Have you ever gone down a Google rabbit hole after noticing a small ache… and convinced yourself it was something life-threatening?

In this episode, I’m joined by my longtime friend and therapist Warren Foot to talk about something I had barely heard of before our conversation — health anxiety. And once I heard what it was, I realised just how many of us might be living with it silently.

Warren specialises in helping people deal with anxiety, trauma, and emotional overwhelm. He introduces us to the concept of rigid thinking, the difference between worry vs. anxiety, and shares how unchecked health anxiety can quietly hijack our lives.

You’ll hear:

• What health anxiety really is (and what it’s not)
• The role of irrational beliefs and catastrophic thinking
• Why Googling your symptoms makes everything worse
• How to reclaim control with “worry time” and action steps

If anything in this episode resonates with you, I invite you to take Derailed — my 30-minute life satisfaction assessment to gently explore the areas of your life that may be out of alignment.

🔗 Take the Derailed Assessment → https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/derailed

I don't know about you, but as I get older, it feels like someone I

know, whether a friend, a family member, or a neighbor is either receiving a new

diagnosis, in treatment for an illness, or recovering from some kind of sickness,

it's become a constant background hum.

So when I caught up with an old friend, Warren Foot, someone I've

known for nearly a decade, our conversation about his counseling

practice took an unexpected turn.

We started talking about something I'd never really heard of before.

Health anxiety.

Warren shared that it's becoming increasingly common in his practice and

that the ripple effects are staggering.

In fact, estimates suggest that visits to A&E across the UK related

to health anxiety are costing the NHS and eye watering 33 billion a year.

That made me sit up and take notice.

So in this episode, we're figuring out what health anxiety is, why

it's on the rise, and what we can do practically to address it.

Let's dive in.

Warren, in a previous conversation you said that one of the most

common things you see in your therapy practice is health anxiety.

What is it?

Health anxiety is essentially the excessive worry about

having or developing serious illness.

Even when there's little medical evidence to show that

there's anything wrong at all.

Some people might say that it's just being health conscious,

but it's, it's really not.

Health anxiety goes way beyond reasonable concern about our

health and becomes preoccupying, distressing, and often exhausting

because it goes on all the time.

If we're anxious about our health, we are constantly anxious until we

know that there's nothing wrong.

Wow.

From a rational emotive behavior therapy perspective,

and, and R-E-P-B-T is the model of therapy that, that I practice.

It's not the physical symptoms themselves that cause people to be disturbed and

anxious, but it's the beliefs that they hold about what the symptoms

they're experiencing actually mean.

So it's driven by irrational demands like.

I must never feel unwell or it would be awful or unbearable if I got sick.

The most common one that, that I experience when dealing with

clients, with health anxiety.

I've got this symptom.

I must know now that there's nothing seriously wrong with me.

And these beliefs, these demands lead to unhelpful behaviors.

Constant symptom checking, constantly seeking reassurance, either from family

members or going to the GP all the time.

But it could also work in the other way.

It can lead to people avoiding seeking help.

Uh, I can't, I, I can't bear the thought of knowing that there's

something seriously wrong with me, so I'm never gonna go to the doctor.

So it can be really pernicious and.

Have a, a long-term detrimental impact on, on the way people live their lives.

Are there any more examples of how health anxiety

manifests itself in daily life?

Yeah, I mean, repeatedly checking our bodies for signs of illness.

So even when there's nothing wrong with us scanning that radar is constantly

switched on constantly scanning to see if we can pick up on any twinges or

pains that we wouldn't otherwise notice.

Or constantly Googling symptoms.

Oh, I've got this ache.

I better Google that.

I better see what, uh, what it is.

And you know, we all know that, uh, that Google's great at telling us

the worst case scenario so we can disturb ourselves simply by seeking the

information that, uh, that we look for.

Wow.

Misinterpreting normal sensations.

Everybody gets twitches and aches, stomach discomforts from time to time.

So taking those symptoms and totally misinterpreting what they actually mean

and, and, and jumping to the conclusion that something must be seriously

wrong, like cancer or heart disease, or brain aneurysm, whatever it might be.

Wow.

This is different, isn't it?

So.

Many of our listeners, we will experience moments of high

stress, of high health stress.

Yeah.

In life.

Most of us have moments of those, but in your experience, what drives and

sustains longer term health anxiety?

Rigid thinking.

