Ep. 92: Dr. Google is Not Your Therapist: How to Cope with Health Anxiety

Health anxiety is one of those things that can quietly take over your mind—and before you know it, you’re stuck in a loop of symptoms, spiraling thoughts, and constant checking. We’re unpacking what this actually looks like in real life, from those sudden “something’s wrong with me” moments to the deeper patterns that keep the cycle going.

We also get into the why behind it all—the underlying fears, life stressors, and emotional experiences that can trigger health anxiety in the first place. Along the way, we talk about what actually helps, how to break out of the loop, and how to find your way back to feeling grounded in your body and your life.

Episode Highlights

[0:00] - Welcome back + introducing health anxiety

[1:00] - Laura shares her personal experience with health anxiety

[2:30] - What health anxiety is (and what it’s not)

[3:45] - Health anxiety vs. hypochondriasis

[6:30] - How physical symptoms turn into obsessive focus

[9:30] - The reassurance trap: doctors, Google, and ChatGPT

[11:15] - The feedback loop between anxiety and body sensations

[15:45] - The deeper roots: core fears, grief, and life stressors

[18:00] - Why reassurance-seeking keeps the cycle going

[20:45] - Intuition vs. anxiety—how to tell the difference

[24:30] - Avoidance, fixation, and how anxiety pulls us out of life

[25:30] - The role of boredom and ADHD in anxiety patterns

[28:00] - Why health anxiety connects to existential fear

[29:15] - What actually helps: breaking cycles and shifting focus

[31:00] - Engagement and healthy distraction as a way out

[32:00] - Normalizing health anxiety and learning to navigate it

If you saw yourself in any part of this conversation, you’re not alone—this is such a human experience, even when it feels overwhelming. Take what resonates, leave what doesn’t, and be gentle with yourself as you navigate it.

And if this episode supported you in any way, don’t forget to rate, follow, share, and leave a review—it means so much to us and helps others find their way to these conversations.

Ever stayed quiet to keep the peace and felt yourself disappear? The Cost of Quiet is for anyone who avoids conflict and pays the price. Reclaim your voice, strengthen your relationships, and experience real peace. Order your copy and join the movement: https://www.colettejanefehr.com/new-book

🎙️ Love the podcast? Come talk about episodes with us inside The Midlife Chat. It’s a free, private community just for women at midlife who want to keep these conversations going. We’ve created this space for real talk, fresh resources, and honest connection—where you can share ideas and resources, ask questions, and get support from women navigating the same season.  Come join us—we’d love to have you!

👉 Join The Midlife Chat here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/795863256460970/

Order The Cost of Quiet now! Colette’s new book, The Cost of Quiet: How to Have the Hard Conversations that Create Secure, Lasting Love, launched February 3rd. Order your copy today: https://www.colettejanefehr.com/new-book

Recognized by FeedSpot:
Top 60 Couples Therapy Podcasts | Top 100 U.S. Mental Health Podcasts | Top 100 Relaxation Podcasts

Transcript

Colette Fehr: 0:44

welcome to insights from the couch, where real conversations meet real life at

Laura Bowman: 0:49

midlife, we're Colette and Laura, two therapists and best friends, walking through the journey right alongside you, whether you're feeling stuck, restless or just unsure of what's next. This is a space for honest conversations, messy truths and meaningful change.

Colette Fehr: 1:07

And our midlife master class is now open. If you're looking to level up, get into action and make midlife the best season yet. Go to insights from the couch.org and join our wait list. Now let's dive in. Welcome back to another episode of insights from the couch. We're going to be talking about health anxiety today, what it is, how to handle it so it doesn't take over your life and hold you back. Laura, you this is a big topic that you work with people on a lot, and you have been open that you struggle with. Tell us a little bit. Set the stage.

Laura Bowman: 1:41

Okay, so like, health anxiety, let's talk about, like, what it is and what it isn't. Yes, it is, interestingly, the one, like form of anxiety I've really had bouts with, and I'm not like a generalized worrier, or I don't have OCD tendencies, but this I've had bouts with, so it's really interesting to like, be inside of it.

