Health Anxiety in Midlife: What It Is and How to Stop the Spiral with Warren Foot
What If It’s Serious? The Trap of Health Anxiety
Warren is a therapist specialising in anxiety, trauma, and emotional resilience. Drawing on CBT, REBT, and EMDR, he helps people navigate life’s challenges with clarity and confidence. With experience supporting frontline professionals, Warren brings a thoughtful, grounded perspective to conversations about mental health, personal growth, and lasting psychological change. Follow him on LinkedIn for more.
Health Anxiety Isn’t Just in Your Head — But It Starts There
Have you ever Googled a strange ache or twitch… and come away convinced it was something catastrophic?
If so, you’re not alone — and you’re definitely not broken. You may be experiencing something far more common (and treatable) than you realise: health anxiety.
In a recent Joy at Work episode, I sat down with therapist Warren Foot, who specialises in anxiety, trauma, and emotional resilience. We unpacked why health anxiety is on the rise, how it shows up in midlife, and what we can actually do to stop it from quietly running our lives.
What Is Health Anxiety?
Health anxiety is more than being health conscious. It’s a persistent, distressing fear of illness — even when there’s little or no medical evidence to suggest something’s wrong.
At its core, health anxiety isn’t about symptoms. It’s about what we believe those symptoms mean.
Warren describes it like this:
“It’s not the symptom itself that causes anxiety — it’s the belief that the symptom means something awful, unbearable, or life-threatening.”
That belief triggers a loop of unhelpful behaviours: obsessively checking your body, constantly seeking reassurance, or avoiding doctors entirely out of fear of what they might say.
Why It's So Common in Midlife
Midlife often brings more awareness of our bodies — and more exposure to illness in our social circles. As Warren pointed out, it’s common to feel like someone you know is always getting a new diagnosis or undergoing treatment. The background hum of worry becomes louder.
Add in the midlife need for control and the pressure to “keep everything together,” and it’s no wonder many of us default to worst-case scenarios when our bodies feel off.
Rigid Thinking = Anxiety Fuel
A powerful insight Warren shared is how rigid thinking keeps anxiety alive.
Beliefs like:
“I must know right now that I’m healthy.”
“If I get sick, it’ll be the end of me.”
“I couldn’t cope with a bad diagnosis.”
…aren’t just stressful. They’re anxiety accelerants. They create an internal demand for certainty in a world where certainty doesn’t exist.
So What Can We Do?
Thankfully, health anxiety is manageable — not by controlling your body, but by shifting how you think about uncertainty.
Warren offered these practical first steps:
Label it: Say, “This is anxiety. These are thoughts — not facts.”
Pause: Ask yourself, “Am I worrying, or am I problem-solving?”
Schedule worry: Give your fear a time slot. Literally. Block 10–15 minutes a day just for anxious thinking. Most of the time? You’ll forget to use it.
And perhaps most important of all:
“I prefer to be healthy — but I can cope if I’m not.”
That single shift in mindset is how we begin to unpick the straight jacket of fear.
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Health Anxiety: How to Stop the Spiral of Fear with Therapist Warren Foot
[00:00:00] When worry becomes constant background noise
I don't know about you, but as I get older, it feels like someone I know, whether a friend, a family member, or a neighbor is either receiving a new diagnosis, in treatment for an illness, or recovering from some kind of sickness, it's become a constant background hum. So when I caught up with an old friend, Warren Foot, someone I've known for nearly a decade, our conversation about his counseling practice took an unexpected turn.
[00:00:31] What is health anxiety, and why is it rising?
We started talking about something I'd never really heard of before. Health anxiety. Warren shared that it's becoming increasingly common in his practice and that the ripple effects are staggering. In fact, estimates suggest that visits to A&E across the UK related to health anxiety are costing the NHS and eye watering 33 billion a year.
That made me sit up and take notice. So in this episode, we're figuring out what health anxiety is, why it's on the rise, and what we can do practically to address it. Let's dive in.
Warren, in a previous conversation you said that one of the most common things you see in your therapy practice is health anxiety. What is it?
[00:01:28] The beliefs that drive health anxiety
Health anxiety is essentially the excessive worry about having or developing serious illness. Even when there's little medical evidence to show that there's anything wrong at all. Some people might say that it's just being health conscious, but it's, it's really not.
Health anxiety goes way beyond reasonable concern about our health and becomes preoccupying, distressing, and often exhausting because it goes on all the time. If we're anxious about our health, we are constantly anxious until we know that there's nothing wrong.
Wow.
[00:02:09] Common behaviours: Checking, Googling, avoidance
From a rational emotive behavior therapy perspective, and, and R-E-P-B-T is the model of therapy that, that I practice.
It's not the physical symptoms themselves that cause people to be disturbed and anxious, but it's the beliefs that they hold about what the symptoms they're experiencing actually mean.
So it's driven by irrational demands like. I must never feel unwell or it would be awful or unbearable if I got sick.
The most common one that, that I experience when dealing with clients, with health anxiety.
I've got this symptom. I must know now that there's nothing seriously wrong with me. And these beliefs, these demands lead to unhelpful behaviors. Constant symptom checking, constantly seeking reassurance, either from family members or going to the GP all the time. But it could also work in the other way.
It can lead to people avoiding seeking help. Uh, I can't, I, I can't bear the thought of knowing that there's something seriously wrong with me, so I'm never gonna go to the doctor. So it can be really pernicious and. Have a, a long-term detrimental impact on, on the way people live their lives.
Are there any more examples of how health anxiety manifests itself in daily life?
