5 Simple Health Anxiety Steps to Kickstart Your Recovery

Health anxiety (hypochondria) can take up most of our attention, no matter what we do throughout the day. The constant checking into anxiety symptoms, falling for intrusive thoughts, and perceived situational anxiety catastrophe can cause great emotional turmoil. That is why on today’s episode of the health anxiety podcast I will show you the most important health anxiety steps you need to take to begin eliminating health anxiety for good and getting back to the life you deserve to live. 

In this episode you will learn,

• What the true definition of your unconscious mind?
• The most important reason for why catastrophic thoughts become a habit
• How one simple mindset shift can lessen the fear around your anxiety symptoms

If the Health Anxiety Guy podcast is helping you on your path toward healing please share it with someone or an anxiety support group in need. It would mean so much to me. 

Enjoy!

Dennis

PS: Don’t forget to join our Facebook Support Community Today.

Table of Contents

Introduction

On today’s episode of the Health Anxiety Podcast Show, I’m going to be discussing the five initial steps to begin your health anxiety healing the right way so that you can make tremendous progress over health anxiety right away. Let’s go.

Podcast Welcome

Welcome to the Health Anxiety Podcast Show being brought to you by TheAnxietyGuy.com. I’m Dennis Simsek, your host, and together we are going to navigate the health anxiety healing process, replacing fear with knowledge and transforming uncertainty into strength. Let’s embark on a path towards a healthier mindset and a healthier life. Let’s go.

 Weekly Schedule and Program Information

My peaceful warriors welcome to another episode of the Health Anxiety Podcast Show. I’m your host, Dennis Simsek. Thank you for joining me for this podcast. Yes, we are back. We are back. And this will be a weekly podcast from now on, coming out every Saturday morning, PST time. So make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast. As well, if you want to learn more about the Health Anxiety Program, head over to TheAnxietyGuy.com today and take the frustration out of your health anxiety healing at TheAnxietyGuy.com.

Relying on Social Media

Today, we’re discussing the initial steps to health anxiety healing because there’s a lot of information out there. And honestly, I really want to be honest with this. If you are relying on social media platforms to help with your health anxiety, what you’re going to find on places like Instagram or TikTok is that you find a lot of relatable information. Like people will share with you what it’s like to suffer from health anxiety. Yes, you will get a lot of that. However, you won’t find many practical steps.

Questioning Results and Information

You won’t find how the person that is presenting the information understands what chapter you are in, specifically in your health anxiety healing. So the first thing I highly recommend is that you take whatever is on social media with a grain of salt. You just kind of go through it, but you don’t rely on these random pieces of information to help you heal health anxiety.

Evaluating Results

Honestly, all you have to do is kind of look at your results, look at your results. And if you’re still stuck in the same place you are for the same place you’ve been, let’s say, for the last six months, year, couple years, then you want to start questioning where you’re getting your information. You want to start questioning your commitment to the health anxiety healing process. You want to start questioning whether you have the correct information.

Mindset and Skill Set

You want to start questioning whether you have the correct mindset towards healing, or is it a skill set issue? Are you lacking some of the skill sets that can take you from perceived threat, perceived danger, to perceived safety at an unconscious and conscious level? So I want to go through these initial steps, and I know that they’re going to speak to you really deeply as I take a sip of my beautiful green tea here.

 Health Anxiety Steps #1: See Through a Child’s Eyes

It’s important go through the Health Anxiety Steps here is number one. Initial step to begin your health anxiety healing. See your intrusive thoughts, your physical sensations, your catastrophic mental imagery from the perspective of a 10-year-old child, since the subconscious mind or unconscious mind and body have the cognitive rationale of a 10-year-old child.

 Applying the 10-Year-Old Perspective

So, What I want you to do is when you have an intrusive idea that pops into your head, or a physical sensation, or you wake up in the morning and you are aware of the catastrophic mental imagery playing out in your mind and it’s affecting your body, I want you to start seeing all of that underneath the umbrella of a 10-year-old child. Okay? And. I’m not going to go into detail as to how I came up with the idea that all of this unconsciousness is related to a 10-year-old’s cognitive rationale.

Questioning the 10-Year-Old Perspective

I’m not going to go into all that. I just want you to begin separating what is true and what is present from what is false, what is coming from the past, and what is coming from perceived threats. And. And this is huge because let me ask you this question. Would you allow a 10-year-old to run your life? Would you allow a 10-year-old to tell you what’s safe and what’s dangerous? Would you allow a 10-year-old, when you get in your car, to convince you that the 10-minute drive you’re about to have is in fact going to be threatening or something’s going to go wrong?

Empowering Through Perspective

Would you allow a 10-year-old to tell you that you’re not physically healthy? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. And the power within this comes from our ability now to disconnect ourselves from these ideas, from these perceptions. Because health anxiety, to a large extent, is thinking that we are these things, that they are real, real within us. When we have an intrusive thought, we believe it’s real. And because society makes us believe that we have to manage every little thing in our lives, internal and external, we believe that we have to take everything seriously.