Colette Fehr: 2:07

What is it? What is it? Health

Laura Bowman: 2:09

anxiety? Okay, well, first of all, like, if you have health problems, anxiety and depression come with health problems. Like, if you're diagnosed with something, it's normal, like waves of anxiety and depression from health concerns. And then there's conversion disorder, which is like a whole other animal, that's where, like, an emotional thing happens in your life that's so traumatic that you can, like, suddenly become mute or blind or not able to walk. This is kind of rare, like I even it does happen. It does happen. Yeah, I haven't seen a lot of it, meaning what I see mostly is health anxiety. And health anxiety kind of has like a recipe to it that I've noticed there's always, like an existential core fear behind it. It's really and most of it boils down to like, the fear of like, ultimate destruction. Like, you are not going your life isn't going to go well, and you're going to find out that you're going to die, right? Like, so it's catastrophic future

Colette Fehr: 3:15

fear of death, of being

Laura Bowman: 3:17

sick, of being sick, of finding out that something's really

Colette Fehr: 3:21

not with you. It's not fear of death.

Laura Bowman: 3:23

Ultimately, it's there. It's there, but it's there's always another core fear that's like, that's pushing on it, and most of it is like, attachment, wounding, like some something always like, sort of flicks it off.

Colette Fehr: 3:39

Okay, but okay, but we're deep in the weeds of the psychology. What is happening, like on the surface? What on the surface?

Laura Bowman: 3:47

Yeah, somebody has like, a physical symptom. Could be dizziness. Could be headaches. It could be you had a chest cold and now you're having chest pain. It could be you're having numbness. It could be any like sensation in the body. Could be heart palpitations, and then suddenly the brain attaches to the symptom and becomes obsessional and monitoring of

Colette Fehr: 4:17

this of the symptom. Okay, I've definitely had a lot of clients, and so let's differentiate this for a moment. I'm curious, your take on this, between this and like, hypochondriasis? Yeah.

Laura Bowman: 4:28

I mean, hypochondriasis is, like, much more pointed of like, I think I'm going to die, like, I'm always going to the doctor because I'm like, that's more like, I'm afraid of death and I'm afraid I'm going to find out something's wrong. I'm always shopping to find out something's wrong, and

Colette Fehr: 4:45

I'm, in fact, going to die. Yeah, okay. Now what's interesting is I have tremendous fear of death, tremendous. You know, I can run anxious, but I really don't perseverate on health stuff. Now I will have, if I get like, an ailment like this is gonna make me sound like the antithesis of what I said the other night, Steve and I are watching the show the night. Agent, have you seen it on Netflix? I actually don't know how I missed it all this time. It's compulsively watchable and entertaining and the perfect escape from your life. And all of a sudden, I'm like, Steve, my arm is numb. And I'm like, It's not pins and needles numb, but it feels like there isn't blood flowing through it, like I don't have circulation. So I'm like, trying to get blood into it. It's still continuing. And then I'm like, Oh, my god, is this one of those things where, like, I'm. Have an embolism, I'm gonna have a stroke. Is this a heart attack symptom that women don't know about? When you always read women don't know they're having a heart attack, even though women have heart attacks, because all the symptoms we talk about are for men. So Steve's like, I don't think you're about to die. I'm like, I do. So of course, I call my dad. I'm like, I feel like I'm having an embolism or a stroke or a heart attack. And he's like, Well, those are very different things. Which one is it? And he's like, and it doesn't sound like any of those is likely. He's like, take some Advil. He's like, that way, if there's any inflammation, it'll go down. And it did. It got better. I took to Advil, but I immediately was like, I'm probably about to die. However, outside of those moments, I don't spend a lot of time. I go to the doctor regularly, and then I just really don't think about my health. Whereas I think I have seen in clients, there are some people who are they don't have health I want to distinguish this from people who have severe health situations. They don't necessarily have anything wrong, but they're always worried that something is wrong. Yes, this is what it is. It's like other things that are bothering you end up getting fixated into somaticized you get fixated on a symptom. It's an issue. It becomes an inquiry into that issue. You're preoccupied with

Laura Bowman: 7:13

that, yes, and it is a preoccupation. It absorbs all of your attention. Anybody who's in the grip of this really can't think about anything else, and the thought distortions are so obvious to an outsider, like somebody who's having health anxiety has like a migrating fears, like, it's one day I have ALS, one day I have MS, one day I think I have, like, a brain tumor. You know, it's like this migrating sense of what's going on, and monitoring sensations and just hyper vigilance on the body.

