxious than before
• Asking a partner, friend, GP or other professional for reassurance about the same worry more than once
• Avoiding hospitals, health documentaries, medical news or appointments because they trigger anxiety
• Interpreting ordinary sensations, such as a stitch or a twitching muscle, as signs of something serious
• Physical symptoms of anxiety itself, including a pounding heart, sweating or dizziness, which can then be mistaken for the feared illness
• Trouble concentrating at work or in conversation because health worries keep breaking through
• Tiredness, low mood or irritability from the ongoing effort of managing the fear

Most people recognise several of these rather than all of them, and the mix often changes as the anxiety develops.

How health anxiety can vary

For some people, health anxiety attaches to one specific condition, often something that affected a parent or appeared in a news story that stuck. For others, the focus moves from one worry to the next, so that resolving one fear simply clears space for another. Some manage the anxiety mainly through checking and asking for reassurance, while others cope by avoiding medical situations almost entirely, sometimes including appointments they genuinely need to attend.

Health anxiety can also sit alongside other difficulties, such as panic, generalised worry or obsessive-compulsive patterns of checking and reassurance seeking. A first conversation with a psychologist usually explores which of these patterns are present, rather than assuming the picture is the same for everyone.

How therapy can help

Cognitive behavioural therapy has the strongest evidence base for health anxiety and is the approach most often used by the NHS for the condition. It works on the specific patterns that keep the anxiety going: the checking that feels reassuring for a moment but resets the worry soon after, the searching that rarely settles anything for long, and the avoidance that narrows daily life without ever removing the underlying fear.

No one can have complete certainty about their health, and therapy does not try to manufacture it. Instead, it works towards a different relationship with that uncertainty, so it can be tolerated without dominating decisions and daily routines. For some people, techniques drawn from acceptance-based approaches sit alongside this work, particularly where health worries have become tangled up with a broader need for control or safety. The exact combination depends on what comes up during assessment, and the pace is agreed between you and your therapist rather than set in advance.

Our approach

We are clinical psychologists for Bromley and south east London, working online with adults, so sessions take place by secure video call wherever you are. That reach covers Bromley itself, either side of the High Street in BR1 and BR2, along with Beckenham, Chislehurst, Shortlands, Bickley, Hayes and Petts Wood. Working online removes the need to travel, whether you would otherwise be catching a train from Bromley South or Bromley North, or simply fitting a session around a working day.

Each piece of work begins with time spent understanding how the health worry developed, what keeps it active now, and what you would like to be different. From there, sessions are structured but not rigid, drawing on established techniques while adjusting the pace to suit what feels manageable. We will update this site as the practice develops.

What does therapy for health anxiety involve?

An initial assessment looks at the history of the health worries, current patterns of checking, searching and avoidance, and any relevant physical health context, while being clear that this service does not diagnose or treat physical illness. From there, therapy typically involves mapping specific triggers, examining the role that checking and reassurance seeking play in keeping the worry alive, and gradually trying different responses to those triggers, usually starting with smaller and more manageable steps.

Between sessions, there is often a small task to try, such as noticing a pattern as it happens or testing a different response to a particular trigger, which is then reviewed together at the next appointment. Progress rarely moves in a straight line, and a difficult week is treated as useful information rather than a setback to be worried about in itself.

When to seek help

It is worth looking for support if health worries come up often, are hard to put down once they start, or are taking up a noticeable share of your time and energy each day. The same applies if checking or reassurance seeking has become difficult to stop, or if avoiding medical appointments, information or conversations is starting to create problems of its own. Health anxiety can also affect sleep, relationships and work, and these wider effects are frequently what push someone to seek support in the first place.

Any new or changing physical symptom should always be raised with a GP first, since psychological support for health anxiety works alongside medical care rather than in place of it. If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, contact your GP or NHS 111, or call 999 in an emergency.