Micromanaging Anxiety

Not only that, we have to find a solution to everything that pops up within our conscious awareness. This is not necessarily true. We get into this kind of pattern where we’re micromanaging every little aspect of our health anxiety, our generalized anxiety, our situational anxiety, everything. And we don’t need to do that. A lot of the times we can leave things alone and we can begin perceiving them from the standpoint of someone different.

 Importance of Perspective

So step number one is really, really crucial. I wanted to start with this one in this podcast because I want you to go through this and I want you to go through this. And I want you to get to a place where, again, like I mentioned, you’re separating yourself from these things, right? It’s not real. It’s all coming from a perception. And the perception is from the cognitive rationale of a 10-year-old child. Think about that for a sec.

Health Anxiety Steps #2: Love the 10-Year-Old Within

Health Anxiety Step number 2 is quite important love the 10-year-old unconscious mind for the protection that it wants. It wants to install into you in this very moment through the mind and body and begin teaching it that all life experiences are safe to experience.

Understanding the Protective Intent

Now, here’s what I’ve realized in my health anxiety healing journey. And this is not easy. Of course, it’s not easy, but we have to start with the proper mindsets. When you start to love the very thing that you’ve been fearing, for years, you start to heal and you start to go down a different path. What I mean by that is when the 10-year-old unconsciousness projects an intrusive idea, projects a physical sensation, projects some kind of catastrophic mental imagery, you need to start loving that 10-year-old for what it’s trying to do for you.  What it’s trying to do for you is to stop you in your tracks before something.

Shifting from Resistance to Acceptance

Bad may happen, so we’re not coming from a place of going, oh, it’s here again, and I don’t want this, or I’m going to run from this. No, no, no. You’re coming from a place where you’re going, okay, 10-year-old, I hear what you’re saying. I feel what you’re saying, right? I really sense what you’re saying here. However, I want to teach you something different. I want to teach you that not only in this very moment, but in the future, we are safe in all life experiences.

Parenting the 10-Year-Old Mind

So you go about intuitively teaching the 10-year-old within you that’s projecting all of this health anxiety stuff, teaching the 10-year-old that the present moment is safe, the future is safe, and the past needed to happen the way it did in order for you to learn the lessons you were not learning. You’re not going to learn anywhere else in your life. Imagine this. It’s kind of like raising a 10-year-old. It’s like raising a child, right? I mean, a lot of the times you allow life to teach the 10-year-old, but there are things as a parent that you can teach to your child as well.

Moving from Bullying to Understanding

So you need to start loving the 10-year-old rather than looking to distract from it, looking to suppress it, looking to drown out its voice, because too often, I don’t know if this is truth for you, but it was true for me and many people that I hear going through my programs, is that they get the sense now that they’re bullying their health anxiety into going away. Is this true for you? Do you bully your symptoms, hoping that they go away? Do you bully your intrusive ideas that show up? Do you bully anything in regards to anxiety as a whole?

Embracing the Healing Process

You know, I don’t know. I don’t know. You know, turning up the music in your car because you don’t want to feel the anxiety sensations is a form of bullying. We have to stop bullying the 10-year-old, and we have to start understanding why it’s doing what it’s doing and start teaching it in ways that feel right to us.

Health Anxiety Steps #3: Allow Physical Sensations to Flow

It’s important go through the Health Anxiety Steps this is number three. To let physical sensations flow through you, which will give you permission to begin letting go of the need for such control over your life and begin trusting in a new idea around safety. The key here is the word learn, okay? Because with health anxiety and in anxiety in general, we do something for a day, two, three days, and then we give it up because it’s not getting the results that we want.

Consistency in Healing

This healing journey should be seen as a marathon and not a sprint because that’s what neuroplasticity is. The ability to rewire your brain will take the same amount of consistency and passion that brought you health anxiety in the first place. So here we’re talking about, in number three, we’re talking about allowing the physical sensations to flow through you. If you’re on YouTube, going through my channel, you need to start doing the surrender sessions.

Surrender Sessions

This is what we’re talking about, the surrender sessions. The surrender sessions allow you to let any element of health anxiety flow through you. And we’re surrendering. We’re not necessarily doing what you think we’re doing where we’re allowing anxiety to win, okay? It kind of feels like that, but that’s not really happening. We’re kind of collaborating with all the elements of health anxiety here. So you go on YouTube and you start doing the surrender sessions. Look up surrender sessions of the anxiety guide. Find a place where you won’t be disturbed. Close your eyes and go through that experience every single day.

Becoming the Observer

Because when you start to give the sensations permission to flow through you, you are becoming the observer. And no longer the reactor. The reactor looks to frantically solve a problem, which only creates more questions. The observer allows the stored energy and stored stress in the body to manifest outwards in the way of surrendering. Often people come up to me and go, Dennis, why do I become more symptomatic when I relax?

