How do I know if it’s health anxiety or a real health problem?

It’s always appropriate to seek medical advice for concerning symptoms. Health anxiety tends to involve persistent worry, repeated checking or reassurance seeking, and difficulty tolerating uncertainty even after reassurance. Therapy helps with the anxiety cycle alongside appropriate medical input.

Why doesn’t reassurance help for long?

Reassurance reduces anxiety briefly, but it teaches the brain that reassurance is necessary to feel safe. Over time, the mind becomes more vigilant, not less. Therapy helps you step out of that pattern.

Is googling symptoms making it worse?

Often, yes. It tends to increase threat focus and uncertainty, even when you find reassuring information. Therapy helps reduce research loops and build steadier coping.

Can health anxiety cause physical symptoms?

Yes. Anxiety can create real physical sensations through stress physiology. Fear of those sensations can then intensify them. Therapy helps you understand and break the cycle.

Can you help if my health anxiety started after a real illness or loss?

Yes. Health anxiety often intensifies after real experiences. Therapy helps you process the impact and reduce the ongoing threat response.

Do you offer health anxiety therapy in London and online?

Yes. We offer therapy in London and online across the UK.

Health Anxiety Therapy

Health anxiety is a pattern of persistent worry about health that can be hard to switch off. You might notice a bodily sensation, a change, or a thought about illness, and suddenly your mind treats it as urgent and dangerous. Even when tests or reassurance suggest you’re okay, the relief doesn’t last for long, and the worry returns.

For many people, health anxiety isn’t a lack of logic. It’s the threat system doing its job too loudly. You may feel trapped between needing certainty and knowing that certainty is impossible. Over time, this can lead to repeated checking, reassurance seeking, and avoidance, which can end up making anxiety stronger.

At Hampstead Psychology, we offer evidence-based therapy for health anxiety in London and online across the UK. We help you understand what’s maintaining the cycle and build a steadier relationship with uncertainty, your body, and your mind.

This page is for information and does not replace a clinical assessment, diagnosis, or medical advice.

When health anxiety starts to take over

You might recognise some of these experiences:

You notice a sensation and your mind jumps quickly to a serious explanation.
You google symptoms, research illnesses, or read stories that leave you more anxious.
You check your body repeatedly, monitor sensations, or scan for signs something is wrong.
You ask loved ones for reassurance, or seek repeated medical reassurance, but it doesn’t stick.
You feel temporarily calmer, then the worry returns in a new form.
You avoid situations that might trigger fear, such as exercise, travel, hospitals, or certain foods.
You feel hyper-aware of your body and struggle to trust it.
You replay past health scares and fear missing something important.
You struggle to concentrate because worry keeps interrupting your day.
You feel exhausted and frustrated with yourself for not being able to stop.

If this fits, it doesn’t mean you’re dramatic or attention-seeking. Health anxiety is often maintained by very understandable safety strategies that backfire over time. Therapy helps you change the cycle without dismissing your experience.

How health anxiety can show up

Symptom focus and catastrophic interpretation

With health anxiety, normal bodily sensations can start to feel loaded with meaning. The mind quickly scans for danger and prefers “better safe than sorry.” Therapy helps you understand how interpretation works and how threat monitoring keeps anxiety switched on.

Checking, reassurance seeking, and googling

Checking and reassurance are attempts to feel safe. They often work briefly, which teaches the brain to do them again. Over time, that short relief becomes the engine of the problem: the mind learns it can’t tolerate uncertainty without checking.

Avoidance and “just in case” behaviours

Some people cope by avoiding triggers: exercise, travel, crowded places, certain foods, alcohol, news stories, medical settings. Others carry “just in case” plans: repeated temperature checks, monitoring devices, frequent appointments, or asking others to watch for symptoms. Therapy helps reduce these behaviours in a paced way so confidence returns.

