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Writer's pictureMegan Devito

Ep 22 - The Truth About Health Anxiety



Episode Description: The Truth About Health Anxiety


Are you constantly worried about your health? Does the fear of illness or disease consume your thoughts? I get it. That was my life story for over 30 years.


In this episode of the More Than Anxiety Podcast, I'm telling the truth about health anxiety and how it impacted my life. We'll also explore the root causes, the impact on your daily life, and practical strategies to stop overthinking and worrying so you can finally let go and feel confident, calm, and have fun.


You'll learn how to:

  • Identify and challenge negative thought patterns

  • Practice mindfulness and grounding techniques

  • Build trust in your body and medical professionals

  • Set boundaries with excessive worry

  • Develop healthier coping mechanisms


If you're ready to break free from the cycle of health anxiety and live a more peaceful life, this episode is for you.


Podcast Transcript:

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito, and I am the Life Coach for women and teenagers living with anxiety, who want more out of life. I'm here to help you create a life you love to live, where anxiety isn't holding you back. Get ready for a light hearted approach to managing anxiety through actionable steps, a lot of truth, talk and inspiration to take action, so you walk away feeling confident in your ability to live a life that sets your heart on fire. Let's do this. 


Welcome to Episode 22. This week, I'm going to talk to you guys about health anxiety. This is kind of a scary episode for me to record but it's also the story of my life for so long. So I'm excited to be able to share it with you. I talk with so many people in groups and people that message me on Instagram or whatever social media platform who tell me, I'm just so afraid all the time that something's wrong with me that I have this disease. And yes, absolutely, I understand that. My running joke for a long time was that I've had every disease under the sun, and also absolutely none of them. So this was the bulk of my story, and a problem from the time I started to feel anxious way back when I was eight year olds and certainly the anxious trigger that tends to linger a little more in my life, even now from time to time. It doesn't pull me under the way it used to. I'm able to let it go. I recognize it for what it is, but that was not always the case. So if you are in the thick of fearing diseases, of the fear of getting sick, or of someone that you love getting sick, you're in the right place. That's what we're going to talk about in this episode. 


The problem with health anxiety is a fear you have of your own health, or of your own demise, or the health of the people that you care about. And this used to be, I guess the proper term maybe would be hypochondria, or illness, anxiety, whatever you want to call it. This form of anxiety that focuses around either how your body feels, or the fear of a sickness, which makes you fear how your body feels. It always goes back to that feeling inside your body and what your brain is telling you is actually wrong. The more that I thought about my experience with living with health anxiety I was, "Oh, well, maybe it's not anxiety at all. Maybe this is OCD" and some of the symptoms or the experiences of people who have health anxiety, tend to mimic OCD, but they are not the same. Health anxiety is characterized by these worries about serious medical conditions, always thinking you have the next worst disease. Or if you read something in the newspaper or you happen to come across a story on social media about someone who gets sick, suddenly feeling those symptoms in your body and thinking 'Oh no, I think I have that" because you read about it and it scared you. It caused your brain to react and it caused your body to be filled with all of those anxiety hormones, and suddenly you're feeling it in your bod, and your mind is creating more stories about what's going on. That is healthy anxiety. Somebody with health anxiety will imagine symptoms or take little tiny symptoms as a sign that something is absolutely wrong with them.


For example, after I had my youngest daughter, she's 14 now, I had really bad postpartum anxiety and that caused me to develop muscle twitches all over my body. It started in my thumbs. My thumb's twitched for weeks, I mean, six weeks! And of course, at this point, I'm like, something's going on and I Googled 'twitching thumb' or 'twitching muscles', and was immediately diagnosed by Dr. Google that I had ALS or MS, and I lost my mind. I mean, to the point where I went to my parents, I was sobbing like, could barely stand up. I made my mom call her friend who was our doctor. And the crazy story is that his daughter also was experiencing the same thing at the same time. He said, Good lord, just tell her to call her friend; she's having the same thing. It didn't end though. Even though the doctor who I trusted the most said, you're fine, this happens, I still thought, this can be right. I ended up going to a neurologist. I ended up having an EEG, I ended up having an MRI, I ended up doing all of these things to find out that I didn't have anything wrong with me. And I finally had to learn to accept it but it took months of me worrying about this. That's health anxiety. 


