Health Anxiety Is Taking Over My Life, What Can I Do
Health anxiety can become much bigger than individual worries about symptoms.
Health anxiety can become much bigger than individual worries about symptoms.
It can determine what you read, where you go, what you eat, whether you exercise, how often you seek reassurance, how you spend evenings and what you talk about with the people closest to you.
The NHS describes health anxiety as health worry taking over your life.
If that description feels familiar, the next step is not to find one final piece of reassurance. It is to look at the whole pattern.
Map what the anxiety is costing you
Consider a typical week.
How much time goes into checking your body, searching online, attending to sensations, asking for reassurance or recovering from worry?
What have you stopped doing?
Health anxiety becomes easier to recognise when you measure its impact on sleep, work, relationships, exercise, hobbies and concentration rather than trying to decide whether each individual worry was justified.
Identify the behaviours that temporarily reduce fear
Checking, Googling, asking for reassurance and avoiding reminders of illness can all reduce anxiety for a short time.
That short-term relief can make the behaviour more likely next time.
The NHS recommends recording these behaviours and gradually reducing them as part of self-help for health anxiety.
If you have been medically advised to monitor something, follow that advice; this is about additional anxiety-driven behaviour.
Put ordinary life back on the schedule
Health anxiety can make life feel as though it must wait until you are certain you are well.
But certainty may never arrive in the form anxiety demands.
Plan ordinary activities because they matter: seeing somebody, working on something absorbing, walking, cooking, gardening or returning to a hobby.
This is not proof that a symptom is harmless. Medical questions remain for healthcare professionals.
Ask for help using the words ‘health anxiety’
You can tell your GP or a mental-health service that worry about illness is taking over your life.
Adults in England can self-refer to NHS Talking Therapies. NHS England lists health anxiety among the anxiety problems treated by the service.
Talking therapies are active treatments and may involve practical exercises between sessions as well as conversations.
Aim for a different relationship with uncertainty
The goal is not to guarantee that you will never become ill or never notice another sensation.
It is to become less controlled by the demand to know, check and reassure yourself immediately.
You can remain appropriately attentive to your physical health while building a life that is not permanently organised around the possibility of illness.
Last reviewed
6 September 2026
Important health anxiety and medical information
This guide provides general information about health anxiety and mental wellbeing only. MH360 is not a medical diagnosis service and cannot assess physical symptoms, diagnose medical conditions, interpret medical tests or provide advice about whether a symptom may indicate a particular medical condition.
New, changing, persistent or concerning physical symptoms, questions about an existing medical condition, and concerns about medical tests or treatment should be discussed with your GP, NHS service or another appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Do not use this guide to decide whether a physical symptom needs medical assessment or to replace medical advice you have been given. If you are unsure whether a symptom needs medical attention, seek advice from an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
If worry about your health is persistent, is taking over significant amounts of your time, or is affecting everyday life, speak to your GP or an appropriately qualified mental-health professional. Adults in England can also self-refer to NHS Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression, which includes support for health anxiety.
If you or somebody else is in immediate danger or there is a life-threatening emergency, call 999 or go to A&E.