Why Health Anxiety Feels So Hard to Control, and How Therapy Can Help

If you find yourself dreading or panicking about your next doctor’s appointment, or scrolling WebMD and Google wondering if your symptoms could mean something while also avoiding getting them checked, it could be a sign of health anxiety.

Health anxiety can feel confusing and frustrating, especially when the reactions don’t seem to match what’s actually happening.

Many people begin considering therapy because the anxiety shows up in specific health-related situations. This might look like feeling uneasy for days leading up to a medical appointment, hesitating to open lab results, or feeling overwhelmed at the thought of blood work. Outside of those moments, life may feel relatively manageable, which can make the anxiety harder to understand.

What Health Anxiety Often Looks Like

Health anxiety doesn’t look the same for everyone, but it commonly includes patterns like:

• Persistent worry about having or developing a serious medical condition, even when symptoms are mild or unclear

• Anxiety around doctor’s appointments, medical procedures, or blood work

• Strong distress while waiting for test results or avoiding opening them altogether

• Repeatedly searching symptoms online or mentally reviewing what something could mean

• Avoiding medical care at times, or seeking reassurance frequently, often cycling between the two

• Difficulty feeling reassured after medical evaluations, even when results are normal

• Noticing that anxiety spikes around health-related situations rather than being present all the time

For many people, these reactions feel out of proportion to the situation and are hard to control once they start.

What Health Anxiety Can Feel Like in the Body

Health anxiety often comes with physical sensations that feel uncomfortable and hard to ignore, especially around health-related situations. People commonly describe:

• A tight chest or shallow breathing when thinking about an appointment or procedure

• A knot in the stomach, nausea, or reduced appetite before blood work or tests

• Waves of heat, dizziness, or lightheadedness when noticing a symptom

• Muscle tension, especially in the jaw, shoulders, or neck

• Feeling on edge or unable to fully relax while waiting for results

• A strong internal urge to do something, even when nothing needs to happen right away

These physical responses can feel convincing and distressing, which often adds to the cycle of worry.

How Health Anxiety Starts Affecting Daily Life

Over time, health anxiety can begin to shape decisions and routines in ways that feel limiting or exhausting.

People often notice they spend a significant amount of mental energy thinking about upcoming appointments, procedures, or test results. They may put off making calls, avoid scheduling care, or feel stuck between wanting reassurance and fearing what they might hear. Tasks that used to feel manageable can start to feel heavy.

Some people become distracted at work, pull back from social plans, or feel emotionally drained after periods of heightened worry. Others notice changes in sleep, focus, or their ability to stay present. Even when providers offer reassurance, the stress may linger.

What often brings people to therapy is recognizing that this cycle keeps repeating. Avoidance hasn’t helped, reassurance doesn’t last, and managing it alone feels increasingly difficult. At that point, the focus shifts toward wanting relief from the pattern itself.

Why Health Anxiety Develops

Health anxiety is rarely about one symptom or one appointment. It often connects to earlier experiences where health, safety, or certainty felt fragile.

This can include frightening medical experiences, growing up around illness, sudden losses, chronic stress, or long periods of uncertainty. Over time, the nervous system learns to stay alert around health-related situations.

When that happens, appointments, procedures, and test results can trigger strong stress responses, even when there is no immediate cause for concern. Avoidance can feel protective in those moments, though it often keeps the anxiety going.

How Therapy Helps Reduce Health Anxiety

Therapy focuses on the underlying responses that keep health-related anxiety going.

In my work, I use a combination of EMDR, exposure and response prevention, somatic therapy, and art therapy to help people feel steadier and more capable in health-related situations.

EMDR supports processing past experiences that shaped how the nervous system responds to health uncertainty. As those experiences become less activating, current triggers such as appointments or test results tend to feel more manageable.

Exposure and response prevention supports gradually facing health-related fears while building tolerance for uncertainty, especially for patterns like delaying appointments, checking symptoms repeatedly, or avoiding test results.

Somatic therapy helps people notice and work with physical stress responses as they arise. By building body awareness and regulation, anxiety becomes easier to interrupt before it escalates.

Art therapy offers another way to explore fears and patterns that can be difficult to put into words. For some people, visual work helps identify themes, track progress, and approach anxiety with more clarity and distance.

What Change Can Look Like in Practice

In therapy, progress often shows up in small but meaningful ways.

Some clients begin treatment feeling stuck around medical tasks they’ve been avoiding for months or years. After a few sessions, they may notice they can think about scheduling a doctor’s appointment with far less distress. One client shared that she didn’t even realize she had called her doctor and booked an appointment until after it was done. In the past, that step alone brought days of anxiety and overthinking.

Others start therapy feeling intense fear around blood tests or medical procedures. Over time, they may still feel some nervousness, but the reaction becomes much more manageable. Clients have described going in for lab work without feeling frozen or overwhelmed in the days leading up to it.

Another client shared that she was able to complete a full dental procedure without feeling anxious at all. Previously, she spent weeks dreading appointments and mentally preparing for worst-case scenarios. That anticipatory stress no longer took over in the same way.

A common shift also happens around test results. Clients who once avoided opening results or needed repeated reassurance often find they can check results and sit with uncertainty without spiraling. The worry no longer dominates the rest of their day.

These changes don’t mean anxiety disappears instantly for everyone, but the reactions often become easier to tolerate, and for some people, they fade entirely.

What Progress Often Feels Like

Progress with health anxiety is usually gradual. People often notice they tolerate uncertainty more easily, respond to health-related stress with less intensity, and move through appointments without getting stuck in cycles of worry.

The anxiety may still show up at times, but it takes up far less space, and for some, it no longer shows up at all.

Support Is Available

Health anxiety is treatable. With the right support, it often eases significantly and, for some people, no longer shows up at all.

If health-related worry is interfering with your life or causing ongoing stress, therapy can help you develop more ease and trust around your health.

If you’re interested in support, you can schedule a free consultation through lenoratherapy.com. I offer virtual therapy for adults in New York and New Jersey using evidence-based approaches designed to support meaningful, lasting change.

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About the Author

Attiya Awadallah is a licensed psychotherapist and board-certified art therapist specializing in anxiety, health anxiety, and trauma. She works with adults who struggle with anxiety using evidence-based approaches including EMDR, exposure and response prevention, somatic therapy, and art therapy. Attiya provides virtual therapy for adults in New York and New Jersey through Lenora: Art Therapy and Counseling.

You can schedule a free consultation at lenoratherapy.com.