When worries about your health feel constant, intrusive, or impossible to switch off, day-to-day life can start to revolve around checking symptoms, seeking reassurance, or avoiding anything that might trigger fear. Health anxiety is a recognised and treatable condition, and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) offers a structured, evidence-based approach to reducing the intrusive thoughts, the checking behaviours, and the physical tension that keep it going. Tara O’Donoghue works as a health anxiety therapist in London, offering personalised, formulation-led treatment designed to support meaningful and lasting change. The following outlines how health anxiety presents, what causes it, and what to expect from therapy.
What is health anxiety?
Health anxiety, also known as illness anxiety disorder or hypochondriasis, is a condition in which worry about being seriously ill becomes persistent, distressing, and difficult to control. Everyday bodily sensations, such as a headache, a change in heart rate, or an unfamiliar ache, are often interpreted as signs of something dangerous.
When does normal health concern become health anxiety?
Occasional concern about health is a normal part of life. Health anxiety is different in degree and impact. The worry becomes frequent rather than occasional, difficult to settle, and begins to interfere with work, relationships, sleep, or the ability to enjoy everyday life.
A useful distinction is this: Normal health concern tends to ease once a symptom passes or a check-up comes back clear. With health anxiety, any relief is short-lived, and the mind quickly moves to the next worry, symptom, or possibility.
Common signs of health anxiety
Health anxiety can look different from person to person, but common signs include:
- Repeatedly checking the body for lumps, changes, or unusual sensations
- Spending long periods researching symptoms or medical conditions online
- Seeking frequent reassurance from GPs, family members, or partners
- Avoiding medical appointments, news stories, or situations that trigger fear
- Persistent physical symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, chest tightness, or gastrointestinal discomfort, often driven or worsened by anxiety itself
Many people recognise several of these patterns. Recognising them is often the first step towards change.
Do I have health anxiety?
If you recognise yourself in the signs above, a short self-assessment can help clarify how much health-related worry is affecting your daily life. The Health Anxiety Inventory is a widely used questionnaire that clinicians draw on during assessment. It is not a diagnosis, but it can be a useful reference point before speaking with an anxiety therapist.
What causes health anxiety?
The causes of health anxiety are rarely straightforward, and for most people it develops from a combination of factors rather than a single trigger. Common contributors include:
- A personal history of significant illness, medical trauma, or a distressing experience within healthcare
- Growing up around a family member with a serious illness, or with a parent who was highly anxious about health
- An existing tendency towards generalised anxiety or depression
- A recent life event such as bereavement, the illness of someone close, or a personal health scare
- Prolonged periods of stress, during which the body’s threat system becomes more sensitive to physical sensations
Understanding what has shaped the pattern is an important part of therapy, and shapes the direction of treatment from the start.
How is health anxiety treated?
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is the most evidence-based treatment for health anxiety, and is recommended for it internationally. It works because health anxiety is maintained by a self-reinforcing cycle: worrying thoughts about illness heighten physical sensations, which are then interpreted as further evidence of danger, which drives further safety behaviours such as googling, body-scanning, or avoidance. CBT interrupts that cycle at several points at once.
Treatment typically focuses on:
- Identifying the specific thoughts, images, and beliefs that fuel the worry
- Understanding how behaviours such as checking, googling, or seeking reassurance keep the anxiety alive, even though they feel like relief in the moment
- Gradually reducing these behaviours through Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), a structured technique that helps the mind learn, through experience rather than argument, that feared outcomes are far less likely and far less catastrophic than they feel
- Building tolerance for uncertainty, which is often at the core of health anxiety
- Developing practical strategies for managing physical tension, stress, and sleep
Therapy does not dismiss physical symptoms or suggest they are imagined. Sensations are real. What CBT changes is the meaning attached to them and the behaviours that maintain the distress. Most people begin to notice meaningful shifts within the first phase of treatment, with continued progress as new patterns become established.
What therapy for health anxiety involves
Tara O’Donoghue is an accredited Cognitive Behavioural Therapist with substantial experience in treating anxiety-related conditions, including health anxiety. Treatment is tailored to the individual and typically begins with an assessment session, which is used to understand the pattern of worry, the physical sensations involved, and the behaviours maintaining the anxiety.
From this, a personalised formulation is developed, a shared understanding of how the health anxiety began, what keeps it going, and where change is most likely to make a difference. This formulation guides the treatment plan and gives each session a clear focus. Progress is reviewed regularly, and the approach is adjusted as new patterns emerge or new areas need attention.
Therapy is available in person in Marylebone, London and online across the UK. Online sessions are just as effective for health anxiety as in-person work, and are often preferred by those who find travel to appointments itself a source of anxiety.
Contact
If health anxiety is affecting your day-to-day life, support is available. Health anxiety is a well-understood condition, and with the right therapeutic approach, most people experience significant and lasting improvement.
Tara O’Donoghue offers CBT for health anxiety online and in person in London. To arrange an initial conversation or ask a question before booking, please get in touch by email at info@homebasedtalkingtherapy.com or via the contact page.