Your struggles to advance in health anxiety recovery alongside your hard work should not discourage you because many others face similar situations. Despite their best efforts numerous people must deal with continuous symptoms. One basic transformation in how you look at the situation holds the potential to completely transform your circumstances.
Why Symptoms Should Not Define Your Progress
The recovery of health anxiety patients depends on symptom appearance or disappearance. Health anxiety sufferers understand that their situation remains unchanged when symptoms persist. People with health anxiety evaluate their recovery based on whether their symptoms grow weaker or stronger. Health anxiety patients continue an endless loop which leads them to neglect complete recovery for the purpose of symptom control.1
But here’s the truth: health anxiety isn’t healed directly. It is an indirect process. When you focus solely on eliminating symptoms, you may be missing the deeper transformation happening within you.
The Powerful Tweak: Accepting Symptoms for the Next Year
This might sound counterintuitive, but here’s the key tweak: accept that your symptoms will be present for the next year, no matter what you do.
This situation might first seem discouraging yet in reality provides you with freedom. Your progress should not depend on symptom reduction because this allows you to heal your true self and transform your identity from fear-based thinking.2
What This Shift Achieves
- Removes Pressure: You are no longer anxiously checking whether your symptoms are subsiding.
- Creates Genuine Change: Your healing work is no longer a quick fix but a lifestyle.
- Encourages Identity Shifts: Real change happens when you redefine yourself, not when you chase symptom relief.
Moving Beyond Fear and Into Self-Restoration
Your attention should not be on fear elimination since you must recover your confidence alongside your trust in life and your willingness to face uncertainties. Moving beyond protection mode enables you to establish both openness and self-trust through this method.
Brain retraining combined with mindfulness and self-compassion develop into methods for uncovering your authentic self while replacing anxiety suppression techniques. The genuine process of change work leads to fundamental healing by eliminating constant results monitoring.3
Embrace the Process—Not the Outcome
By making this mental shift, your healing work becomes more than symptom management—it becomes a transformation of who you are. Letting go of control over symptoms allows for deeper, lasting recovery.
Start today. Accept that symptoms may be present, but focus on building a new identity—one where fear no longer defines your experience. This is where true freedom lies.
For structured guidance on overcoming health anxiety, check out the Health Anxiety Recovery Program at DennisSimsek.com . It’s time to move beyond symptom tracking and step into real healing.
If this message resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it. You are more than anxiety, and your journey towards healing is already underway.
Citations
- The Power of Embracing: Acceptance in Mental Health Recovery Explained. (2025). Retrieved January 31, 2025, from Attainbh.com website: https://www.attainbh.com
↩︎ - Sankey, C. (2023, May 11). How to Deal with Anxiety: Acceptance is Key. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from www.clairesankey.com website: https://www.clairesankey.com
↩︎ - team, N. editorial. (2024, July 29). Accepting Anxiety: A Comprehensive Guide to Embracing and Overcoming Your Anxious Thoughts. Retrieved January 31, 2025, from NeuroLaunch.com website: https://neurolaunch.com
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Comment
Accept my symptoms will be there for the whole year no matter what I do,this sounds soooo powerful and I am determined to use this as a reminder to myself everyday.
One of the things that makes me believe in Dennis’s teachings is when I first heard him speak about bodily symptoms,it truly helped me to understand a big part of the anxiety I deal with on a daily basis, I could feel the correlation with my feelings like, anxious, nervous and then full blown worry, poor me , why me almost every single day,some days I am able to fight it, and it’s so liberating,only it is less often than I would like it to be, I am going to give this new suggestion a serious try and definitely hope for the results I have been looking for.
FYI
Some days when I am struggling I would think of Dennis and some thing he would say, like the feeling is a false alarm or something encouraging, and I give Thanks to God for him helping me and other people like myself, I pray for him everyday.🙏🏾