Freedom from Health Anxiety: Understand and Overcome Obsessive Worry about Your Health or Someone Else’s and Find Peace of Mind

by Karen Lynn Cassiday, Simon A. Rego (Foreword)

Discover essential skills to liberate yourself from persistent anxiety about your health. Are you constantly worrying about your health, or the health of a loved one? Do you frequently check yourself for lumps, bumps, tingling, or pain? Do you find yourself endlessly looking up symptoms on the internet? Perhaps you find yourself asking others for reassurance or validation that you’re okay, obsessing over health scares in the media, or monitoring your blood pressure on an hourly basis? No matter how your health anxiety manifests, it can be a crippling psychological burden. Endlessly ruminating about illness and death can affect all aspects of life—at home, work, school, as well as the doctor’s office. And if you’re obsessing over the health of a loved one, that can put tremendous pressure on the relationship. In Freedom from Health Anxiety , nationally recognized anxiety expert Karen Lynn Cassiday teaches you skills to conquer health anxiety, once and for all. You’ll learn to switch from focusing on worst-case scenarios to appreciating the joy of the present moment—regardless of  health status. Using a blend of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), positive psychology, and the author’s “learned inhibition” model, you’ll finally acquire the tools you need to take charge of your fear and break the cycle of stressing over your—or your loved one’s—well-being. You’ll also learn effective methods for tolerating health uncertainty, getting in touch with your body’s cues, and rediscovering the pleasure of the present. It’s time to find freedom from the obsessive fears that stand between you and true happiness. If you’re ready to trade endless hours of online self-diagnosis (Goodbye, Dr. Google!) for a life filled with a genuine appreciation for each moment, this book will show you the way.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Mental Health, Health, Medical

200 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2022

Reviews

[Nat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful for me (with some of my main subtypes being somatic OCD and health anxiety OCD) and combined with exposure therapy has helped me a lot lot lot.

[HB · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was the best book I've read all year and probably one of the most useful self-help books I've ever read. Addressing my health anxiety has always felt overwhelming and impossible, but Dr. Cassiday's easy-to-understand strategies make me feel like I can make changes to my life and recover. I appreciated all of the exercises throughout the text and the worksheets available on the New Harbinger website (though I wasn't able to find the anxiety symptom tracker worksheet referenced in the final pages of the book). I've already started implementing some of these exercises into my daily routine, and I can tell that they're helping! All of the personal examples included in the book also helped me understand not only how serious health anxiety can be and why it's so important to address it but also that there's hope and a light at the end of the tunnel!

My favorite chapters of the book were chapters 4 (Giving Up Reassurance-Seeking) and 9 (Express Gratitude to Build Joy and Resilience). I'm sure that I'll be revisiting this book in the coming months as I continue on this journey to address my health anxiety.

Overall, I'm extremely grateful that Dr. Cassiday wrote this book and genuinely hope she continues writing books for those of us with anxiety! I highly recommend this book to anyone struggling with health anxiety!

[Shelby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve needed this book for a long time and I’m glad it’s finally here. For those who do not have access to therapy, this book is an excellent self-guided exposure treatment to illness, death, and disability anxiety.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

out here assigning myself therapy extra credit work who am I

no but seriously this book is packed full of useful concrete tips and relevant examples - I feel like I now have better ways to articulate what I'm feeling when my anxiety takes over and a clearer idea of some coping strategies to try out.

[Milos Pavlovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writer really took time to explain the whole disorder in details and provide much needed solutions to overcoming not only the health anxiety, but also the general anxiety as well.

Worth reading!

[Epifania Rita Gallina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will definitely be my health anxiety guide and bible forever. It’s a must read

[Brooke Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly thought this was fantastic for anyone struggling with illness anxiety or illness ocd. OR if you know anyone who is.

[Tegan Stuart · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s not that the content is bad, but the way this book is written makes it so difficult to find the parts that are valuable to the reader. The author acts like they’re an almighty mind reader with “I bet you…” “does this sound like you?” and “have your doctor read this” and it frankly put me off.

Readers, DO NOT go into this book expecting all of it or even more than 1 or 2 chapters will be relevant to you. I only found value here and there with my particular struggles.