If you're unable to stop thinking about the next potential disease, or germs, or you go worst case scenario on what will happen if you get sick... and we've seen this go up so much since COVID. You might fear how other people would feel or react if you had this disease, what would it be like for my children if they found out I had this deadly disease, what if I die from this deadly disease that my brain has created, and you're down that rabbit hole of going into this emotional experience of having to tell your kids you're sick having to you know, watch them watch you be sick. So many stories that can come up in your brain, that it's just manifesting these symptoms in your body and telling you something's wrong, when in fact, you're just afraid something is wrong, and you don't have any evidence other than you feel anxious. When you feel that way, there's this need for constant reassurance, just to prove to you that you're okay. This can lead to a ton of visits to the ER, especially if you're panicking. Panic feels like a heart attack. 'Oh, my gosh, I thought I had lymphoma, and now suddenly, I'm having a heart attack too! This is horrible!' and you go to the ER. This happens to people. You're going to see a doctor and then you're going to see a specialist, and then you're getting a second opinion, or a third opinion, or a fourth opinion and you're visiting Dr. Google on the daily. Which is the worst thing you can ever do;  think we all know that by now. Maybe you're asking other people if they have the same symptoms? And you can do this in such a sneaky way, right? Oh my gosh, Isn't it crazy that I feel like I have this disease! It's just crazy, Isn't it?! And you laugh and you pause and you look at them just searching their face for something like..."Yes, you're nuts," just hoping they even tell you that you're nuts. Like, that's what it gets to. You're always feeling there's bumps, there's lumps, you're freaking out over every little bruise or a runny nose, anything that gets a reaction out of your nervous system. This is a major problem. It takes up so much of your time. It takes your energy. You can't think clearly. Your kids are wondering what's wrong, but there's really nothing wrong except you're horribly anxious. This is what you need to do instead.


You have to stop trying to predict the future. And if you really want to predict it anyway, choose an empowering or a happy future. The only reason you're stuck in this cycle of fearing worst case scenario is because your nervous system is on fire and it's causing your brain to come up with reasons for how you feel, so it's throwing spaghetti against the wall. You're guessing, you're guessing, you're guessing, based on what you do not want to experience. You need to learn to trust your body and your doctor, and recognize your patterns because those patterns are there. You can recognize them and how your body reacts as soon as you're anxious. You could recognize them in the thoughts that come up and where those thoughts came from. For me, anytime I heard that somebody else had a disease, I would start to think that I felt that in my body, like it was going to jump over and I was going to catch it. Everything must have been contagious to me. At that point, your body gives you all the signals, and you repeat the checking to try to stay safe. You have to stop that cycle, and learn to find the truth and the sufficiency and knowing that you're safe right now. No one has the next five seconds guaranteed. And we are often so far out into the future creating these horrible situations for ourselves that we forget to go right back into our bodies and to let them just feel anxious. This is this is a big ask, isn't it? I tend to be throwing a lot of these out there lately. 


