Health Anxiety

Health Anxiety Hypnotherapy & CBT in Newcastle & the North East

Health anxiety can cause you to become increasingly worried about your health, physical sensations or the possibility of developing a serious illness. Even after receiving reassurance, you may find that the relief is short-lived and another symptom or concern quickly takes its place.

At Peaceful Minds in Newcastle, Sian Barnard provides professional therapy for health anxiety, combining CBT, clinical hypnotherapy and psychotherapy techniques to help you understand the patterns maintaining your worries and develop a calmer response to health-related thoughts and sensations.

Understanding the Cycle of Health Anxiety

Health anxiety can make ordinary bodily sensations feel significant or threatening. You may notice a pain, change or unusual sensation and immediately begin worrying that it could be a sign of something serious.

This can lead to repeatedly checking your body, searching online for symptoms, seeking reassurance from other people or becoming increasingly alert to physical sensations.

These behaviours may provide temporary reassurance, but the relief often does not last. Before long, another sensation or doubt can appear and the cycle begins again.

The more closely you monitor your body, the more sensations you are likely to notice, while anxiety itself can also produce physical symptoms that may then become another source of concern.

Changing Your Response to Health Worries

Sian combines CBT with clinical hypnotherapy and psychotherapy techniques to help you recognise and challenge the thoughts and behaviours that may be maintaining health anxiety.

CBT can help you examine frightening interpretations of physical sensations, reduce excessive checking and reassurance seeking, and become more comfortable with the uncertainty that naturally exists around health.

Clinical hypnotherapy can be used alongside these techniques to encourage relaxation and reinforce calmer, more constructive ways of responding to anxious thoughts and physical sensations.

The aim is not to ignore genuine health concerns, but to help you respond to them more proportionately without becoming trapped in repeated cycles of worry, checking and reassurance.

Health Anxiety Therapy in Newcastle & Gosforth

Sian is a Harley Street trained clinical hypnotherapist and experienced CBT therapist providing therapy for health anxiety in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Face-to-face appointments are available from Peaceful Minds at the Regent Centre in Gosforth, with online appointments also available if you would prefer to receive therapy from home.

If worrying about your health, monitoring symptoms or repeatedly seeking reassurance is taking up significant amounts of your time, therapy can help you understand the cycle and develop a more balanced relationship with health-related thoughts and sensations.

How We Can Help

Therapy for health anxiety can help you:

• Reduce excessive worry about your health
• Challenge frightening interpretations of physical sensations
• Reduce repeated body and symptom checking
• Reduce excessive reassurance seeking and symptom searching
• Become more comfortable with uncertainty around health
• Respond more calmly to unfamiliar physical sensations
• Feel less controlled by health-related thoughts and fears