That being said there is value. Everyone with mental health challenges should practice gratitude. I related to the negative feedback loop of anxiety to feeling ill to being more anxious and learning to be comfortable when you have physical symptoms that make you anxious. Great, somewhat helpful for me. A good portion of the rest of it is hyper specific and encourages self induced exposure therapy which feels like something someone should do with a mental health professional. I feel like worksheets or directions on finding a mental health professional or language to communicate with them would be a more responsible approach. I just don’t feel a person could just pick up this book and successfully address illness anxiety alone and it feels like the author is saying that’s the solution.

All I will say is give it a shot but don’t expect to be blown away. You’ll have to find the chapters that relate to your experience and sift through the writer’s unflinching narrative that they have all the answers. I’m not really sure I left with anything sustainable and solid I can bring just into my life that I’m not already practicing.

[farah_reads_and_wonders Farah Afzal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genre: self help, health
Rating: 4 stars

This book caters to a specific audience that is people with health anxiety, but number of such people is constantly increasing in our society and it was high time that this topic was brought yo light . It gives many related examples and persuades the reader to come out of the vicious cycle of health anxiety causing unnecessary hospital and doctor visits. Overall, its a good read if you think you or your loved ones have anxiety related to health issues

[Ashley Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freedom From Health Anxiety by Karen Lynn Cassiday uses a primarily cognitive behavioural therapy approach to support people dealing with illness anxiety disorder (formerly known as hypochondriasis) and other forms of health anxiety.

The book begins with a checklist to assess the negative impact of health anxiety in the areas of negative reactions of others, feedback from others about anxiety being a problem, negative effects of anxiety in daily life, checking behaviours, avoidance behaviours, and financial cost. There’s also an exercise to identify the ways in which illness anxiety leads to avoidance behaviours.

The author explains what health anxiety is (intolerance of uncertainty is a big part of it) and what it is not (secondary gain or Munchausen's syndrome, for example). Concepts throughout the book are illustrated with example scenarios based on clients that the author has worked with in her therapy practice. Also scattered throughout the book are exercises aimed at helping you raise your resilience.

Exposure therapy is emphasized as an intervention, and the author explains that rather than constructing a hierarchy of exposures, it’s more effective to tackle exposures in random order. Guidance is provided on how to set up effective exposures in order to develop habituation and inhibitory learning.

There’s a chapter devoted to giving up reassurance-seeking. The author writes, “Trying to get reassurance is like trying to walk across an interpersonal minefield in which the other person has no map.” She explains, “if you give your worry the cookie of reassurance, then you can expect only one outcome: more illness anxiety.” Exposure and response prevention (which is commonly used in the treatment of OCD) is presented as a way to cut down on reassurance-seeking.

The author helps readers to distinguish between what constitutes a helpful conversation with health professionals and what constitutes harmful reassurance-seeking, which I thought was a useful distinction to make. Sometimes there are reality-based health concerns that need to be dealt with, and the book offers tips on how to take reasonable precautions without overdoing it.

There’s a chapter devoted to increasing tolerance of uncertainty, which can free up a lot of cognitive resources that would get sucked into attempts to eliminate uncertainty in making decisions. There’s also a chapter on enhancing your recovery, which offers suggestions for interoceptive exposures, i.e. creating feared physical sensations. Gratitude is explored as a way to build greater joy and resilience. The final chapter explores additional treatment options, including eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), medications, and complementary and alternative therapies like acupuncture, Ayurveda, tai chi, and qigong.

The author comes across as someone who has significant clinical knowledge and experience specifically related to illness anxiety. Her tone is optimistic, but without that false overconfidence that sometimes bugs me about CBT-based books. She acknowledges that this will be a difficult journey, but seems to have hope that readers will be able to find the strength inside themselves to push through with treatment and make progress. The book felt very balanced and realistic, and the author has quite a comforting written presence.

Illness anxiety isn’t something I deal with personally, but I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to recommend this book to anyone who is dealing with this disorder.



I received a reviewer copy from the publisher through Netgalley.

[Brittany Becker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being someone with health anxiety is debilitating sometimes. This book has given me hints and tips to manage and hopefully defeat health anxiety. I am always looking for new strategies to help with my anxiety disorder and this book helped a lot!
Thank you to Karen Cassidy for the opportunity to read this arc copy!

[Rob Nicholson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally an audio book on Health Anxiety! This book is filled with examples and techniques to help address the burden of health anxiety on your life. I found myself having experienced most of the examples myself 😅 Easy to follow (not heavy on jargon).

