https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ng-accepting-uncertainty-is-an-important-step
This condition used to be called hypochondriasis and it was often met with derision and misconceptions that it stemmed from attention-seeking or malingering. As our understanding of the condition has deepened, we have become more aware of the profound distress experienced by those afflicted and the incapacitating anxiety underlying their health concerns. The latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual has also replaced hypochondriasis with two related disorders: illness anxiety disorder and somatic symptom disorder.
Ironically, in a cruel twist of fate, health anxiety fuels itself through the physiological symptoms of anxiety, attentional bias and the nocebo effect. When confronted with fear, the body’s natural response is to trigger the fight-or-flight reaction, eliciting a wide array of somatic symptoms, such as elevated heart rate, shortness of breath, chest pain, sweating, nausea, diarrhoea and dizziness. These somatic responses reinforce the belief that something is seriously amiss, exacerbating anxiety and creating a feedback loop. Furthermore, once we fixate on a symptom, we develop an attentional bias, magnifying its importance and intensifying our experience of it, often neglecting other signs that we are well and healthy.
Health anxiety can also be complicated by the nocebo effect, which operates in the opposite direction of the more familiar placebo effect. It occurs when we read about the symptoms of a possible illness or the negative side effects of a medication and subsequently experience those symptoms or side effects, even when we’ve unknowingly been given a sugar pill rather than the real drug. Clearly our mind exerts a profound influence over our bodily experience.
Prof Gill Straker and Dr Jacqui Winship are co-authors of The Talking Cure. Gill also appears on the podcast Three Associating in which relational psychotherapists explore their blind spots