When your body becomes the thing you’re afraid of
Health anxiety has a specific rhythm. A symptom appears. The search begins. The worst explanation wins. Reassurance from a doctor, a partner, or a forum gives a day of relief, and then a new symptom starts the loop again.
Living next to the largest medical complex in the world doesn’t help. In Houston, there’s always another specialist to see.
Some people who come to me have no diagnosis and a body that keeps sounding alarms. Others have a real condition, a cancer scare, a cardiac event, or an autoimmune diagnosis, and the fear has grown bigger than the illness. Both are treatable.
How health anxiety therapy works
The core of the work is the same evidence-based approach I use for all anxiety therapy in Houston, aimed at this particular loop:
- Understanding the cycle. Symptom, interpretation, checking, reassurance, temporary relief, repeat. Seeing it clearly is the first step out.
- Reducing the checking and searching. Gradually, with support, so your nervous system learns that not checking is survivable.
- Tolerating uncertainty. Nobody can promise you’re healthy. Therapy helps you live well without that promise.
- Calming the body. Anxiety produces real physical symptoms, which then get read as illness. Learning to settle your body breaks that feedback.
- If you have a diagnosis, separating the illness from the fear of it. The chronic illness counseling page covers the broader work of living with a condition.
Online, from home
Sessions are by secure video from anywhere in Texas. For people who dread anything medical, not having to walk into another office is a real advantage.
Book an online therapy session for health anxiety, or ask Laura a question first. Costs are on the insurance and fees page.