All the best to anyone experiencing this viscous cycle. You are not alone 💙

[Afreen Khalid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough and well-researched for the most part, with some useful tips for overcoming illness anxiety. However, the author lost me when she started talking about functional medicine, crystal healing and other pseudoscience-based therapies.

[Buck Wilde · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed examination of health anxiety, how it manifests, and how to address it.

Health anxiety is an obsessive preoccupation with minute and normal bodily sensations or differences in composition that leads to loss of sleep, compulsively googling symptoms (all of which will guarantee that you have end-stage Turbo Cancer), and damage to personal relationships, along with the usual accoutrements of anxiety like physiological panic symptoms, elevated breathing, tachycardia, weird and inconvenient sweating, bad skin, graying hair, and a medley of other disasters that will convince you beyond the shadow of a doubt that your internet aided self-diagnosis of Turbo Cancer is real and terminal.

What makes health anxiety different from regular anxiety, which will often concern health in the first place, is the overwhelming desire to contradict and demonize doctors, while also annoying them for constant reassurance far beyond what even the best insurance policy would permit.

The solution, as always when addressing anxiety disorders, is "knock it off". Get some hobbies, journal about the worst case scenarios, use the "sit on your hands and behave" approach to stop needling your doctor and indulging your morbid fascination with your own expiration date, or the rapidly approaching terminus points of your loved ones.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality, but health anxiety is tricky because it needs exposure therapy but you can't expose yourself to little bite-sized bits of Idiopathic Teeth Evaporation Syndrome. Ironically, this means the medicine is the disease, and you get through it by leaning in to worst case scenarios -- ignore your little twinges and tics, force yourself to stop checking for lumps and bumps, delete your WebMD Premium account and seal the medical news sites away with a NetNanny.

And mindfulness, of course. No way to obsess about your imminent demise if you're hanging from the branch and eating the strawberry.

Great book, great read if you're convinced your bones are gonna fall out even though your doctors keep telling you your bones are incredible, once a week, when you call them at home.

[Leila Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know I was able to absolutely devour a book in only two days until I came across this.

I have been suffering from severe death- and illness-related anxiety since 2021. There is a possibility I may also have illness OCD. The strange thing is that I only get anxious when other people die or get sick, and not when I myself get sick. I'm still in the thick of it and caught in the throes of uncertainty. But I feel like this book has given me many useful strategies on how to deal with my anxiety.

One of the quotes from the book that I felt was most helpful and affirming was "our culture promotes the idea that virtuous people will be rewarded, and evil people will suffer torment. Unfortunately, a quick survey of who gets ill or experiences tragedy reveals that it can happen to anyone at any time and doesn’t seem to correlate with virtue or character." I've always had a voice in the back of my head expressing this underlying belief that the good tend to die younger than those who are evil or unlikable, and it feels so relieving to hear an authoritative figure speak directly about this subject. Most resources that I've read about dealing with death anxiety or illness anxiety tend to not discuss the often-promoted idea of "only the good die young" and I'm happy that this book dealt with that subject. For a while I thought that since I was still alive, I must not be that good enough of a person, and that if I died young, that would be proof that I was such a good person that I were too good for this world. I believed that God thought of me as "good, but not great enough to get early access to the afterlife." I'm still trying to fight those excruciating and painful thoughts.

The only reason I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars is because this book seems to be targeted more at those who are afraid of their own health declining (which is not the case for me) rather than those who are worried about a loved one's mortality or potentially declining health.

[Jennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish that I knew about this book sooner. Better late than never!

After experiencing a personal health crisis, followed by a global pandemic, I experienced an increased level of anxiety that manifested mostly in illness anxiety. I’m doing a lot better than I was a few years ago, but the illness anxiety still flares up from time to time.

I was hopeful that there were techniques out there that I could practice to try to work towards addressing and improving this anxiety. I was lucky to come across this helpful book online.

This book does a wonderful job of laying out some CBT practices and also gives a ton of tools and exercises to try. The author also details stories of others who have experienced illness anxiety and their stories of recovery.

I’m hopeful that by slowly introducing some of the author’s exposure therapy practices as well as the gratitude exercises, that my anxiety flare ups will gradually get better over time.

