Lauren – The Reality of Health Anxiety: "your brain is trying to protect you"

Hypochondriasis, commonly known as health anxiety, is a condition that research shows will affect 6% of people in their lifetime.

Lauren McCredie is a 24-year-old dental receptionist from Edinburgh. She has been impacted by health anxiety for a large part of her life. She sheds light on the reality behind the condition, the downsides of researching symptoms online, and the impact of health-related content on social media.

Although Lauren’s health anxiety developed fully as she got older, she recalls her experience with emetophobia when she was around 8 years old. This experience was potentially where Lauren’s health anxiety began, as her intense panic about her health would trigger real physical symptoms:

“I scared myself into thinking that every time I got a sore stomach I was going to be sick, so I think that is where it comes from. That is something that still happens to this day; I think about something so much that it becomes a cycle. You don’t trust your body in that sense, and if you don’t trust your body you don’t know what is real.”

Lauren explains that the intensity of her health anxiety worsens when she finds something new to fixate on. When she experiences minor symptoms, she will relate this to a much more significant illness she has seen online or heard about through other people. These fixations tend to last around a month; Lauren explains the impact they have on her everyday life:

One of these specific fixations on her health occurred last summer, lasting around three months. Lauren explains that she was hyper-focused on some minor stomach issues, which caused her to believe it was related to a much larger illness. These strong anxious feelings brought on physical symptoms – ultimately resulting in numerous visits to the doctor:

Visiting a doctor has been enough to help ease Lauren’s anxiety in the past. However, she shares how on this occasion even medical advice failed to stop her worries:

“Sometimes I would go to the doctors, and they would tell me it is nothing to worry about and that would be enough – but last year that wasn’t enough. Which I thought was quite concerning because I was never somebody to not trust the doctors. I think because they would say it is nothing, but then I would think ‘what am I doing wrong?’. It is because my mind was so fixated on it.”

Researching her symptoms online is ‘99%’ the cause of Lauren’s health anxiety. She explains how the search for answers always makes her feel worse:

However, content on social media such as TikTok has also been a source of anxiety regarding Lauren’s health. Specifically, she describes a viral video about a woman who had a rare type of cancer in her arm. This video caused Lauren to research into her profile:

“I remember thinking that I am going to convince myself that I have got this illness, I could just tell before anything even happens.”

She then explains how this intrusive thought developed further due to her job as a dental receptionist:

Lauren believes that the convenience of accessing health content online and researching symptoms can cause people to get stuck in a cycle of panic:

“It is just so easily accessible to go on Google, you can’t just have a doctor there all of the time to help you. So, it is so easy to fall into that trap of looking for answers yourself, which is never good.”

Interestingly, Covid-19 did not impact Lauren’s health anxiety. However, being in lockdown allowed her more time to dwell on other issues:

"What affected me more was lockdown, because that gave me more time to be on my own. I definitely had a few flare-ups that got progressively worse because I was by myself. It wasn't so much Covid itself that was making me anxious."

Lauren also reflects on how sensationalist news stories can play into scaremongering the public:

As Lauren’s grandmother was a hypochondriac, she didn’t realise at first that health anxiety is not something that everybody deals with:

“I think that talking about it all the time with someone who’s also really bad with it doesn’t really fix anything. It took me a while to realise that it wasn’t normal for people to worry about their health that much.”

Lauren also touches upon the link between health anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD):

“The more I have been doing research, I’ve found that health anxiety can be the byproduct of other conditions. A lot of people that have health anxiety have OCD because it links into that constant reassurance you are seeking.”

When asked if she believes health anxiety is taken seriously enough, Lauren shares how this is a conflicting topic:

Our conversation ends with a reflection from Lauren on how people can best deal with health anxiety, based on her experience and research:

“It is something that you just have to sit with, you need to just acknowledge that you have these thoughts. I've found that you should try recognising that it is a thought that is not based on anything concrete; your brain is trying to protect you.”

Lauren's story highlights the complex nature of health anxiety, as it can often feel like a never-ending cycle. Although health anxiety is often misunderstood, it is important to remember that it is a condition which can seriously impact your well-being. Lauren has proven that self-reflection is a crucial first step to overcoming the intrusive thoughts that health anxiety can create.