Understanding Symptom Intensification

Let me tell you why. You become more symptomatic when you relax. Because the pent-up tension and stress that’s been accumulating in different parts of your body finally have a chance to be let go of. This is not a bad thing. You wake up in the morning. First thing you do, you go to your phone. Then you run over here, run over there, go to your to-do list. By the time 11, 12 p.m. shows up, you’re exhausted. 24 hours a day. Going through that, you’re always in a sympathetic state. How can you not have anxiety?

Breaking the Anxious Cycle

How can you not see the threatened things? You don’t even give yourself a moment to let go. And the other problem is that when you’re in such a sympathetic, frantic state, you’re always looking for the quickest solution. So now we’re going to process foods to make us feel better. Burgers, fries, pizza, a beer, wine, whatever it is. You know, because it’s the quickest way to feel better. And so we don’t want that. So again, surrender sessions on YouTube to allow the sensations to flow through you, meaning the compounded stress that has been accumulating in certain parts of your body has the chance to be let go of.

Acceptance of Sensations

When this happens, you no longer fear the sensations. You allow the sensations to be there because the sensation, the sensation and symptom itself is looking for you. It’s looking for resolve. And it’s looking to leave the body. Huge. Isn’t this huge? Doesn’t this give you a completely different perspective on your healing? Doesn’t this take away some element of the fear in relation to the sensations and symptoms in your body that perpetuate health anxiety? I’m going to say it. I’m going to say it. This is a more than anxiety, moment, my friends. Let’s have another sip of this tea here. Hope you’re enjoying your tea, water, whatever it may be.

Health Anxiety Steps #4: Practice Observing via the Mind and Releasing via the Body

It’s important go through the Health Anxiety Steps one by one, here is number four. Practice observing via the mind and releasing via the body. This goes hand in hand with number three. So now you are the observer of all the mental activity.

 Understanding the Observer Role

Why are you the observer of the mental activity? Because you know it’s coming from the cognitive rationale of a 10-year-old child. And so we allow the 10-year-old to have its perceptions. We allow the 10-year-old to do what it wants. Tim Ferriss calls it the monkey mind. I call it the 10-year-old. And so now you’re no longer attached to its decisions.

Empowerment through Detachment

When you become detached from the 10-year-old’s decisions, now you’re creating your own rather than being led by an unconsciousness that believes it’s doing its very best for you. That’s all the unconscious mind believes it’s doing. Why is this happening, guys, though?

 Root Cause of Unconscious Behavior

At the root of all this, why is this happening? Because in truth, we haven’t taken enough time on a daily basis to train the unconscious mind. We haven’t. And then we’re surprised as to when these unconscious things show up in mind and body. We have to train the unconscious mind if we want it to be in congruence with what we believe in the present moment, in present time, in consciousness.

Health Anxiety Steps #5: Practice the Emotional Experience of Being Anxiety-Free

It’s important go through the Health Anxiety Steps here is the final step. We will Begin practicing the emotional experience of being anxiety-free before its manifestation. Ooh! Hoo-hoo-hoo! I love this. I love it so much that I want to tell you exactly when to do it upon waking up in the morning.

Morning Routine for Anxiety-Free Living

When you wake up in the morning, you get these adrenaline bursts because now your mind is running off to here and there and you’re checking in on your sensations and your symptoms and you’re worried about your health and yada, yada, yada, right?

Morning Visualization Exercise

Now, that’s energy to be used rather than allowing the energy to use you and direct you. So when you wake up in the morning, practice the emotional experience of being anxiety-free. I want you to get out of bed. Don’t stumble out of bed. Jump out of bed. Put your arms up and pretend. Play pretend because that’s what you did as a child. We lost that many years ago.

The Power of Pretend

To play pretend is the key to all this healing. Pretend like it’s already done. It’s done. You are anxiety-free. You are anxiety-free. You are health anxiety-free. You no longer worry about sensations, symptoms, potential illnesses, diseases. All the fears have left, have left your mind, left your body.

Retraining the Unconscious Mind

And if you can tap into that sort of emotional experience prior to it becoming true, now you’re retraining the unconscious mind to no longer believe in threat and danger. You’re training the unconscious mind to see the safety and joy and lightness in things. So I’ll say this again. Practice the emotional experience of being anxiety-free before it manifests in the future.

Final Words

My friends, your well-being means the world to me. If you find solace in the Health Anxiety Podcast and desire more insightful episodes, I kindly ask you to show your support by leaving a positive rating and review on this podcast platform. Your feedback holds immense value.

For those seeking a profound transformation from health anxiety, explore the Health Anxiety Program at theanxietyguide.com. This step-by-step program is crafted to equip you with the necessary tools and strategies, empowering you to reclaim control over your health, mental well-being, and life.

Remember, you are more than anxiety. I genuinely appreciate your presence on this journey. Let’s continue moving forward together. Until the next episode, take care, and know that you are not alone in your struggles. Bye for now.