Colette Fehr: 7:47

And I love how you say that that migrating thing, because I have worked with many clients over the years with versions of this right where now it's not this, but now it's that, yeah, and how convenient, in a way, unconsciously, not that anyone intends for this, but then you can't think about or worry about what you started to say earlier. The attachment fears, the core fears whatever else is not working in your life. All your attention is consumed

Laura Bowman: 8:17

by this thing. Yeah, so that, to me, is like what I see a lot in in practice, and know what I saw in my own life? Because the thing that set up right before this is, and I talked about it in another episode, is that I had an ectopic pregnancy, and I was in a really, like, tight loop with myself of trying to, like, have a family, and I wanted to have my kids certain amount, you know, just like perfectionism, I wanted them two years apart, I had this ectopic pregnancy. I couldn't, like, grieve it. I couldn't accept that it had happened. I just had to get pregnant right away. I was, like, trying to force my life to work and on your plan, on my plan, I wasn't getting pregnant. I was really obsessed on that and kind of fixated. And then after, you know, after, I was very hormonal, and I'm prone to high blood pressure anyway, and I had had an ectopic, so my hormones were probably all over the place. I had a migraine with aura, which is very scary, and I had those for some time, and it left me with, like, migrating numbness. It left me with pain. It left me with all kinds of symptomatology that would just, like, roam around my body. Like I'd get numbness in my face, I'd get numbness in my hands, I'd get pain in my hands. And I was, like, certain that I had, like, something majorly neuro, neurologically wrong with me. I was, like, too afraid to, like, actually go check it out. I think I went to, like, my general practitioner. I took me a while to get to a neurologist, until I finally, like, wore my family out so badly because I could, I was inconsolable. Like they would reassure me, but the reassurance lasts for like, couple of hours, and then you're back at it again. And this is what you'll see with health anxiety. Is like, there's and that's the problem. Can't get relief. You can't ever scratch the get out of it. And it's a real problem now with chat GPT, because people who have health anxiety will talk to chat GPT all day long, for for reassurance, yeah, and it just

Colette Fehr: 10:25

keeps the cycle going. Oh, God. I used to always say to people, don't google anything medical. And actually that's a rule I have for myself, I will not Google. And this is even for chat GPT, because you can become convinced. It's just all so vague, and everything's applicable to everything. And honestly, your arm going numb. If you look that up online, it probably could be 10 things that could kill you. Yeah, you know

Laura Bowman: 10:51

there, like, go get good medical. Like, go get a physical. Go talk to somebody about this. I mean, I think what happens is, people with health anxiety want to go to the doctor over and over again, it becomes like reassurance seeking or avoidance. You're either going to trend with anxiety into avoidance or, you know, repetitive doctor shopping tends to one way or another. But, but the problem with what I didn't realize, and I think what I want to like really say, is that these symptoms are real, like they you're actually having the symptoms, but they're they're maintained by like, autonomic arousal. They're maintained by the anxiety. And you get like, such like, attentional amplification on these symptoms, where it's like, if you were like, just had the numbness, and you're just like, okay, that's like, no big deal. I'm not gonna, like, make anything out of it, and then it kind of rides out. Is different than when you focus on it, you're focused on it more. Now it's creating more anxiety, and the whole cycle just keeps right going.

