The Cutprice Guignol

So, a few years ago, I wrote a small guide for people dealing with health anxiety, based on my own experiences of dealing with the disorder myself. But it struck me recently that I’ve never written an article regarding how to help people with health anxiety if you’re not one yourself. I know it’s a disorder that has been an issue for a lot of people in the last few years, especially since the pandemic, but it’s one that remains quite underdiscussed in terms of the ins and outs of how it functions, and how best to support people dealing with it.

Previously known as hypochondria, health anxiety does pretty much what it says on the tin: an excessive preoccupation with the status of a person’s health, often manifesting in constant checking and investigation of perceived symptoms and bodily functions that the sufferer views as indicative of severe illness. I’ve written a bit about my experiences with it before, if that’s something you’d like to learn more about, but for this article, I’m going to focus on how to provide support for people living with it. As ever, despite my obvious staggering intellect and intelligence, please be aware that I’m not a medical professional and am talking from a place of personal experience rather than psychological expertise. With that said, let’s get into it!

Limit Reassurance

Look, I get how wild this sounds: if someone is coming to you in a state of obvious distress about something that you can offer them reassurance on, you want to give it to them, right? I know this impulse comes from a genuinely compassionate place, but it’s worth remembering that, with disorders like health anxiety, reassurance-seeking can form part of the compulsive behaviour: asking someone for reassurance becomes as much part of the ritual as body-checking for new symptoms or reaching out to a healthcare provider again and again. And the thing with compulsions is that indulging them and carrying out those rituals serves to reinforce their importance and lead to further rumination and anxiety on the subject at hand. If someone’s coming to you over and over again, looking for reassurance on the same health-related topic, it might be worth compassionately re-directing that focus to something more constructive rather than continuing to give that reassurance. Which leads me to…

Please, Bloody Hell, Know That We’re Not Doing it On Purpose

I think this goes for any kind of anxiety, but health anxiety can be particularly vulnerable to this kind of assumption. It can be incredibly frustrating to see someone obsessing over the same issues over and over again, seemingly insisting on bringing conversations and actions into the same circular route only to end up no better of because of it. But understand that health anxiety is something that is truly inescapable – we’re never able to remove ourselves from the constant monitoring of our bodies, and that can make health anxiety more pernicious and seemingly inescapable as a result. Similarly, anxiety can trigger physical symptoms that feel extremely serious in the moment (laboured breathing, chest pains, numbness in the body) and increase the likelihood or intensity of a health anxiety attack, and yeah, that’s just as roundabout and circular and frustrating and terrifying as it sounds. This is a mental illness, and that means that we’re not always going to be acting rationally, but it doesn’t mean we’re making a concentrated effort to be the most annoying people on the planet (I just happen to be that as well, but it’s got nothing to do with my health anxiety).

With that said, as with any mental illness, be aware of your boundaries and when you need a break – dealing with someone in an intense anxiety attack can be triggering for a number of reasons, and it’s okay to take a step back and manage your own triggers too.

Don’t Normalise Health Anxiety

If you’re not well-versed in health anxiety or how it manifests, it might be tempting to assure the person dealing with it that everyone worries about their health sometimes – which is entirely true! But that kind of language can dismiss and normalise behaviours and thought patterns that are really damaging in both the long and short term, and it can serve as a way to downplay the harm this kind of anxiety does. Recognizing the warning signs that might hint towards someone struggling with health anxiety as opposed to normal and manageable health concerns will help differentiate between the two, and, if you have your doubts about the wellbeing of the person in question, don’t dismiss it under the veil of normality, and give their anxiety more room to flourish in the process.

If you’ve supported people with health anxiety, what methods have you found helpful in that process? If you’ve got it yourself, what do you wish the people around you knew? Let me know in the comments!

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