Rigid thinking is, I think the one thing that really maintains not just health

anxiety, but any anxiety, believing things must or should be a certain way.

For example, I must know for certain that I'm healthy or I couldn't bear

it not to know, not to know now that what I'm experiencing isn't serious.

That's rigid thinking.

Catastrophic beliefs.

If I get ill, it'll be the end of me.

I couldn't, I couldn't handle it.

If I have a worst case diagnosis or it might relate to, to family worries, um, if

I die, who's gonna look after my children?

Who's gonna provide to my family?

So this rigid straight jacket thinking is what maintains anxiety.

Wow.

Short-term relief from reassurance or of avoiding the

issue together just feeds the cycle.

So, so even when a doctor gives you a clean bill of health, you might

still say, yeah, that's fine, but I, I'd like a second opinion on that.

Or even if we go to the doctor and we get the all clear.

A week later we might say, yeah, but that was last week.

Something might have happened between then and now.

Um, that that could be serious, so I better get it checked again.

There's often also a low tolerance level for uncertainty and a need for

constant control over our body, and that's irrational because we can never

have complete control over our bodies.

So we don't like the discomfort of not knowing.

I can't bear not knowing, so I must know.

Wow.

In rational emotive behavior therapy terms, we, we encourage

people to, to try and shift from this straight jacket rigidity to a much

more flexible, realistic position.

I prefer to stay healthy, but I can cope if I'm not.

I prefer to know now that there's nothing seriously wrong with me, but it's not

the end of the world if I don't know now.

So taking a much more flexible approach in the way that we do with other things.

And I think it's important to make a distinction here

between anxiety and worry.

Worry is a human reaction.

We need worry.

Worry is the thing that, that keeps us safe.

We can worry about things because it helps us to assess risk.

So there's nothing wrong with worrying about our health, but

there's a big difference between worry and anxiety, where anxiety is

an exaggeration of badness and an underestimation of our ability to cope.

We can go to hospital for an operation and we can be worried about the outcome,

but we're keeping it in perspective.

Yeah, I'm worried about this, but I'm in, good hands.

I believe I'm gonna be looked after, whereas anxiety is, this is gonna go

wrong, the operation's gonna go wrong.

I'm gonna die if I die, who's gonna look after my family?

That's the difference between worry and anxiety.

I, I love that you say that worry is what keeps us safe.

Yes.

But there, there seems to be a big difference in society at the

moment between worry and anxiety.

So if someone is listening and everything you've said has somehow resonated, they

find themselves in this rigid thinking, wearing their straight jacket, that's

increasing this health anxiety for them.

What might they do practically this week?

To start to unpick that or start to ease the burden of the health

anxiety that they're feeling.

I'd start by naming what's happening.

This is anxiety.

It's not evidence of illness.

So stop thinking that anxiety's part of you.

Take it out of your head.

This is just anxiety.

These are just thoughts, not evidence.

The next thing I, I, I, I think I'd advise is just pause and ask, am I

worrying here or am I problem solving?

Am I wasting time being anxious or am I actually doing something practical?

So anxiety tends to be repetitive fear-based, problem

solving is action focused.

Okay.

I'm worried about this pain that I have in my body, but I'm gonna sleep on it.

I'm gonna see how it feels tomorrow.

If I'm still worried, then I might phone the GP.

Rather than I've got this pain, i'm gonna phone an ambulance now.

Obviously it's, it's worth saying that if you're seriously worried it's not

something that's happened before and you're not somebody that is usually

anxious about this sort of thing, then of course err on the side of caution.

But if you know that you have this predisposition to health anxiety,

then pausing and waiting is something you can do practically.

If you find that you are constantly in this state of an anxiety.

Try scheduling some, what we call worry time.

So rather than trying to suppress anxious thoughts, contain them to a 10 or 15

minute period at certain times of the day saying, okay, I'm not gonna waste my

time on this anxiety now I'm gonna wait till 11 o'clock this morning and I'm

gonna give myself 15 minutes of worry time when I can fill my boots and really

make myself as anxious as possible.

What often happens there is that   11 o'clock clock will come and go.

And we'll forget all about it.

Wow.

Now that's interesting.

I wouldn't have thought of that.

I particularly love that movement from the anxious thinking, the

catastrophization to action.

The difference between those two, one is taking action and one is internal.

That is brilliant.

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