Colette Fehr: 11:55

It becomes a feedback loop. And that was happening is that at first I was just like, This is weird. Then I made meaning of it, that maybe something was wrong, and then it was all I could think about. I couldn't focus on the show anymore. And every five minutes, and Steve makes this joke about me, that I always have ailments, but I really don't. I actually think I have relatively little stuff happening, but what I do is I kvetch about everything, like everything that happens. I say out loud, so I'll be like, Oh my God, my back hurts, like I'm tired. So he compares me there's this like, Rosanna, Rosanna, Danna character from SNL a million years ago. And he always calls me that because I'm like, my back hurts, my head hurts, like, by the end of the day, but it's more just me being like. I don't tend to get perseveratory about the symptoms, but I did that day. And I think also, as you're talking about this, you know, for somebody that gloms onto these things, these symptoms, and that's where anxiety goes. I just am also thinking about how this can lead us into avoiding life and the rest of what we have to attend to. And then I think for me, my version of this in younger years of my life was like love preoccupation, like, you know, becoming I was, I'm so fixated on relationships, which is obviously why I do the work I do, but that that would consume all of my energy and attention, usually, some quasi or fully emotionally unavailable man that had me on the hook that, Like, right? Like, how long it took to get a message or a phone call, or was he as attentive, some little thing that I would perseverate on existentially, that would consume all the oxygen and attention in my life, and therefore I'm not attending to anything else. I swear. This is probably why I didn't write a book or start a show or do any of these other things sooner in my life, because all of my energy went to that. And that is the same. It's a different fixation, but it's the same. Danger with these things is that they completely subsume us, and we don't. We're not in our life.

Laura Bowman: 14:18

I'm glad you said that, because I think that this is so human, and people have their own versions of it, and it's so funny because I, like, got up, my mom is constantly asking about my daughter's relationship with her boyfriend, and I finally said, You are so obsessed with love. You are so in love with love. And she's like, Yeah, I'm like, I could. I'm like, there.

Colette Fehr: 14:39

Like, Well, I'm not anymore either, but I used to be that.

Laura Bowman: 14:44

But I think people have this thing with like work or there can be something that they perseverate, hyper fixate on, and can't take their teeth out of, right? But when it's health anxiety, it can be, I mean, it really does feel like fear in the body, you know, and this is what you hear in OCD, is when people have a fear of contamination. You know, I don't give a crap about contamination.

Colette Fehr: 15:13

Me too, but I can

Laura Bowman: 15:15

my husband has contamination fears, and I can see the change in his face when he sees me, like, put my hand on an escalator, like I can see the gripping fear in his face. And I with health anxiety, you are gripped by fear.

Colette Fehr: 15:29

So I think this is an important thing to understand across all anxiety disorders. And as we talk about health anxiety today, the fear is real, the symptom is rare. Real. But then we can build this into something bigger through our perseveratory thoughts, through our preoccupation. And then the fear gets bigger. The more attention we give it, the more scary, the bigger, the stronger the symptom, the more it starts to take over our life. So okay, I'm certain that lots of people listening can relate to this to some degree, whether you immediately think you're having an embolism, stroke and heart attack at the same time, like I did the other day, or you're fixated on a symptom, worried about get, you know, getting really sick. Like I think if we sat there for a minute, we could all get pulled into that, because it's human. What helps us with this? How do we break free?

Laura Bowman: 16:28

Okay, well, I wanted to say that back to that core fear, because I do believe that people get pushed into this when something in their life goes sideways. I think you become more vulnerable to this that makes sense, like a breakup, a loss, a near an illness of a of a parent, child or spouse. I've seen somebody go into like, really dark health anxiety when their husband almost died, and they, like, were consumed for months over their own demise.

Colette Fehr: 17:00

That makes so much sense. Yeah,

Laura Bowman: 17:03

other things, job loss, humiliations, something where another thing that's huge is like people being afraid of contracting STDs. And not the kind of OCD type of obsession with with STDs, but the kind where it's like, I'm gonna find out that I have HIV or herpes or something and I am damaged goods, and what the core fear under that is is like relationships aren't gonna work out for me, but maybe relationships aren't working out in general, but this is now gonna be The reason why I'm completely disqualified from finding love, and now I'm terrified, but underneath that is like, even a deeper fear of like, I'm not safe, I'm not lovable. Life can end abruptly. There are all these like, there's real existential dread that can tick this stuff off. And so I think part of getting to it is talking about how, what the real fairness, what the real thing is like for me, the not being able to, like, get pregnant again, would I? Was my body ruined? Was I going to be okay? Was I, you know, is this the end? For me, I needed to be grieving a lot of things and really sitting with stuff that I wasn't sitting with, so it's doing this instead, right? So that's part of the therapist.

