£65 per 50-minute session

CBT for Health Anxiety

For when a normal bodily sensation turns into hours of searching, checking, and asking other people to tell you you're okay.

Signs this might be for you

Repeatedly checking your body for signs of illness
Searching symptoms online and feeling briefly relieved, then worse
Asking friends, family or GPs for reassurance about your health, often more than once
Avoiding medical information, appointments or news stories about illness altogether
A pattern of interpreting normal bodily sensations as signs of serious disease

Health anxiety has a particular shape: a sensation appears (a headache, a mole, a heartbeat that feels off), and instead of passing, it becomes the centre of your attention. You check it, you search it, you ask someone to reassure you, and for a few minutes it helps; then the doubt creeps back in, often stronger. That cycle, not the sensation itself, is usually what CBT for health anxiety targets.

This is different work to general anxiety therapy because the maintaining factors are specific: checking behaviours, reassurance-seeking (from Google, from GPs, from people around you), and a tendency to interpret ordinary bodily noise as evidence of serious illness. We'll look at where that interpretation habit came from, what keeps it going, and build a plan to reduce checking and reassurance-seeking without just telling you to "stop worrying", which rarely works on its own.

I take a straightforward, non-judgemental approach here. Health anxiety often carries a layer of shame, like you should just be able to reason your way out of it. You can't, and that's not a failure on your part; it's how the cycle is built to work.

What treatment actually looks like

Assessment

We map your specific checking behaviours, reassurance-seeking patterns, and the health-related beliefs that tend to trigger the cycle.

Formulation

We build a shared understanding of what maintains the cycle (attention, checking, reassurance) and agree what change would actually look like for you.

Behavioural experiments

We test specific predictions (what happens if you delay checking, what happens if you sit with the sensation) and gradually reduce reassurance-seeking.

Consolidation

We build a relapse prevention plan for the moments a health scare, real or imagined, is likely to bring the old pattern back.

A specific formulation for health anxiety

We map your particular checking and reassurance-seeking pattern, since health anxiety is maintained differently from other anxiety presentations.

Reducing reassurance-seeking gradually

We work at a pace you can sustain, not by cutting off all reassurance overnight, which usually backfires.

Working with, not against, medical uncertainty

We build tolerance for the uncertainty that's genuinely part of having a body, rather than promising a way to eliminate it.

GAD-7 and symptom-specific tracking

Alongside the GAD-7, we track checking frequency and reassurance-seeking directly, so the behavioural change is something you can actually see, beyond how a session happened to feel.

Questions about health anxiety at Pamoyo Therapy

Will you tell me my health worries are irrational?

No. Some of what triggers health anxiety is genuinely uncertain; bodies do produce unexplained sensations. I'm not here to argue you out of a worry. We work on the checking and reassurance-seeking cycle that keeps the worry alive, which is a different thing entirely.

I've already had medical tests that came back clear. Why am I still anxious?

This is extremely common and it's the exact pattern CBT for health anxiety addresses. A clear test brings relief for a while, then the doubt returns, sometimes about the same symptom, sometimes a new one. That's the reassurance cycle at work, and it's very treatable.

How many sessions does health anxiety usually need?

Many clients see meaningful change within the standard 12-session programme. If checking and reassurance-seeking have been part of daily life for years, we might agree to extend to 15 to 20 sessions. We'll discuss this honestly after your assessment.

Can we do this online if part of the problem is checking my phone?

Yes. Online CBT via video actually works well here, since a lot of the checking behaviour we're targeting (symptom searching, health forums) happens on a phone or laptop anyway, and we can build strategies directly around your real environment.

What if I have a genuine health condition alongside the anxiety?

That's a conversation we have honestly and early. CBT for health anxiety doesn't ask you to ignore real medical issues; it targets the checking, reassurance-seeking and catastrophic interpretation that can develop around a genuine condition, or independently of one.

Is there a waiting list to start?

No. You can usually book an assessment within a week or two, rather than waiting months.

Ready to talk about health anxiety?

Book a free 15 minutes consultation. No pressure, no commitment, just a chance to ask questions and see if working together feels right.

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