Home > Anxiety > Hypochondria and Health Anxiety

Anxiety sufferers, with their tendency to imagine and expect the worst, can easily become hypochondriacal with just about any unusual body sensation, even anxiety sensations themselves. There's a tendency to start believing that such feelings may be indicators of serious medical conditions. For example, the rapid heartbeat may be interpreted as the onset of heart disease, dizziness as a sign of stroke or brain tumor, and so on. Such fear of seemingly catastrophic health issues often leads to an increased awareness of body sensations, or even self-generation of symptoms. So for a person who has anxiety and a tendency to imagine the worst, it's usually no problem to find physical symptoms supporting their medical concerns.

Hypochondria is, in fact, nothing more than imagining the possibility of some terrible health condition, and fearing it - fearing it because you don't think that you'd be able to handle it. Of course, it's impossible for any person to fully understand what another is going through, but in many ways the hardest part about any illness, real or imagined, is the mental and emotional one. However, whether you're really ill or just worried about the possibility, keeping a healthy state of mind makes sense. So try using the Part 1 method with your current body sensations - it will do wonders for getting anxiety under control. And even if you are in fact sick, it's hard to imagine anything more likely to stimulate your own immune system and promote healing than this exercise. The human body has been evolving for millions of years, and when allowed to function freely, without the interference of mental or emotional stress, the body's ability to self-heal is tremendous.

Of course, if you really think that you're developing a health issue, by all means see a doctor and get a physical exam - sometimes that's the best way to ease a worried mind. But in the meantime, working with the MC2 Method will free up your body's own self-healing forces, and free you up to continue living in the present moment.