Colette Fehr: 18:25

So talking about what the real wound allowing the grief and the fear to get voice because we know those things do heal, the fears do diminish when they're vocalized.

Laura Bowman: 18:37

Yeah, yeah. I think the other piece is like a real response prevention piece, like you have to stop the cycle of checking and reassurance seeking. So people who are in your life, they they just get real neutral with you and real like they're not going to give you the you know you're fine. This is ridiculous. Like, let's stop this. Like, it's not helpful. It doesn't work. It fuels

Colette Fehr: 19:03

the cycle. But you have to also decide, and you may need, if this is something that's really powerful in your life, you may need a therapist to help you with this for a time to, like, cut off the seeking of those reassuring behaviors, going to the doctor once a week. I mean, it can get really excessive, and the more you do it, the more you need, and it doesn't fill the void.

Laura Bowman: 19:29

Yeah, and I do think in certain cases, like once I got my MRI, and I, like my neurologist, really explained what was happening in my body, my body, scientifically, I was able to take a step back from the hyper vigilance. And once I took a step back from the hyper vigilance, the symptoms really diminished on their own, which was like wild to see that I was sustaining all of this, these sensations in my body through the anxiety process. So I think a good, well placed doctor's visit, Oh, of course, gonna give you good information is helpful, but that's different

Colette Fehr: 20:05

from using doctor visits as a pacifier, you know, yeah. And also, you know, just what comes to mind for you guys listening to it's like, obviously this is different from so I think you do have to really check in with yourself and get real. This is different from your intuition, like, sometimes something's wrong, and we just know something's wrong, and it can be hard to diagnose things. We hear all the time, stories. I've heard it from clients. You read it in the paper, right? This like went undetected, or there's a long history of medical. Establishment treating women as ridiculous and being dismissive and treating women as hysterical and being like, you're fine, and then it turns out they have cancer. So not to say that if you have something that keeps happening in your body and it doesn't feel right, yes, go to the doctor. Pursue it, and if you notice you are, like, obsessed with a minimal symptom, right? And that something else maybe is going on in your life, get curious about, is this my intuition telling me something really is wrong and I haven't found the answer? Or is there something in life that's like, really hard that I might be avoiding through becoming obsessed with this, it's hard to bring your awareness there, but ultimately, very valuable.

Laura Bowman: 21:29

Yeah, and I think you can probably do both of those things at the same time. You know, I love that you said that. I think women do get dismissed. I think that our, you know, our intuition is powerful, but there it gets a to be a really blurry line, another. Another thing is, I think you've got to climb back in your body. And you know, I'm always talking about some kind of movement, but what the distinguishing factors between health anxiety and like real problems is, like, sensations are one thing, function is another. So like proving to yourself, like your body works, you can go for a walk. You are breathing fine. You can get a deep breath. You can you know you, you are you're functioning just fine, despite sensations that might be migrating around, yeah. So being in relation to your body, yeah,

Colette Fehr: 22:25

and I think this is, that's such great advice. Just those basic things that are so grounded and tactical are so important for this, you know, I think also it just again, it makes me extrapolate this out to thinking about how anxiety works, and that what people don't realize about anxiety and why the treatment of it is really breaking these cycles, these compensatory behaviors or even thoughts or rituals, even if it's Not OCD that we do that tend to be around avoiding things we're fearful of, that maybe there's some legitimate reason to feel afraid, and yet they're interfering with functioning in our life, like flying for me for years, you know, and then I didn't understand that. I made it worse by not getting on a plane, I had every reason to feel afraid. I had a bad experience, and yet it took on. It became so enormous, and it's why I have a lot of issues. Okay, when it comes to like fears, I have claustrophobia, I have fear of flying. I mean, I so not adventurous, but it's part of why, and I don't feel any shame about it anymore. My parents both have these things, like it's in my wiring, like I've always been this way, but it's why I make myself get on an elevator. I hate elevators. No, it's, it's, it's really, like, very scary for me. It's not like a small thing. I feel like I am gonna get trapped in there, and that is scarier to me than, like, being faced with a roaring lion. I'm not even kidding.

