What is health anxiety? Here are the signs

From overthinking to not feeling safe, here are a few signs of health anxiety.

Health anxiety, also known as Illness Anxiety Disorder or Hypochondria, is a disorder when a person worries excessively about having a serious medical condition. It can develop due to a lot of reasons. In this disorder, a person develops long-term fear of having a medical condition that is serious. This makes the person worry about even small symptoms of health conditions. They often change the doctors and the treatment due to their anxiety. "There are several possible reasons why someone may develop health anxiety (also known as illness anxiety disorder or hypochondria)," wrote Mental Health Advocate Taylor Marae as she explained the signs of health anxiety.

What is health anxiety? Here are the signs(Unsplash)

Worrying: When a person with health anxiety hears about an illness, he/she instantly starts thinking of developing it. The fear of the thought engulfs the person.

Missing symptoms: In this anxiety, the person constantly worries that he/she has missed the symptoms and now things have become serious.

Not feeling safe: The person does not feel safe in their own body and is constantly in fear of having a serious medical condition.

Searching illnesses symptoms on Internet: They constantly search for illness and their symptoms on the Internet and worry that they have it.

Mentally scanning the body: They also mentally scan the body for pain and other symptoms to match with that of the illness shown on the Internet.

Overthinking: they also keep thinking of what will happen if they develop an illness.

Not believing test results: After having the fear of an illness, he/she conducts medical exams. Even after seeing the results, they have a difficult time believing if the test reports are true or not.

Here are the reasons why a person may suffer from health anxiety:

Personal history: When a member of the family develops a serious medical condition, it can be the reason for health anxiety for others.

Trauma: An event of severe illness or medical emergency can also trigger health anxiety in people.

Personality traits: Some people, because of their personality, worry a lot about their health and are constantly overthinking about their health conditions.

Media influence: Too much media exposure about a certain illness can also be the reason for health anxiety.