How to recognize cases of hypochondria, and what to do?

These are the characteristics that define hypochondria and make it recognizable.

The need to look after our well-being and to take care of our own physical integrity is one of the factors that have most influenced the evolution of our brain and our behavioral patterns.

For example, this is why we suffer from fear or anxiety, unpleasant and even painful emotions that we experience relatively frequently because they are useful for our survival.

Sometimes, however, this predisposition to detect danger signals where there need not be any can lead to problems, and hypochondria is a case in point. Here we will see how to recognize the hypochondria, as well as some advice to overcome it..

How to recognize a case of hypochondriasis problems?

Especially in recent times, when high population numbers and the dynamics of the globalized world have given rise to several pandemics and epidemics, the line between a reasonable level of concern for one's health, on the one hand, and an unjustified obsession with the possibility of illness, on the other, is somewhat blurred.

Nevertheless, it is always possible to recognize extreme cases in which the perception of the state of one's own body becomes so skewed toward pessimism as to be totally incompatible with reality..... This is what happens with hypochondria, which not only does not help to prevent serious health problems, but also becomes a problem for those who develop it.

Hypochondriasis, or hypochondriasis, is a psychological disorder characterized by the propensity to believe that one has an illness, despite there being no reasonable grounds for such a conclusion.

This causes them to see evidence of having a pathology in a wide variety of small, unimportant events, or events that do not say much about the person's condition.or that do not say much about one's state of health.

Here we will look at some of its most distinctive features.

1. What indicates that hypochondriacal distress is unwarranted?

As we have seen, people with hypochondria have a great facility for believing that they suffer from illnesses, to the point that this propensity to be distressed by supposed signs and symptoms of pathologies can wear down their quality of life.

Here it is important to pause and think about the difference between what we can consider reasonable grounds for suspecting pathology, on the one hand, and the objective grounds for thinking that. They may seem equivalent, but they are not.

For example, some alterations linked to chronic Pain can be very difficult to objectify, since what ultimately indicates their presence is the existence of pain sensation. In cases of this type, there is no objective reality on which the idea of "I have a disease" is based, but it is reasonable to think that something is wrong with our body.

Thus, hypochondriasis has to do with giving too much importance to events or phenomena that should not be attributed to an illness.

2. It is not simply an obsession with health.

To say that a hypochondriac is an individual who shows excessive concern for his or her own health would be inaccurate.. In reality, hypochondriasis is based on a more concrete type of concern: it is not the need to gain health by achieving a perfect body, but the fear of losing health.

3. Gaining strength through rumination

Psychological rumination is what happens when a disturbing idea or mental image comes to our mind over and over again, and makes us wish it would disappear from our consciousness. In the case of hypochondria, this happens a lot, because as we assume that there is a problem in our body, almost any stimulus or sensation that we judge to be a problem in our body will cause us to think that there is a problem. almost any stimulus or sensation that we judge to be abnormal can lead us to think about the possibility of having a pathology..

In turn, the fact of exposing ourselves several times to these unpleasant situations makes the anticipatory anxiety grow, with the possibility that with a new day new signs that we have a disease may arrive.

4. It is prolonged in time

Hypochondria is a persistent alteration, which lasts for months, and. It is not a matter of having seen a documentary on the effects of processed food and spending an afternoon thinking about it.

What to do?

Here are several tips that can help people who have developed hypochondria.

1. Attend psychological therapy

The first and most important advice is to get help from psychologists.The first and most important advice is to get help from psychologists, since only through this procedure you will have personalized attention and intervention measures adapted to the particularities of your case, and also by professionals specifically trained for interventions of this type. However, bear in mind that therapy is a process that requires commitment, and abandoning it prematurely can mean going back to square one.

2. Keep a diary in which you write down what you feel

It is important to get used to seeing beyond the thoughts and feelings associated with hypochondria; ideally, you should not only experience them yourself, but also learn about how and when they arise.

Through this process of psychological reverse engineering, in which you begin to detect the thought patterns behind hypochondriasis (when it is expressed), you will find it easier to understand the extent to which these ideas are irrational.

To achieve this, a very useful thing to do is to keep a self-recordA place that you should always keep handy where you can write down basic information about what you think, feel and do in the moments when hypochondria manifests itself, noting place, date and time, and what happened just before, during and just after each of these experiences.

3. Create routines that keep you away from rumination.

Although you may not notice it, hypochondria does not arise spontaneously from your brain, but "feeds" on certain habits and contexts to which you are frequently exposed. Therefore, a good measure to take is to detect situations or contexts in general that tend to drag you to hypochondria, and opt for other options..

For example, if you notice that every time you visit YouTube you end up watching videos about diseases, it may be good to choose another way to fill some of your free time on the Internet, or visit many videos on other topics so that the algorithm stops recommending those contents. Or, if for whatever reason many people in your group of friends are doctors, you can directly ask them not to talk about their work when you are with them. The idea is to expose you to different situations, either by modifying your context or exposing you to new ones.

4. Do not try to block the discomfort

Hypochondriasis gains strength when we try to leave completely out of our consciousness all the anxiogenic thoughts that it generates. It is much better to gain ground by accepting that for a time it will produce uneasiness and discomfort..

Are you looking for psychological support against hypochondria?

If you think you have developed hypochondria and you are looking for psychological help to treat this problem with the support of professionals, we suggest you contact us. In Cribecca Psychology we have several experts in psychotherapy with extensive experience offering treatment to this kind of problems, as well as other psychological complications: generalized anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, phobias, relationship problems, OCD, etc..

We currently attend psychotherapy sessions in person in Seville, and also in online therapy sessions by video call. If you want to know how we work, you can read more about us on this page.