Health Anxiety & Fear About Symptoms

Worry about health can be deeply distressing.

For some people, anxiety becomes focused around physical symptoms, illness, bodily sensations, or fears about what may be wrong. Even when medical reassurance has been given, worry may persist, returning repeatedly or shifting to new symptoms and concerns.

Health anxiety can be exhausting — mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Many people describe feeling trapped in cycles of checking, reassurance-seeking, researching symptoms, scanning the body for signs of illness, or struggling to settle uncertainty despite insight or repeated medical investigations.

Others may feel frightened because symptoms are real, ongoing, or unexplained, yet the level of fear and preoccupation begins to take over daily life.

You may recognise experiences such as:

• Persistent worry about symptoms or physical health

• Fear that symptoms may indicate serious illness

• Repeated checking, monitoring, or researching symptoms

• Difficulty trusting medical reassurance

• Feeling hyperaware of bodily sensations

• Anxiety that worsens physical symptoms or creates new concerns

• Fear of serious illness despite investigations

• Becoming preoccupied with uncertainty or “what if” thinking

• Feeling trapped in cycles of reassurance followed by renewed fear

• Difficulty relaxing or switching off health-related worry

For some people, health anxiety develops after a genuine illness, frightening medical event, bereavement, caring for someone unwell, or periods of prolonged stress.

For others, fear may have been present for many years and become increasingly exhausting.

A medically informed approach

As a medically qualified doctor with over 25 years of experience in one-to-one work, Dr Emma Rae Rhead offers a thoughtful, medically informed approach to health anxiety and fear about symptoms.

Health anxiety is approached with care and nuance.

Physical symptoms are real, and concerns about health deserve to be taken seriously. At the same time, anxiety, vigilance, fear, and nervous system activation can sometimes intensify distress, increase bodily awareness, or maintain cycles of worry that become difficult to settle.

Clinical hypnosis may help some people work differently with fear, uncertainty, repeated checking, hypervigilance, or patterns of anxious preoccupation.

Rather than dismissing symptoms or offering false reassurance, the work often involves understanding the patterns that may be maintaining distress and helping people respond differently to uncertainty over time.

Looking beyond symptoms alone

Health anxiety is often shaped by wider experiences such as earlier illness, family experiences of health and illness, bereavement, traumatic medical experiences, periods of uncertainty, stress, perfectionism, or longstanding anxiety patterns.

Where appropriate, attention may be given to these wider experiences rather than focusing only on symptoms themselves.

Important medical note

This service does not replace medical assessment or treatment. Ongoing physical symptoms or concerns about health should continue to be discussed with your GP or relevant medical professionals.

Is this right for me?

People seeking support with health anxiety are often thoughtful, intelligent, and highly conscientious, yet feel exhausted by cycles of worry, checking, fear, uncertainty, or difficulty trusting reassurance despite considerable effort.

Clinical hypnosis may offer a different way of working with health-related fear where logic, reassurance, or repeated checking have not brought lasting relief.