STOP GOOGLING HEALTH SYMPTOMS

Health anxiety, formerly referred to as hypochondria is diagnosed as Illness anxiety disorder, somatic symptom disorder or sometimes panic disorder. It behaves like OCD due to the cycle caused by obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors like reassurance seeking, body symptom checking, ruminating, excessive googling and avoidance and safety behaviors.

Common physical compulsions for health anxiety include googling symptoms, physically scanning your body, monitoring or checking body symptoms with different devices, checking where the local hospitals are if you travel, excessive doctor visits and testing, and seeking reassurance from loved ones.

While some can stop compulsive googling cold turkey, others find this is difficult because the urge and habit have been going on for some time.

Remember that your job is to tolerate your anxiety when you have the urge to do any compulsion, including the urge to google health information.

People enrolled in my health anxiety course have reported decreased anxiety after only a few days of stopping their excessive googling of health symptoms.

Here are 5 tips to help you to resist the urge and stop googling health symptoms:

1. Write down your health worries and document what you want to google and why. Sitting with the anxiety and the urge to find answers. You may even try answering your own questions in a rational voice. This exercise can move your brain from a seeking mode to more of an acceptance mode of the uncertainty we all must tolerate.

2. Make a new rule to help keep you accountable. Perhaps a rule might be that instead of you googling, ask someone else to google something for you and summarize the answer. This keeps you from getting hooked in the compulsion.

3. Delay your googling. When noticing the urge, set a rule to delay googling activity for 2 hours. Eventually work your way up to 24 hours. You will find that your ability to tolerate the urge will improve with practice.

4. If you are googling social media sites and forums, ask yourself, “What am I looking for? What do I really want?” If the answer is reassurance, answers, certainty, or anything to calm your anxiety, then stop and resist the urge.

5. Shift your focus in the moment. If you notice that you are on your device or computer and you immediately catch yourself in the act of googling, use the opportunity to shift your focus. You can use the I. A.M. method to help you. Identify that you were seeking reassurance, Allow the urge and that angst to be there, just floating in your mind, and Shift your focus in the Moment. It helps to have something to do to shift your attention to and away from the urge to google those symptoms.

Health anxiety can hook your attention and reel you in. It can convince you that something may be seriously wrong, and can activate your fear response. It pulls you in and away from everything else that’s important to you.

Health anxiety thrives on your vulnerabilities and catastrophic thinking, where minor symptoms are blown out of proportion, leading to thinking of the worst case scenarios. But, health anxiety is a treatable condition.

[andibgoode]

I was just about to google, remembered this short, and didn't! So, thank you!

[catq]

Perfect timing - spend half of the day googling. 😐 Sometimes the OCD (health anxiety) gets me, but now I’m back in charge. 😁

[MrNovaman]

how about googling side effects of medication we may be taking? I understand googling isn’t good, but I also want to be aware of any things that may arise. Especially with things like SSRIs. Any tips?

[ashleygaw]

It always ends up bad, now I'm feeling really awful because I googled again... This level of anxiety is exhausting... I feel on edge all day every day