When you learn to recognize the feelings in your body as familiar, but not dangerous, that is a game changer. I read a quote once and it said worry is wishing for what you don't want, or anxiety is wishing for what you don't want. I was just learning about manifestation at this point. I wasn't really sure I was buying into it or that it was real, but that quote stuck with me what you're doing when you worry and when you let your brain create these stories as you are manifesting symptoms, or diseases and situations before they happen. And they may never ever happen. You're dying from a disease you don't have. You're imagining someone else suffering or passing from a disease that they don't have. You're losing out on time when you are perfectly healthy, because your thoughts feel so real and your body feels so completely wrong. Due to all of the fight or flight that's going on. It is just your body filling your muscles full of blood so you could outrun a saber toothed tiger or some other extinct animal. It's your brain getting fuzzy because the blood ran from your brain down into your muscles and into your lungs. So, so that you can run, so that you can fight, so that you can freeze. So yeah, you can't think clearly, you're only coming up with thoughts that are helping you react faster. So if you actually had to lift a car off of somebody, if you actually had to outrun a saber toothed tiger, great, you're set! But to be able to think through the feelings in your body, and say, Oh, wait, this is this is just me being anxious' takes practice, but it is 100% possible. And I can say that with absolute certainty, because I do it. I did it in the past, and I help people learn to do this all the time. And it works over and over and over again. But the more you fight it, and the more you allow yourself to believe the brain chatter, and yes, I know, it's loud, and I know it's believable, the more you go there... the longer you're going to go there. You have to learn to sit in that uncertainty, and just recognize that you've been here before, and you've survived every single time, even though your brain wants you to think otherwise. this time is no different. 


People with health anxiety have a tendency to go into this idea that, 'This time I think I really am having a heart attack'. Or, 'I've been wrong, I've been really lucky so far, because I keep thinking I have cancer, but you know what, I think this time I really have it'. Stop checking! Stop checking, stop believing. Huge ask... It is very difficult to do, isn't it? That feeling that if you just check one more time, you can ward off some bad situation? 'If I just check to make sure it's not growing...Oh, no, it feels the same... I'll check it in five seconds...Oh, no, it's still there... It's still there.... Oh, god, it's still there!' Yeah, you just checked five seconds ago! That letting go process is surrendering to what you know to be true and that is a process of learning to trust yourself and to trust your body. This is where coaching is powerful. It's a simple answer - super simple! You just have to stop. That doesn't mean it's easy. It means it takes work. It means it takes effort. It means it takes learning to trust yourself, learning to trust your doctors, finding actual evidence that works for you. 


All of these things are simple, but they take dedication. This is a really strong habit that you formed to keep yourself safe and alive. It's working in a terrible way, isn't it? Because it feels really overwhelming and dangerous. Your brain is screaming at you that you'll miss something. Your body is shaking, and it feels really sick. So start with five minutes. Let yourself sit in it, and notice what changes in those five minutes. Have you ever done that? Have you ever been so anxious that you have no idea what to do? So you just sit and feel your body? Most people don't. Most people notice they feel anxious, and they freak out and try to solve for it. That makes sense. But what if you didn't? What if you sat there and said, 'My guts are shaking so hard right now that I can't even stop moving?' 'I'm just shaking from the inside out.' 'I'm gonna sit here and feel that for 30 seconds.' What if you did it for 30 seconds and noticed what it feels like. Then step back, and step back in and say 'now what do I feel?' 'Does it feel better or does it feel worse?' 'Am I more anxious?' 'What am I thinking now that I wasn't thinking two minutes ago?' 'Have I made it into something different or has it backed off a little and I'm not really thinking that anymore?' This is what curiosity can open up for you and this is how I started my recovery process. It wasn't pretty and I was not successful the first time I tried it. It took intention. It's habits. It's it's changing your habits. Have you ever driven somewhere and your brains off? It's just, you're driving to work and you take the same route, but you meant to stop and pick something up on your way to work, but you totally spaced out because you had this habit of going in the same route. Have you ever moved to a different house and actually driven to your old house? I did that once. Because your brain just shuts off and goes it does the same thing when you're feeling anxious, and if your habit is to check, or your habit is to go worst case scenario and to fight it off, it's going to try and do that. It takes intention.


For me, and I've mentioned this in past episodes, one of the things that helped me with my health anxiety was to keep a really detailed log of my symptoms. I had a little spiral bound calendar of the year and every night I would write in there, 'My anxiety was really bad today.' Or 'my anxiety was really good today.' 'I felt this.' 'I'm pretty sure I have "this disease".' I would write it down every night. "This is what I think is wrong." "This is how bad it is." Then the next day I might write, "I was anxious. I didn't have any symptoms, but I kept thinking I should be checking this." Then maybe the third day, "I think I felt good. Today wasn't too bad, it was just a little bit anxious. Not so much." The fourth day, "Today I went out for lunch with my friend." The fifth day, "Terrible anxiety. I felt this way. I think it's this." And then you go back over time and see that your story is changing, your feelings stay the same. It's not consistent. And you remind yourself that if you truly had some monster disease, you wouldn't get better for a little while. You use this information to your advantage to see this happens all the time. "For me, I think this is normal."


