Health Anxiety Pack (Centre for Clinical Interventions)

The information provided on these pages is intended for patients already under the care of the Local Mental Health Teams.

 

Module 1 - Understanding Health Anxiety

The aim of this current module is to provide you with some general information about health anxiety, to discover whether health anxiety is a problem for you, and to discuss the negative impacts of health anxiety.

 

Module 2 - How Health Anxiety Develops

In this module, we will explore how some of these factors may contribute to the onset and development of health anxiety.

 

Module 3 - What Keeps Health Anxiety Going?

In Module 2, we explored how our past experiences may lead us to feel more vulnerable, increasing our concern about our health and making us more sensitive to bodily symptoms and changes. 

 

Module 4 - Reducing Your Focus on Health Symptoms and Worries

This Module will explore ways that you can start to decrease the amount of time spent focussed on health symptoms and worries and thus start to break this vicious cycle.

 

Module 5 - Re-evaluating Unhelpful Health Related Thinking

In this Module, we will examine what you can do with these negative and often unhelpful thoughts once you get to your elected worry period. We will examine these thoughts in more detail and discuss ways of evaluating and overcoming them.

 

Module 6 - Reducing Checking and Reassurance Seeking

In this Module, we will revisit the different ways people check and seek reassurance for their health, explore the difference between helpful and unhelpful checking and reassurance seeking, and explore strategies to reduce or eliminate these behaviours.

 

Module 7 - Challenging Avoidance and Safety Behaviours

In Module 3, we introduced the notion of avoidance and safety behaviours. In this Module, we will revisit the common types of avoidance and safety behaviours and introduce a way to gradually start to challenge and overcome these behaviours.

 

Module 8 - Adjusting Health Rules and Assumptions

In this module, we will discuss adjusting the underlying health rules and assumptions that gave rise to your health anxiety.

 

Module 9 - Healthy Living and Self-Management Planning

Congratulations on making it to the end of this information package! In this final module, you will find a summary of all of the important concepts and strategies introduced to you in the previous modules. You will also find a self-management plan designed to help you stay on track in the future.