Laura Bowman: 24:17

So interesting. Like I've gotten stuck in an elevator. Okay, don't love them. I don't love them, but I don't have, like, a, yeah.

Colette Fehr: 24:25

I mean, for me, it's terrible to get on one, yeah, yeah. I mean, I still get on one too, but that's my point. Like, I'm very afraid and I still get on it, because I know if I don't get on it, then I'm suddenly not going to be able to, like, go visit even my relatives in New York, like I have to be able to get on an elevator. So I think with this stuff, that middle ground of like intuition is anxiety fueling it, knowing that we have to have, like, healthy skepticism, even with medical establishment, if we're getting if we feel like we're getting dismissed, go like you said, go to the doctor, look into it, and like, if you're getting feedback that that makes sense, like, don't keep perpetuating. Don't keep googling. Don't keep fixating. Do whatever you have to do to not be like, avoiding the other stuff, because this can be such an avoidance mechanism,

Laura Bowman: 25:25

it can be or it just can be, like the needle getting stuck on the record, where you just the fixate. It's not even a conscious avoidance, yeah, very subconscious. I agree with that, and it's interesting, like, though, when something's really going on. In your life that takes all of your attention. Somebody was telling me this, that she went through a really bad time, and then things got really good, like, she kind of got everything she wanted, and right after that, she was like, so afraid she was going to come down with something like, so all of a sudden. And that's another thing that I want to say about this, it's these health anxiety can be in higher rates with people that have like, ADHD, yeah. And this is the same with like picking disorder,

Colette Fehr: 26:10

hair pulling, trichotillomania, yeah,

Laura Bowman: 26:13

excoriation, anything with like skin picking. It's because boredom is a huge piece of it that when there's a vacuum, existentially, you can just start attacking self.

Colette Fehr: 26:25

Oh, my God, yes, okay, that is when I tend to get very in my phobias, when, like, life settles down. So light bulbs just Yes, when life settles down or and, or I do remember, like, right after I got married the first time, and like, I was in sort of a golden year phase before everything shit the bed. I remember becoming very afraid that I was gonna die, that, like, like, my death anxiety cranked up. So I really relate to the end. Probably this has a greater propensity to manifest in people who run anxious, oh,

Laura Bowman: 27:07

sure, sure. And like, and women like, I think one of the common like women young mothers fear is like, I'm gonna get sick and die and leave my kids. I hear that in my like, young 30s, women, a lot of like something catastrophic is going to happen and I will have to leave my family. And, I mean, that's a deep seated existential dread, right?

Colette Fehr: 27:29

Totally, totally.

Laura Bowman: 27:31

And just to keep on, one more thing with this is that people who've gone through really significant health journeys, whether it's cancer treatment, I mean, some people take these things

Unknown: 27:43

in stride. I know it's

Laura Bowman: 27:45

crazy believe those people, because I am not one of them, like I just I am. I get contaminated by other people's health stories. I can't watch health dramas. I watched my dad die. I I'm a mess when anything with the hospital is involved. But I see other people, and they just take it like it's, you know, another day in the life. And I can't believe it, but there are certain people that when they go through health dramas and traumas, and it is traumatic, to be sure, like breast cancer treatment and all this kind of stuff, they like, really can't tolerate anything around their health, like getting their blood pressure checked, yeah, getting their blood drawn, getting a stethoscope on their chest, like it, it just ignites such trauma in the body. So, yeah, I don't know. Some people are just really sensitive to health, yeah,