If you’re experiencing illness anxiety, know that it can get better and extend a bit of patience to yourself as you work towards finding a recovery plan that’s right for you. (I say this as much for myself as I do for others!)

Favorite quote:

“Be willing to challenge your unhealthy belief that your life could only be good if you never had another episode of anxiety. Instead, work hard to know that your life is full of blessings BECAUSE your anxiety gave you the opportunity to develop great courage, compassion, and strength.” Chapter 9

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life changing work, honestly. While I'm in a better place now, it was incredibly validating to listen to the behaviors and habits common for those suffering from health anxiety and be assured that those behaviors (while at best obnoxious and at worst ruins a life) are a valid response to this specific form of anxiety. The anxiety management techniques feel incredibly helpful and I imagine can even be successful for general anxiety management. The emphasis on exposure therapy seems a bit extreme, but also the discomfort with the idea of it is likely a reason to follow through on it (with professional assistance). I loved the constant assurances and emphasis on finding joy in life despite the ongoing anxiety and that anxiety is just a natural part of life and it's okay if you're more sensitive to it than others. There were also a couple sections that were incredibly eye-opening on why this specific form of anxiety persists and how to better manage it.

Overall, this has already been incredibly helpful and I highly recommend it even if your health anxiety is just on the end of googling WebMD a little bit more than you should.

[Nicholas Lightner · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who struggles with health anxiety to the point that it can be incredibly debilitating, this book is helpful in various ways. Cassiday's best point was that living life is better than worrying about it; who knows what the future holds? The control we genuinely have is minimal regarding severe illnesses. Eat healthy, regularly exercise, have a positive outlook, etc. We can't control random occurrences based on factors beyond our control; only worry about what we can control. The recovery process takes time and patience, but many of the points offered in this book are helpful and worth trying out.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

*audiobook*
This was pretty useful and insightful. It’s different from other books on this topic as it contains a clear and simple message, breaks down various types of health anxiety and what to do about it including some assignments. I still have to do the assignments but it was nice to read about people going through the same, or worse, as myself.
Why not 5 stars? Because it was fairly repetitive at times and the stories of clients were a bit too much/too long for me. Also, it got some very severe cases which I could not relate to but that’s personal.
A note on the narrator: only by speeding it up significantly it was bearable to listen to.

[Chelsea Hutchinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I usually stick to fiction, but after some health scares over the past couple of years.. and with the anxiety the pandemic brought.. I knew I needed help with my health anxiety. This book has been incredibly helpful, offering practical strategies and real solutions to manage my anxiety so it doesn’t control my life. Forever grateful! I listened to the audio book but I’m going to purchase the physical copy because there are so many useful resources and exercises that I can use in the future over and over again.

[Ariela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, I thought this was probably a helpful book if you are struggling with pretty extreme anxiety. You’re somebody who is just trying to like be less of a worrier and gain perspective, it is likely overkill. I think a lot of the reframing exercises recommended here are helpful, but like how is anyone supposed to fit a lot of this practice into an actual life?

[Michael Nedza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read, helpful information .

Filled with great information and exercises to help you take back control of your life. Wi5h patience and determination, you should be able to keep your illness anxiety at bay. Highly recommend this book.

[Jaden Howell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has helped me learn so many ways to tackle my health anxiety, and accept my health anxiety. If you stress about illness or dying of you or someone you love, I absolutely 100% recommend getting this book, specifically the physical copy so you can write and highlight in it.

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

really helpful

This book offers some great stories and steps to follow to heal your anxiety. I recommend for anyone who is willing to follow the guidance and do the exercises. I truly feel like it made a huge difference for me.

[~Mrs.~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 solid stars. I found this book extremely well written, researched, informative, and inspiring. The chapter on gratitude brought me to tears. It’s definitely a book that I will keep to refer back to as I continue to grow and improve.

[Lida · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've had to abandon this book for now. I was hoping it would be more based on CBT but the main focus is on exposure therapy which made me feel even more bloody anxious!!! Advice such as plan your funeral, visit hospitals, read articles about dying people and death....
No thank you.

[Nic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short but very informative. Handy book to keep and reference.

[Alex Becker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me willingly go swimming. There’s gotta be some weight to it.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

By far, the best self help book I've ever read!

[Lori Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helped a lot with my health anxiety.