Health anxiety - useful types of therapy

[Unusualusernames]

I was just wondering if anyone has had therapy they've found helpful for health anxiety.

I'm having quite a bad flare up and i am so fed up of this going on and on for years.

I've had CBT and tbh I didn't really find it that useful. I think if I was a slight worrier it would be great but I found it barely scratched the surface.

I believe my health anxiety comes from my dad suddenly dying when I was 7 years old. I vividly remember him leaving for work and just never coming home. I think I was high functioning anxious until my daughter was born and the literal day after I became fixated with the fear of dying.

I was just wondering if anyone has had any type of therapy which they found helpful. I'm at the stage where I would be prepared to pay for it if that's the only option. I haven't got much saved but I don't want to live in fear any more.

Can I ask why you didn't find the CBT useful? Was it the therapist or did you feel unable to do the work required?

Your father's death happen during the crucial period when children are making sense of their place in the world and figuring out how they relate to people around them and the world at large. I believe EMDR has a good success rate helping to rationalise a single traumatic experience or you could try hypnosis.

I think you've already hit the nail on the head, actually. CBT tends to tackle the symptoms of things and not the causes. (Although it can be helpful, in terms of behaviour modification, alongside a different kind of therapy.)

Basically the hurt seven-year-old you is still cycling around in your subconscious, reacting to things especially health-related things now in the way your seven-year-old self did then.

Effectively, you have to learn new ways to 'parent' your inner child, with compassion. Tackling this can be quite a lot of work, and it isn't always easy. Healing is hard and sometimes you have to go through discomfort to get out the other side. But I think that reintegrating past trauma is a good way to tackle health anxiety.

I don't think you're alone OP.

My partner has Panic Disorder and emetophobia, so not diagnosed health anxiety, but with many of the same symptoms and triggers. She was referred for CBT and said she also found it completely pointless. Having had CBT myself for a totally different illness, it did nothing for me either, beyond perhaps give me a very small insight into a different aspect of one of my relationships.

I think if you already have a pretty good grasp on, and awareness of your illness, are not a particularly suggestible individual and don't really buy into nebulous 'spiritual' type concepts, then I don't think CBT really offers anything useful.

My partner controls her anxiety with very occasional use of Propanolol, which works to an extent to lessen her symptoms, but unfortunately it doesn't 'cure' the issue itself, so it always comes and goes for spells here and there. She's in the midst of a bad attack right now, but she knows it will pass of it's own accord in a week or two.