Yeah, I mean, repeatedly checking our bodies for signs of illness. So even when there's nothing wrong with us scanning that radar is constantly switched on constantly scanning to see if we can pick up on any twinges or pains that we wouldn't otherwise notice.
Or constantly Googling symptoms. Oh, I've got this ache. I better Google that. I better see what, uh, what it is. And you know, we all know that, uh, that Google's great at telling us the worst case scenario so we can disturb ourselves simply by seeking the information that, uh, that we look for.
Wow.
[00:04:19] Misinterpreting normal sensations
Misinterpreting normal sensations. Everybody gets twitches and aches, stomach discomforts from time to time.
So taking those symptoms and totally misinterpreting what they actually mean and, and, and jumping to the conclusion that something must be seriously wrong, like cancer or heart disease, or brain aneurysm, whatever it might be.
Wow. This is different, isn't it? So. Many of our listeners, we will experience moments of high stress, of high health stress. Yeah. In life. Most of us have moments of those, but in your experience, what drives and sustains longer term health anxiety?
[00:05:08] Rigid thinking and catastrophic beliefs
Rigid thinking. Rigid thinking is, I think the one thing that really maintains not just health anxiety, but any anxiety, believing things must or should be a certain way.
For example, I must know for certain that I'm healthy or I couldn't bear it not to know, not to know now that what I'm experiencing isn't serious. That's rigid thinking.
Catastrophic beliefs. If I get ill, it'll be the end of me. I couldn't, I couldn't handle it. If I have a worst case diagnosis or it might relate to, to family worries, um, if I die, who's gonna look after my children? Who's gonna provide to my family? So this rigid straight jacket thinking is what maintains anxiety.
Wow.
[00:06:05] Why reassurance doesn’t fix it — and may fuel it
Short-term relief from reassurance or of avoiding the issue together just feeds the cycle. So, so even when a doctor gives you a clean bill of health, you might still say, yeah, that's fine, but I, I'd like a second opinion on that.
Or even if we go to the doctor and we get the all clear. A week later we might say, yeah, but that was last week. Something might have happened between then and now. Um, that that could be serious, so I better get it checked again.
There's often also a low tolerance level for uncertainty and a need for constant control over our body, and that's irrational because we can never have complete control over our bodies.
So we don't like the discomfort of not knowing. I can't bear not knowing, so I must know.
Wow.
[00:07:02] Building flexible thinking instead
In rational emotive behavior therapy terms, we, we encourage people to, to try and shift from this straight jacket rigidity to a much more flexible, realistic position. I prefer to stay healthy, but I can cope if I'm not.
I prefer to know now that there's nothing seriously wrong with me, but it's not the end of the world if I don't know now.
So taking a much more flexible approach in the way that we do with other things.
[00:07:37] The difference between worry and anxiety
And I think it's important to make a distinction here between anxiety and worry. Worry is a human reaction.
We need worry. Worry is the thing that, that keeps us safe. We can worry about things because it helps us to assess risk. So there's nothing wrong with worrying about our health, but there's a big difference between worry and anxiety, where anxiety is an exaggeration of badness and an underestimation of our ability to cope.
We can go to hospital for an operation and we can be worried about the outcome, but we're keeping it in perspective. Yeah, I'm worried about this, but I'm in, good hands. I believe I'm gonna be looked after, whereas anxiety is, this is gonna go wrong, the operation's gonna go wrong. I'm gonna die if I die, who's gonna look after my family? That's the difference between worry and anxiety.
I, I love that you say that worry is what keeps us safe. Yes. But there, there seems to be a big difference in society at the moment between worry and anxiety. So if someone is listening and everything you've said has somehow resonated, they find themselves in this rigid thinking, wearing their straight jacket, that's increasing this health anxiety for them.
What might they do practically this week? To start to unpick that or start to ease the burden of the health anxiety that they're feeling.
[00:09:17] Practical ways to disrupt the cycle
I'd start by naming what's happening. This is anxiety. It's not evidence of illness. So stop thinking that anxiety's part of you. Take it out of your head. This is just anxiety. These are just thoughts, not evidence.
The next thing I, I, I, I think I'd advise is just pause and ask, am I worrying here or am I problem solving?
Am I wasting time being anxious or am I actually doing something practical?
So anxiety tends to be repetitive fear-based, problem solving is action focused.
Okay. I'm worried about this pain that I have in my body, but I'm gonna sleep on it. I'm gonna see how it feels tomorrow. If I'm still worried, then I might phone the GP.
Rather than I've got this pain, i'm gonna phone an ambulance now. Obviously it's, it's worth saying that if you're seriously worried it's not something that's happened before and you're not somebody that is usually anxious about this sort of thing, then of course err on the side of caution. But if you know that you have this predisposition to health anxiety, then pausing and waiting is something you can do practically.
[00:10:34] Worry Time: The technique that surprises people
If you find that you are constantly in this state of an anxiety. Try scheduling some, what we call worry time. So rather than trying to suppress anxious thoughts, contain them to a 10 or 15 minute period at certain times of the day saying, okay, I'm not gonna waste my time on this anxiety now I'm gonna wait till 11 o'clock this morning and I'm gonna give myself 15 minutes of worry time when I can fill my boots and really make myself as anxious as possible.
What often happens there is that 11 o'clock clock will come and go. And we'll forget all about it.
Wow. Now that's interesting. I wouldn't have thought of that. I particularly love that movement from the anxious thinking, the catastrophization to action. The difference between those two, one is taking action and one is internal. That is brilliant.
[00:11:27] Take the Derailed Life Satisfaction Assessment
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