I used to have pretty bad health anxiety. It wasn’t there all the time, but when it flared up, it was debilitating. For example, over the years, I’ve had a few biopsies. Those cancer scares, and the waiting for results, were always terrifying for me. Getting sick on Rosh Hashanah of 2003, being in the ICU, going blind, and wondering if I’d ever feel better again- that was alsone of the scariest, most serious experiences of my life.

Sometimes health anxiety does come from traumatic experiences in our past (like that Rosh Hashana when I had gotten Stevens Johnson’s Syndrome from an antibiotic, long before most doctors knew what that was). Where something rare happened to us or went wrong, and we felt shaken to our core and completely caught off guard. It made us feel like our sense of security was gone. Usually, we tell ourselves that rare things won’t happen to us. But when something unexpected, unusual, or rare does happen, it shakes up our foundation. It makes us feel like anything can happen, and that we’re not fully safe.

Sometimes the hardest part of health anxiety is uncertainty. When we don’t know why something is happening, or what’s going on in our own bodies, it can make us very scared and uncomfortable. Uncertainty is common in both anxiety and OCD- which is why so many people scroll the internet looking for explanations of what might be wrong when something alarming or confusing in the body crops up. We are really looking for reassurance, but often, we end up just scaring ourselves instead.

We catastrophize. We imagine the worst. But somehow, anything feels better than not knowing. Filling in the blanks, even with something scary, seems to reassure us that we’re in control, that we can make a plan, that we’re prepared for whatever happens. Our minds get hijacked, and we start imagining all kinds of scenarios. The trouble with imagination is that when you imagine something happening, your body goes through the experience as if it’s real. You can live through a scary experience a million times over, purely in your own mind, even though it never actually happened- and is very unlikely to.

For those of us with overthinking minds and active imaginations, and especially for those of us with trauma, or a deep fear of getting sick, losing control, being debilitated, being in pain, or not being there for our children- that fear can feel enormous.

Luckily, a lot of my health anxiety has gone away. I don’t experience it often anymore, thanks to the treatment I’ve gotten for it. But every now and then, something from the past that I haven’t felt in a long time can pop back up.

Over the last 6 weeks, I’ve had a bad cold that hasn’t seemed to go away, no matter what I’ve tried. It’s been lingering on and on, seeming to get a little better, then flaring up again. At a certain point, when it no longer made sense to me why it was still there, and not knowing what would help, I started to feel scared. What’s wrong? Why isn’t this cold and cough going away? Things have felt out of control with my body. (Luckily, I started a new medication regimen, and I’m hoping I’m on the mend.) But feeling out of control, uncertain, and not knowing why my cold was lingering put me right back in that space of health anxiety, just for a few minutes, every now and then. It wasn’t fun. And I don’t miss those days when the fear would actually take me over. These days I can pull out of it more easily because I know how to cope with the anxiety differently.

But here’s the thing about the health anxiety- it can make your imagination take over, your heart start racing, and make you feel you can’t get to a doctor fast enough to find out what’s wrong, or get another test done. If you have this kind of anxiety, you may not trust your body to work well for you. You may feel a sense of fragility, like time is limited, or like you’re not in control.

The truth is, none of us are in control. We never are. All we can do is cope as best we can with whatever happens to us. Worrying, catastrophizing, and imagining the worst doesn’t prevent anything, and it doesn’t help anything- although deep down, some part of us often thinks it does. Some part of us believes that the more we worry, the more control we have. That the more we imagine the worst-case scenario, the more prepared we’ll be for whatever goes wrong. This is a trick our mind convinces us of. We don’t have to buy into it.

So if you’re worrying about a health issue, convinced something is wrong with your body, and you’ve already been to the doctor- it’s very unlikely that anything serious is going on. If you find yourself back on the internet, searching for answers you’ve already been given, maybe stop. And go see a therapist instead. Life is way better when anxiety is under control!