Fear of the unknown is one of the most common reasons why a lot of people don’t pursue a life of adventure. What many don’t know is that this same fear is also why a lot of people anxiously google their health concerns, only to become more anxious from what they discover. “Cyberchondria” is the name for it, and if you’re someone with a low threshold for ambiguity and uncertainty, you could experience it more intensely, a Baylor University survey found in 2016.
What Is Cyberchondria?
Cyberchondria is “a clinical phenomenon in which repeated Internet searches regarding medical information result in excessive concerns about physical health,” the National Institutes of Health states.
Just how common is cyberchondria? With statistics like these, there is a good chance that it is very common:
- At least 77 percent of Americans use Google to research their health concerns (a 2013 Pew Research Center survey).
- 40 percent of Americans have misdiagnosed themselves online (LetsGetChecked survey).
- 2 out of 5 Americans have consulted Google for a diagnosis, instead of seeing a doctor (OnePoll survey).
Symptoms of Cyberchondria
Cyberchondria is closely related to and can overlap with hypochondria (which is also referred to as “illness anxiety disorder,” “hypochondriasis,” or “health anxiety”). Some of the symptoms of cyberchondria include:
- Spending a lot of time on the Internet researching health concerns
- Being preoccupied with having or developing a serious disease
- Noticing minor body sensations and worrying they’re signs of serious illness
- An obsessive-compulsive need for more information about your symptoms
- Anxiety that only increases the more you google your health issues
It is not uncommon for cyberchondria to occur with an anxiety disorder or depressive disorder and to intensify its symptoms.
Can Worrying About My Health Improve It?
“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” Jesus asks listeners in his “Sermon on the Mount.” He makes a good point, but what about health worries? Can worrying about your health help you live longer?
Swedish researchers recently asked a variation of this question. They wanted to know whether more anxiety about one’s health could at least improve a person’s health outcome. What the researchers found was precisely the opposite: More health anxieties led to poorer health outcomes.
Managing and Overcoming Cyberchondria
Awareness of this fact is a critical first step toward managing and overcoming cyberchondria. So much of the time, faulty thinking is at the root of an unhealthy behavior. In this case, the automatic assumption may be that by googling your symptoms, you’ll gain more information and decrease the uncertainty, thereby reducing your anxiety. In actuality, the very opposite may be true. You could quite literally be making yourself sicker with more anxiety.
A good rule of thumb? When your brain says, “Time to google,” do anything but that. Take a break. Close the computer. Get outside. Go for a walk. Call a friend. If your symptoms seem serious and are causing anxiety, schedule a doctor’s appointment or go to your nearest ER or urgent care clinic.
Some anxiety is normal when you’re feeling sick. Give yourself permission to worry: Set a timer for five minutes; then write down all your illness-related worries. Save any questions for the doctor. Once the timer rings, you can go back to taking another nice long break from the worrying and the googling. You may even notice, over time, that life is better without all of that worrying and googling.
