Anxiety and health anxiety
Anxiety is not foolishness and it is not a failure of will. This page is for worry that has attached itself to the body: checking, searching, and the fear that a sensation means something is being missed.
A free 15-minute call first. I usually reply within 2 working days.
You might recognise
- The worry starts before I am out of bed, and it does not wait for a reason.
- I have read the same symptom page more times than I want to admit.
- Reassurance helps for about an hour, and then it is gone.
- I check the same spot, the same lump, the same pulse, several times a day.
- I cancelled the appointment because I could not face what they might find.
- Everyone tells me I am healthy, and I do not believe any of them.
- I am exhausted by how much of my day this takes.
Why it happens
Anxiety is a system for detecting danger. On this page the danger is usually a sensation read as illness, or a thought that something is being missed. Worry and panic often travel with that. The work is on the cycle that keeps the fear going. Bodies produce sensations constantly: flutters, aches, twinges, a heartbeat you suddenly notice. Most of them mean nothing, and most of the time they are never registered at all. Health anxiety changes what happens next. Attention narrows onto the sensation, the sensation is read as a sign, and that reading triggers a fear response, which itself produces more sensations. A tight chest, dizziness and a racing pulse are real. They are frequently the anxiety rather than the disease. Then come the safety behaviours, and this part matters most. Searching symptoms, checking the body, asking a partner whether it looks normal, booking or avoiding tests: each one lowers the fear briefly. Each one also teaches the system that the danger was real and only narrowly avoided. That is why the relief never holds. Context loads it further. A frightening diagnosis in the family, a symptom that was once missed, a bereavement, a long period of medical uncertainty, or working in healthcare can all make vigilance a reasonable adaptation that then outstays its usefulness. None of this means your sensations are imagined. It means the fear has its own mechanics, and mechanics can be changed.
How therapy helps here
- CBT for health anxiety
- We work on the cycle rather than on the argument. That means tracking what you check, testing specific predictions, and gradually reducing searching and reassurance so the fear has a chance to fall on its own. Predictions are testable in a way that possibilities are not.
- Attention training and interoceptive work
- We deliberately produce harmless sensations, by breathing faster, standing up quickly, or focusing hard on one part of the body. Doing this on purpose shows where sensations come from, and it teaches attention that it can be aimed rather than captured.
- EMDR for the frightening memory underneath
- Sometimes a specific event drives the whole pattern: the moment of a diagnosis, a scan, a hospital corridor, a phone call. When a memory like that still fires in the present, EMDR works on the memory itself rather than on today's symptom.
- Psychophysiological techniques
- Breathing work, heart rate variability training and attention to sleep lower background arousal. When baseline arousal drops, the body produces fewer of the sensations that start the cycle, and the ones it produces are quieter.
What the first sessions look like
- We start with an ordinary week: what you check, how often, what you search, and who you ask.
- We map one recent spike minute by minute. The sensation, the thought, what you did, and what happened to the fear afterwards.
- We choose one safety behaviour to experiment with, and it is small. Nobody is asked to stop everything at once.
- You will not be asked to accept that you are healthy. We test predictions instead.
You do not have to explain why it is not rational. You already know that, and knowing has not switched it off.
What this does not replace
Therapy does not diagnose or rule out physical illness, and nothing here replaces medical assessment. If you have a new or changing symptom, have it examined once, properly, and then we work on what happens afterwards. If avoidance is keeping you from necessary care, or if severe panic or obsessive-compulsive symptoms need a psychiatric assessment, I will say so.
Common questions
What does a session cost, and how long is it?
An individual session is 45-50 minutes and costs €130. A group session is 90 minutes and costs €70-100. All sessions are online, in Hebrew or English.
How do I know it is anxiety and not something the doctors missed?
Therapy cannot settle that, and I will not pretend otherwise. The working arrangement is that appropriate medical assessment happens once, properly, and then we look at the pattern around it. The pattern is recognisable by what happens after reassurance, not by whether illness is possible.
Will you tell me to stop searching online?
Not as an instruction. We look at what searching does to the fear over an hour and over a week, then you choose an experiment. Reductions that you design tend to hold, and ones imposed on you tend not to.
I have health anxiety and a real diagnosis. Does this still apply?
Yes, and the combination is common. When there is a genuine condition, the work separates sensible monitoring from anxious checking, which is a finer distinction and worth doing carefully.
Does online work, given that I find clinics difficult?
All sessions are online, so getting to a waiting room is not a barrier to starting. Worth naming, though: if avoiding clinics is part of the difficulty, that avoidance becomes part of the work rather than something we quietly leave alone.
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For blood tests, injections, scans and dental work, including fainting, and including the fear that has made you postpone care.
Read more
Unsure whether to write?
Write one sentence about what is going on. I will say if I work with that, and if not, where else to look.
A free 15-minute call first. I usually reply within 2 working days.