Health Anxiety

What is health anxiety?

Health anxiety is a type of anxiety that can cause you to worry excessively about your health or to fear that you have a serious physical illness – often when there is no reason to think this. This excessive worrying can cause a great deal of distress and affect your everyday life.

 

Some people with health anxiety have a medical condition which they worry about excessively while others have medically unexplained symptoms. Others may just be persistently worried about their future health.

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Health anxiety symptoms

Some of the symptoms of health anxiety are:

 

  • Unexplained physical symptoms and frequent visits to your GP
  • Intense fear of getting sick
  • Residual fears around the reoccurrence of a disease or illness
  • Fear about the catastrophic outcome of contracting a particular illness
  • Fear of heightened vulnerability or susceptibility to illness
  • Behaviours like: consulting multiple doctors, undergoing diagnostic procedures, endless symptom-searching, frequent hand-washing – and other safety behaviours

Frequently asked questions

You should seek help for health anxiety if you find yourself getting preoccupied about your health when there are no obvious reasons for concern. Likewise, we would also recommend that you seek support if you find yourself spending a lot of time symptom searching or carrying out medical tests to get reassurance.
Health anxiety can happen for a number of different reasons. It can sometimes be a consequence of experiencing high levels of anxiety in other areas of your life. It’s also possible that you may have been modelled this way of relating to the world by a parent who was anxious about their own health. Or you may have grown up over protected which meant that you didn’t develop a sense of your own resilience. It can also be a result of the reverse experience – not growing up with an adequate feeling of safety in your environment.

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Athena Lazaridou

Athena is a Pilates instructor with 8 years’ experience in the field. After completing a Power Pilates Mat Certification in Athens, she went on to complete the Full Comprehensive Classical Pilates Certification with Equinox in Kensington.  She has been teaching Pilates at Equinox for the past 6 years in addition to her own private clients who she trains both face to face and virtually.

Athena has a passion for helping people get stronger and fitter as well as helping those recovering from injury regain their strength and mobility.  Over the years, she has worked with athletes to incorporate Pilates into their training and improve performance. Athena has also worked with prenatal and postnatal women who may be experiencing depression or other mental health difficulties and used Pilates to facilitate a positive impact on their mental health.

Athena is very passionate about improving physical and mental well-being and has recently incorporated Sound Healing into her work, as she believes it to be one of the best ways of ‘letting go’ and releasing stale energy whilst increasing greater self-awareness.