Break The Health Anxiety Cycle

Break the cycle of health anxiety with this practical CBT-based journaling tool. The BREAK Protocol (Behaviour, Rate, Edit, Adapt, Keep Score) helps you reduce reassurance-seeking, body checking, and overthinking—so you can regain control and build calmer habits over time.

Transcript

Hello and welcome. Today's session is about response prevention for health anxiety. However, This is more of a toolkit for managing health anxiety than it is an immediate relief. If you need something right now because you're really feeling anxious about your health, Then check out my meditation, Focus Not Fear, And that will give you some more immediate help. Now, This is a journaling exercise for health anxiety. So you will need something or some way of writing. It could be on your phone or on a tablet or old-school pen and paper. Just make sure you have something to use to write though. Now, This is something I've dubbed the BREAK protocol, Which stands for Behavior, Rate, Edit, Adapt, And Keep Score. And this is based on CBT and ERS research in health anxiety, Both of which have a very high level of efficacy when it comes to health anxiety. Now, Health anxiety is a pervasive and tricky thing. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy in many ways. It's almost like an answer in search of a problem. We feel something and then fixate on it. We obsess about it. We research about it. And so we convince ourselves that we have a serious illness or problem. This, In turn, Causes more anxiety. And even when we are reassured that there is no problem, We quickly go back to worrying about it or something else. Our anxiety feeds our behavior, Which in turn feeds our anxiety, Which drives our behavior. And you can soon see how a habit may form. The irony, Of course, Is that the stress of worrying about these illnesses is far more dangerous than the actual imaginary illness that we think we have. So let's address that today using this BREAK protocol. All right. Hopefully you have your pen and paper or whatever you're going to write with. Now, The most common types of behavior or categories of behavior when it comes to health anxiety are the following. Seeking information. Seeking reassurance. Avoiding situations that trigger anxiety. And continuing to scan the body for symptoms. So step one is to write out these four headings. Now, If you can think of something you do that doesn't quite fall under one of these headings, Then you can put in your own heading there too. But I want you to write out these headings first. So, Again, To repeat. Writing with me. Seeking info. Number two. Seeking reassurance. Three. Avoiding situations. The things that trigger your anxiety normally. And number four. Continuing to scan the body for symptoms. So you should have seeking info, Seeking reassurance, Avoiding situations that trigger anxiety, Continuing to scan the body for symptoms. So step one is behaviors. That's the B in BREAK. You're going to write out under each one of these headings the behaviors that you do that correspond with the category. Again, If there are behaviors that you do that maybe don't fall neatly under one of these categories, That's okay. Just write your own behavior or category in there. Just write out as many as you can think that you do currently. Now, I'm sure the go-getters out there have already started writing furiously under each one of these categories, But if you need more time, Then press pause here and then press play when you're ready to jump in to step two. Alright, Hopefully you've had enough time to write out what is necessary there, But if you need more time, Just pause. That's all good. Now, Step two is the R of BREAK and that is called RATE. So just next to each one of those behaviors that you've written out, I want you to just write down a rough frequency that you do them in a week. So, Maybe it's 2, 3, 4, 5, Whatever it is. And if you're doing it multiple times a day and working out how many times a week is tough, You can just put in how many times per day you're doing it. Just make sure you make it clear that, You know, These are per day and these other behaviors are per week. So, However you want to do that, Just make sure you're kind of getting a rough estimate of how often you're doing each behavior. So, If you were Googling your symptoms four times a week, You may put 4-W four times a week. If you are checking your pulse or heart rate three times a day, You might put 3-D for day. Again, Press pause here to fill it out and press play when you're ready to carry on. All right, On to step three, Which is E for edit. Now, Next to the number you put next to the rating, So if you had three times per week, You're now going to put in brackets a goal for the upcoming week, A reduction in how often you do this behavior. Again, It doesn't have to be groundbreaking. You don't have to go right down to zero and cold turkey. Just try to get a lower number, All right? So, If it's three times a day, Maybe you want to drop it down to two times a day. If it's five times a week, Maybe it's going down now to three times a week. Just put in brackets a new goal that is lower in frequency to what you did before. Again, Pause here to do that and then jump back in when you're ready. All right, On to step four, P for plan. Now, You've got your goal frequency amount. In a new area of wherever you're writing this, I want you to write out a plan of how you might achieve this. Now, This isn't something I can totally help you with. Everyone does things in their own way. But for instance, If you Google many times during the day your symptoms and you do it mainly on your phone, You may consider turning off your mobile data for web search. This will mean that you can only do it when you have Wi-Fi. If you use a machine to check your pulse or blood pressure, You may put that thing in the attic or closet to make it less easy to get to. What I'm asking you to do here is add friction to the behavior that you're trying to stop doing and just make a real plan of how you're going to do that. It may be as simple as each time you feel the need to, You're going to think of how you'd like to not have health anxiety. Totally up to you here. You make your own plans. Now, This may take a little bit longer, But go through all those responses, All those behaviors rather, And then go through how you may achieve this lower number. So you're building your own plan. You're becoming your own guide, Your own doctor in the sense. All right, Pause here. Take as much time as you need. Okay. Now, Last step is to keep score. Now, Each day, I want you to refer back to what you have here, Your break protocol. Read your plan, Check your goal, And then just note down how well you do in terms of reducing the frequency that you did things. At the end of the week, You may revise your plan and adjust to make it better next week. Maybe you found some of the plans worked in some ways and didn't work in other ways. You're just working towards improvement, Not necessarily towards perfection. It may well take a good few weeks before you get the hang of this, And that's okay. This is how you take control of your health anxiety. This is how you start to become the master of your own destiny. So keep checking in, Keep keeping score, And that's the K of break. All right? Check in. Make sure you do this weekly, And if you can, Maybe even daily. Just check in how you're doing with each one of these behaviors, And let me know how you get on. That's it. That's your break protocol. I hope it works for you, And I hope you feel better soon. Take care.