Another really powerful move that you can make is to shift your focus to what you want to see. You don't want to see disease. It's just grabbing your attention because it's scaring you, your brain is trying to keep you safe from something that it imagined. But if you can show it factual things that are really going well or that you want to see, like, "Hey, check this out! I was able to lift this really heavy thing. If I had this disease that made me weak, I wouldn't be able to do that." "I wasn't tired today." "I didn't feel like I was going to throw up today." "I was very happy and went out and didn't even think about it for a while today." Finding Evidence for what you want to see changes the way that your brain starts to think. When you start focusing your brain to go where you want it to go, when you become the boss of your brain, your brain does what you tell it, but it doesn't do it on its own. Its job is to keep you safe. And if the way that it does that is to keep you scared, and to keep you checking for diseases, that's what it's going to do. You have to override the system, you have to do a software update. 


The next recommendation I totally have, and I'm going to say that you can choose to do this right now today, stop researching. Health anxiety. people are full of information often found on the internet, where you can learn far more than you would ever need to know unless you are a doctor and then you would learn it in a certified health program where they train doctors. When you're tempted to go look for symptoms, choose a different activity until that urge goes away. If it's because your phone is always right next to you or your computer is right next to you, put it in a different room. You don't need it. Put it someplace where you can't mindlessly grab it and search for symptoms of glaucoma or whatever it is that's on your mind today. You don't need to know that. If you truly feel that something is weird with your eyes, go to the eye doctor and let them tell you what's going on because I am here to tell you that my mom sometimes says, "It's so crazy to me how much you know about medical stuff." In my head, I'm like, 'It's total bullshit. because I spent 30 years researching diseases because I was terrified, I was dying from them!' I have a lot of information. Sometimes information is not your best friend and when you are struggling with health anxiety, and you're being pulled under by every scary symptom, the last thing you need to know is what those symptoms could potentially mean on a 1% chance or something like that. Stop researching. 


Get familiar with your body and your own habits. Talk to me about coaching and how I can help you create these new responses or new replacement responses that you can use when you start to feel consumed, and feel that compulsion to check or to Google. Coaching is incredibly powerful and it is a perfect companion to therapy when your health anxiety is taking over your life. I absolutely encourage you to talk with a therapist and reach out to a coach who can help you create a vision and a plan for your life that shows you how you can live without fearing every single twinge in your body. When you do this, you get to know yourself better and you know your story. You know what you fear. You know what you really fear underneath the fear. And then you change that fear into motivation to do the things that you're afraid that these diseases will take away from you. You live on purpose! When you're not sitting here fearing everything that could go wrong, you have time to play with your kids and enjoy going out and doing things because you realize that you're safe and now is the best and the only time that you have to do what is in front of you. There is nothing that will ever be in guaranteed 100%, and for people who have health anxiety, that in itself feels daunting, but the fact is nothing has ever been 100% up until this point and it's not In two seconds down the road. You start to find empathy and safety and helping other people who are living with the scary health stuff that you were fearing too, and you find hope and their stories instead of running away from them. You can find gratitude for your health and peace for what is happening right now in your life, and share hope with them.


I've been in your shoes and I can help you heal.  Schedule a call with me and let's talk about how you can find and create more freedom. You have a healthy body, and you're already living in that body, so let's just create a strong mind and a strong future to go with it. Go to the shownotes or go to www.MeganDevito.com/workwithme and schedule that call. Let's talk about what it looks like to work together. I'll be back next week. See you then. 


I hope you've enjoyed this episode of The More Than Anxiety podcast. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And of course when you're ready to explore coaching with me, jump to the show notes, click the link, and schedule time for us to talk. See you soon.

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