Colette Fehr: 28:41

yeah, yeah, no, it makes sense. And also it all makes sense because existentially, there is a knowledge that we're gonna die, and most of us are afraid of it to some degree. I mean, some people are not, and like, good for you, but like, right, we live with the knowledge that our time is limited, and health things force you to confront that reality, just on a very real level. So I think it's easy for this to become and we do. Most of us know someone have loved, someone, have seen someone go through something awful and it's painful and it's horrible. So I think it makes sense that this fear lives to some degree within everyone, and that it can present and become a focal point and become a fixation. And I like how you explain that. I think that's so true. When I keep talking about avoidance, it's not conscious, it's it's not and so you can't really solve it that way. It's like, it gets fixated on this thing. The symptom is real, the fear is real. You can't help it. And yet you can do things that may will keep it from getting worse and having more power, right?

Laura Bowman: 30:00

And I'll just say, like, you. And you say, like, how do you ultimately get out from under this? And I'll just say how I got out from under, yeah, and how I've seen other people get out from other under, it is that a little bit of space gets made where it's like, oh, huh, maybe, like, this is really, I'm overreacting to my body, like the MRI, for me, was a moment where, like, I the anxiety came down enough for me to, like, not attend to it in a hyper vigilant way every day, and then right after that, but I'm still trying to get pregnant like a weirdo. And I started my practicum, so I shifted my attention fully to something else, and I got a. Grossed in what I was doing for my practicum, and I got pregnant, like three months later, and the health anxiety completely rode out. And that's what I see, is that when you and distraction in a healthy way is great,

Colette Fehr: 30:55

yep, engagement and engagement,

Laura Bowman: 30:57

you can't force it when you're not ready for it, but when it finally come moves in. It pushes the health anxiety out.

Colette Fehr: 31:04

Yeah, yeah. And I think Pregnancy is a big one for us women, you know, like, I became very obsessed after I had a miscarriage, and then was deathly, like my first pregnancy was Charlotte after the miscarriage. I mean, I every time I went to the bathroom, I was sure there was going to be blood, right? And you kind of can't help it, like you're just wait the thing just happened. You're waiting for it to happen. Of course, I was more relaxed with my second daughter, but I think that getting yourself involved, anytime there's a lot of anxiety around something you're right, like getting yourself involved in something else that's meaningful, that's exciting, that's fulfilling, that's distracting in a healthy way, is going to help pull you out of that because you don't have the space to hyper focus. No, no, yeah, it's crazy. This is one thing I've also realized during this season, when I slow down, I'm like, oh, there is stuff I'm worried about. I feel like I'm too busy to even worry, which is kind of nice, because I'm such a worrier.

Laura Bowman: 32:08

That's the one good thing about the fighter light mode, right? All the worry is like, just can't

Colette Fehr: 32:15

even hear it exactly, exactly. Okay? So this is and also, let's just end on the note of normalization, that like there are extremes, but there are also lots of shades of this. It happens. It's not a defining feature of your life, but I think that it can be something like you said, when we go through something hard, we can get a little bit of health anxiety popping up for sure. Yeah.

Laura Bowman: 32:43

And I think that people who tend to have this will tend to have it again. You know, you'll have and the people I've treated, they they have seasons of it, but I think you get better each time going around the May pole on this and saying, like, Oh, I see this kind of for what it is. Yes, I know how to help myself better.

Colette Fehr: 33:01

Yes, and don't start a relationship with chat GPT around, because that thing will make will only make this worse, and it's just available on demand.

Laura Bowman: 33:14

Yeah, and this is a time to seek therapy, because, like, I think family members really just want to make you feel better, and a trained therapist in this can really help break the gridlock.

Colette Fehr: 33:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree, because family members can unintentionally make it worse in their effort to help. All right, well, thank you for illuminating this. Maybe I have more health anxiety than I thought I did, but it's going to be low on the list of problems

Unknown: 33:43

I have at the moment today, Colette, not today

Colette Fehr: 33:47

next time. All right, thanks everyone for being here. We hope you got some great insights from our couch, and we'll see you next week. Bye, guys.