Health Anxiety Therapist – Evidence-Based Help to Stop the Spiral
Anxiety is more than a feeling—it affects your body, too. You might experience a racing heart, tight chest, tingling, or other symptoms that make you feel like something's seriously wrong. Sometimes, those physical symptoms lead you down a rabbit hole of worry, quickly spiraling into health anxiety.
If you’re finding yourself caught in a cycle of worrying about your health, you don’t have to deal with it alone.
At Embrace Now, our doctoral-level psychologists specialize in helping individuals overcome health anxiety with evidence-based, compassionate therapy. Using proven therapies for health anxiety, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), we can help you find relief.
Whether you're always checking symptoms, obsessively worrying, avoiding doctors altogether, or stuck in endless Google searches, we’re here to help you step off the hamster wheel.
You don’t have to be stuck with the mental loops, obsessive worrying, or compulsive behaviors.
Book a free 10-minute consultation today with a licensed therapist who understands health anxiety and can help you move forward.
What Is Health Anxiety?
Health anxiety isn’t just “worrying too much.” It’s a persistent fear that something is terribly wrong with your body, even when there’s no medical reason to think so.
Some people with health anxiety zero in on every ache or heart flutter, convinced it means something life-threatening. It's not just about the presence of physical symptoms—it's how your mind interprets them.
Here’s the problem: You might also find yourself trapped in a vicious cycle, where anxiety creates physical symptoms, which then creates more anxiety, worsening those physical symptoms.
There are usually two common patterns:
- Care Seeking: You find yourself frequently calling, or visiting, doctors for reassurance. You may repeatedly request unnecessary retesting or seek second opinions when told you are actually healthy.
- Care Avoidant: You have high anxiety around your health, but instead of seeking certainty through medical professionals, you avoid it. Your fears of being told that there is actually something wrong lead you to avoiding any type of medical care.
If this hits close to home, just know that there are effective treatments that will help you feel better.
Signs You Might Be Struggling With Health Anxiety:
Being concerned about your health is normal, and it is important to stay proactive when you think you may be experiencing some sort of illness.
But when you find yourself constantly worried about your health, it may indicate health anxiety.
Signs of health anxiety, beyond normal health concerns:
- Obsessive or constant fear that you are sick
- Checking yourself frequently for physical indicators of illness
- Worrying that normal physical sensations and symptoms are indicating something is wrong
- Mistrust for doctors and medical tests, and doubting everything they tell you
- Frequent visits or calls to the doctor
- Frequently searching your symptoms or researching illnesses
- Adapting your lifestyle for an illness, even when not diagnosed
Health Anxiety Therapy
Once medical illness has been ruled out by a medical professional, effective health anxiety help is available. Finding treatment is a key step for helping you find relief from your anxiety and compulsions.
Effective treatments for health anxiety:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): CBT is the one of the most common treatments for anxiety today. Through CBT, individuals learn how to identify and challenge their intrusive, anxious thoughts to change unhelpful behaviors. It teaches you how to respond to anxiety-inducing situations with more balance.
- Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP): ERP for health anxiety involves being exposed to health-related fears and triggers to gradually avoid participating in anxiety compulsions or responses (like symptom checking). Over time, ERP retrains your mind’s response to perceived threats and triggers.
- Medication: When managed by a medical professional, psychological medications may be paired with psychotherapy to help reduce the symptom of anxiety.
Embrace Now offers both Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for Health Anxiety.
How to Deal With Health Anxiety: Practical Tools You Can Start Using Today
While professional therapy is the most effective path forward, there are small but meaningful steps you can take now to start managing your health anxiety.
These include:
- Practicing Mindfulness: Spending 5-10 minutes daily to focus on your breath, or following a guided meditation, can help to calm your nervous system and bring you in touch with your body and mind. This can reduce anxious spirals and help to ground you when anxiety takes control.
- Journaling: When you identify an anxious thought, write it out so you can start recognizing the pattern. What are you afraid of? What triggered it? Naming the worry helps you gain a bit of distance, while also laying the groundwork for challenging those fears in the future. Try to take note of how often health anxiety thoughts occur and try to reduce the number each week.
- Limit Symptom Searching: It might feel like you’re looking for answers in a helpful way, but googling symptoms typically fuels anxiety rather than relieving it. Try to avoid searching the internet for answers to your health concerns.
Build a Support Circle: Whether it’s a therapist, friend, or group who gets it, talking things out can also help you feel more grounded, and less stuck in your head worrying about your health.
Why Google and Social Media Can’t Solve Your Health Anxiety
It’s easy to see why we turn to the internet when something feels off with our body. But when it comes to health anxiety, those searches often do more harm than good.
Search engines don’t know your body, your health history, or other essential context. You might type in a common symptom that could have 100 different causes—and often the first result is terrifying and catastrophic. Chances are, what you find doesn’t apply to your actual situation. That’s more than unhelpful—it’s rocket fuel for health anxiety.
If you find yourself stuck in this kind of loop, it’s time to put down the phone and pick up tools that actually help—like therapy, mindfulness, and learning how to sit with uncertainty without spiraling.
Health Anxiety Therapy at Embrace Now
At Embrace Now, we tailor health anxiety therapy to your unique needs. Whether you’re stuck in reassurance-seeking or feeling overwhelmed by fear of going to the doctor, our licensed therapists offer proven tools and gentle guidance to help you live a happier life. We offer virtual therapy across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and many other states.
Let’s take the first step together.
Book a Free Consultation with Dr. Susanna
Conshohocken, PA, Main Line Suburbs, and virtually across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and several other states