Health anxiety after illness, loss, or stressful periods

Health anxiety often intensifies after a real illness, a bereavement, a medical scare, or a period of chronic stress. In these cases, the nervous system has learned that the world and the body can be unpredictable. Therapy helps you process the impact and reduce the ongoing threat response.

Related difficulties we often see alongside health anxiety

Health anxiety often overlaps with generalised anxiety, panic symptoms, insomnia, stress and burnout, and low mood. Some people also notice obsessive rumination, perfectionism, or a strong need for certainty.

Therapy takes the whole picture into account while keeping the work focused on the maintaining cycle of health worry.

Medical input alongside therapy

Therapy for health anxiety is not about dismissing health concerns. It’s about changing the anxiety cycle that keeps you stuck. Where medical factors may be relevant, we recommend appropriate medical input through your GP or treating clinician, alongside therapy, so you’re supported properly and safely.

What keeps health anxiety going?

Health anxiety is often maintained by a loop that makes sense in the moment.

A sensation or trigger appears.
The mind interprets it as dangerous and urgent.
You seek safety through checking, researching, reassurance, or avoidance.
Anxiety reduces briefly.
But the brain learns: “Good thing we checked — it must have been serious.”
So the mind stays on alert and the next sensation feels even more threatening.

Therapy helps you step out of this loop by reducing reassurance and checking patterns, changing how you respond to uncertainty, and rebuilding trust in your ability to cope.

How therapy for health anxiety helps

At Hampstead Psychology, we use approaches that are widely used in evidence-based psychological practice. Depending on your needs, this may include CBT, ACT, compassion-focused work, and schema-informed therapy.

In practice, therapy often involves mapping your health anxiety cycle clearly and changing the behaviours that keep it going, such as reassurance seeking, body scanning, and repeated researching. We help you develop a different relationship with uncertainty and with anxious thoughts, so you don’t have to “solve” every sensation.

We also work with the emotional layer underneath health anxiety, which can include fear of loss, fear of vulnerability, and the belief that you must be perfectly vigilant to be safe. Compassion-focused work can be especially helpful when anxiety has become tied to harsh self-judgement.

The aim isn’t to promise certainty about health. The aim is to reduce the grip of health worry so life feels freer again.

What to expect from sessions

We begin by understanding what triggers your health anxiety, what you do in response, and what impact it has on your life. We’ll explore your current coping strategies and how they’ve inadvertently strengthened the worry loop.

From there, we build a shared map and a clear direction for therapy. Sessions are collaborative and active. You’ll leave with insight that feels usable and practical steps to try between sessions, reviewed and refined over time. We work at a pace that feels safe, because the goal is steady confidence rather than forcing yourself through fear.

How long does therapy take?

This varies. Some people benefit from focused work on reassurance and checking cycles. Others need longer, especially when health anxiety has been present for years or has been shaped by real health experiences, trauma, or loss.

We review progress together so therapy stays purposeful and aligned with your goals.

Health anxiety therapy in Hampstead and online

We offer health anxiety therapy in person in London and online across the UK. Online sessions can work extremely well for health anxiety, particularly when sessions are consistent and you have a quiet, confidential space.

Take the next step

If health anxiety has been pulling you into checking, reassurance seeking, and constant worry, you don’t have to keep living in that loop. With the right support, you can learn to relate differently to uncertainty and to your body, and life can start to feel freer again.

Contact Hampstead Psychology to enquire about health anxiety therapy in London or online.

Useful links: Anxiety Therapy, Panic Attacks, Stress and Burnout, Insomnia and Sleep Problems, Health Conditions Support, Fees, Meet the Team, Contact.

Urgent Help

If you are worried about immediate risk to your safety, call 999 or go to A&E. If you need urgent support but it isn’t an emergency, contact NHS 111 or your GP. You can also contact Samaritans on 116 123 (24/7).

Meet The Team

At Hampstead Psychology, all of our psychologists have extensive training to doctoral level and decades of experience in their field of expertise. You will be matched with a psychologist that has the knowledge and skill to help you understand and overcome your problem - not just in the short term but for good.