My child has massive health anxiety

[Sunshine35x]

Hi can anyone help? My son is 10, he's always suffered from anxiety but since covid, he has developed severe health anxiety and there is noone who can help us right now.
Every day he will alk me hundreds of questions about different parts of his body, how does it work, what should it feel like, his feels weird and strange, like the pulse in his neck, he's convinced himself that shouldn't be there. The questions and need for reassurance are relentless.
Sometimes every few days he will wind himself up into a panic attack about its started to happen a lot at night when he's dropping off to sleep.
I understand he needs reassurance and we try our best, we also show him information on how the body works etc. But it's just becoming overwhelming.
I honestly don't know the best way to deal with it, my husband feels that by talking to him in depth about each "made up" ailment, that we are almost encouraging it and we should ignore it.
He was very anxious again at bedtime last night asking me about his lungs for the thousandth time, and i snapped at him and now feel guilty.
Csn anyone advise me please? I feel like covid has caused massive problems for the mental health sector, it was bad enough already but now each local one I try to access for him just tell me they are closed due to covid

I could have written this post re my 11 year old.

One thing that has seemed to help is the ThinkNinja app, which is a mental well-being app for children. Was surprised at how useful my DS found it. I think perhaps some of the strategies the app uses helped him feel a bit more in control.

Sorry to hear that your son is suffering. I think I would try and distract him/keep him busy if he is dwelling on things too much. Does he have any suitable hobbies that you can switch his attention to? eg model making or lego or such like then you could say for example when he asks another question " Lets talk about that later I'm more interested in that model/lego/etc you made today and what are you going to make tomorrow etc"

Also maybe try and encourage some audio book listening when he is alone/going to bed so that he is taken off to another world. Or even start reading something good together eg Narnia or Harry Potter etc.

If he persists with the medical questions could you talk more about how to become a doctor pharmacist/nurse/scientist etc and turn the focus to the positive.

I don't think it would be good to ignore the anxiety but I think you can help him to focus on other things and also to keep seeing bodies/science/medicine in a positive way.

@StrawberryCloud that's for that suggestion, I will look into that app now

Sorry I see this is an oldish post but just wondering how your son is doing now and if you found anything that helped with his anxiety? I'm currently going through something similar with my child.

I could have written this post - my 10yr old daughter is the same. Very wearing. She has always had a predisposition and I was pretty bad at the age too (not in adulthood) but every time the schools close, post Covid, she has a flare up. I took her to a private peadiayrician doctor for reassurance several months ago which really helped. School closures seem to have triggered it badly again and she’s quite extreme again, although good days and bad days. It’s usually close to bed time but today we’ve had multiple complaints all day, and she gets in a state and dizzy. Miraculously fine if there are children to play with, school work to do or a book to read - or if she’s going to the park with a friend. She’ll complain of double vision, headaches, breathlessness - and in the next breath be on the trampoline doing backflips, playing chess, or reading a book. So hard to manage at the moment. When the clever doctors give her the clean bill of health, she’s not convinced by them. Then she worries about worrying! We’ve talked very calmly to her - I will see how it goes and CBT is the obvious thing. But the peaditrician was a quick win for months - I think the school closures are having an impact in this flare up.