What is hypochondria? What can we do to help people with this problem?In this article, we will answer these questions.
Often, helping a person with hypochondria is not an easy task, being exposed to the troubling symptoms of these people can create a sense of frustration and fatigue in the family when the resources available to help are limited and, in turn, it is common for these people to feel emotionally invalidated by those around them regarding their complaints , developing a sense of loneliness and isolation.
- Whether the disease is potentially real or perceived.
- The physical symptoms that cause the complaint are actually felt (not false).
- While medical examinations rule out the presence of a physical illness.
- The concerns of the person with hypochondria often motivate the request for additional evidence to confirm their suspicions or support their certainty about others.
Hypochondria is characterized by excessive concern for the health of the individual and its possible causes. The main emotional component of hypochondria is fear. A fear focused specifically on health, so the individual attributes much of the signals he receives from the body to a potentially serious disease that puts his well-being and even his life at risk.
In many cases, fear is linked to anxiety, with the visible part of anxiety disorders; specifically, generalized anxiety disorder.
Another major component of hypochondria are repetitive self-exams around physical symptoms and changes that can occur in the body (signs, weights, injuries, types of pain?), trying to prove that this disease is real.
What appears in search engines when we write “headache” Reading certain symptoms that characterize a type of serious illness gives a person clues, or what they think is the key, to self-diagnosis. From this moment on, the usual sequence is for people to look for even more information, paying attention to the one that corresponds to that initial diagnosis and discarding the rest?confirmation bias.
In this way, web search tools become a double-edged weapon when it comes to generating and feeding fears of health, information accessible to all that, misinterpreted and managed, can fuel fears that distress the person and, in addition, hinder intervention. in many cases: the person is convinced that they have a real problem and does not believe that what they feel is a product of their anxiety.
We are all, at some time and circumstance, somewhat hypochondriacal; however, such concerns in people with hypochondria tend to persist over time, being little or no sensitivity to a specialist’s opinion. or you have a serious illness that finds no relief in the test results or your doctor’s interpretation.
That said, we want to show you some keys to help a person suffering from hypochondria:
This is one of the most important points. Sometimes people with hypochondria find a barrier that prevents them from expressing their symptoms and fears.
So validating the experience means “putting on that person’s shoes?”She understands that she can feel this in her situation, in the way she sees and understands the world at that time. It is not an easy goal; in fact, we generally don’t when we use simpler, more dangerous formulas that are expressed when using phrases like:
In other words, do not engage in the individual’s complaints. Often, the need for patient comfort leads to consultations with acquaintances; somehow, the hypochondriac needs others to tell him that what he has is nothing and that your imaginary disease will have a good prognosis.
This calm you get when consulting others doesn’t usually last long, it doesn’t take long for the person to reclaim these words of relief, entering a very dangerous circle.
The person must carry out activities pleasant and incompatible with self-exploration in search of confirmation of the disease.
The practice of physical exercise as a form of distraction can function as stressful in the early moments, as the activity can generate signs in the individual that can be added to all the material collected to support their suspicions, fears or self-diagnosis.
However, once you’ve done the right exercises to your fitness at the time, what usually dominates your body is a sense of well-being that hardly matches your fears.
The situation may go beyond our own resources; that this situation depletes our patience and energies. It is not recommended to get to this point; It is better to ask for help much earlier, but if we have not yet done so we cannot wait any longer, it is necessary to help or encourage the person to seek psychological help.
The person with hypochondria may be reluctant to take this step, they may think that by doing so, they are investing resources in a place that is not the origin of their problem, in these cases, in order to make an appointment, they may tell them that they need someone to help her manage her anxiety. We should not talk about hypochondria, even if we suspect that it is the source of what is happening to him.