Health Anxiety during a Pandemic
This article isn’t a patronising article stating “ keep calm and carry on” but looking at the supermarket shelves I can only presume that everyone is feeling really anxious about this latest outbreak and heightened anxiety only adds another horrible layer to all of this.
Anxiety is a perfectly reasonable response to anything that threatens our well-being and of course if we didn’t feel anxious at times like these we wouldn’t have survived as a species, however it is really important that we don’t let our anxiety get out of control during this outbreak, because if we do we will be less able to cope with it and more likely to feel overwhelmed.
Over the years I have worked with many people who have experienced health anxiety and for them the “fear” of illness becomes a much greater burden than any illness they might experience. They often become hyper-focused on symptoms and over estimate how much danger they are really in.
When something is on the news every moment of everyday we can’t help but to really focus on it, which leaves us very little capacity to focus on what was part of our former everyday reality. We become so focussed on this newest existential threat that we are likely to forget how likely we are to die of the flu, or of cancer of being hit by a car, or a heart attack, all of our focus is on the newest threat to our lives and our new reality becomes focused on finding ways to avoid becoming a victim to this new disease. We focus less on our chances of having mild and recoverable symptoms and more on the worse possible outcomes. Our brains are designed to do this, it is how we have survived as a species but what this means is that we lose all perspective.
When anxiety manifests in health anxiety we become hyper-aware of anything that doesn’t feel quite right in our bodies. Given the highly published list of symptoms for this illness ,if health anxiety is allowed to flourish we will start to search out these symptoms in our bodies, a slight tickle or feeling a bit hot might send us into a spiral, triggering a stress (fight/flight) adrenaline response in the body that can feel horrendous, causing a racing heat, sweaty palms, upset stomach and dizziness, In short anxiety itself can cause physical reactions that can feel very scary and these reactions are likely to convince you that things really are very dangerous and worrying. This is how anxiety starts to fuel itself.
You can see how important it is for us to try to stay on top of this anxiety and here are some pointers that might help:
Try to keep some perspective. What things do you already have to do everyday that carry some risk? You might have to cross a busy road, drive a car, go on a plane, The world we live in is full of dangers but if we were to focus on those dangers every moment of the day we wouldn’t be able to function. At some point we have decided that the risk of these things happening is so slight that the benefits outweigh the risk. We can apply this coping strategy to this outbreak. We are all likely to get the virus at some point but how likely is it that we will become critical and how likely is it that we will recover?
Take a break from the news and social media you are only fuelling your fear. How many conflicting reports have you read? Are you reading opinions rather than facts? Is the reporting focused on the spread of the contagion rather than the likely good outcome if you were to catch the virus? If you must check the news be disciplined by only checking in with what’s going on once a day and only getting your information from really reliable sources. You don’t have to look very far to get bad information or sensational reporting. Switch your focus elsewhere, what else is going on in the news, is there any positive news you can focus on?
Exercise. Exercise combats the chemicals that create the physiological response to anxiety lowering cortisol and adrenaline and kicking the parasympathetic system into play. If you are feeling overwhelmed try to include more of it and if that can include being outside even better.
Relax. Meditating, reading, cooking. What helps you to relax? Relaxing helps to take our bodies out of fight/flight mode and pushes us into rest/digest mode. How can you relax and self-soothe
Wash them away. Just as you have been advised to wash your hands more often, when those intrusive catastrophic thoughts creep in surrounding your vulnerability, try to wash them away. Those thoughts don’t create any safety for you they only create more problems for you.
Take the very best care of yourself and talk to others. We are all in this together you are not alone.
If you’d like more help with your anxiety but you are stuck at home skype sessions are available.