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Get help with a qualified mental health professional who can help you to work through your problems. People with hypochondria sometimes have underlying anxiety issues or depression that, if treated, might help the individual overcome their fears of illness. A therapist can also help you to determine the cause of your fears and work through them in a safe environment. To find a qualified psychologist, try this site: http://locator.apa.org/ A therapist can help you by using different therapy styles, such as cognitive behavioral therapy. One cause of hypochondria is a misunderstanding about how bodily sensations work and/or how pain signals work. This misunderstanding, or lack of knowledge, can lead people to misinterpret bodily signals and view them as more serious than they actually are. So, ask yourself how much you have learned about the body and brain in your education. If you haven't learned much as part of your education so far, one way to help you overcome hypochondria may be to learn about basic bodily sensations. Learn about normally occurring bodily sensations so you don't become scared that you are seriously sick when you experience them. It can be helpful to ask friends and loved ones what types of experiences they feel sometimes. For example, you might ask whether your friends have ever felt a heart palpitation (e.g., a fluttering of the heart of a feeling of the heart skipping a beat). You will likely find that many of your friends and loved ones have experienced this before, because heart palpitations are common. In addition, you could use this resource, which shows the kinds of sensations people typically feel when they experience different emotions: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/2/646.full You may find yourself thinking a lot about your bodily sensations in order to detect illness. Make a week long plan to reduce the number of checks you allow yourself gradually so that by the end of the week you are only checking your sensations a couple times a day or less. For example, on the first day, you might allow yourself to check your sensations 30 times, on the second day you might reduce this to 22 times, on the third day 14 times, and continue to reduce that number over the rest of the week. If you ask your friends and family to reassure you that you are not sick and this doesn't alleviate your worry, it may be best to stop engaging in this behavior. This is because it can backfire and cause you to actually worry even more. This is because you may ask for reassurance more and more often in an attempt to get some benefit from it in the form of reduced anxiety, which just keeps your worries front and center in your mind. If your loved ones are constantly asking you how you are doing and their checking in on you is disrupting your attempts to get your illness anxiety out of your mind, kindly let them know this. You might say "I truly appreciate that you are concerned about me and that you care but I'm trying to think less about my concerns about illness, so it would be really helpful for me if you checked in on me only one day per week." An effective way to reduce stress and increase well-being is a technique called progressive muscle relaxation. This may help you reduce your levels of anxiety more broadly, and your illness anxieties in particular. To perform progressive muscle relaxation: Set aside 15 quiet minutes for yourself. Close your eyes and relax your body. Apply tension to a specific muscle group by flexing/squeezing it for five or so seconds. Be careful not to squeeze too tight and hurt yourself. Quickly relax the tensed muscle group while exhaling your breath. It is very important to focus intently on the difference in feeling between the tensed muscles and the relaxed muscles. After staying in this relaxed state for around 15 seconds, repeat the whole process with other muscle groups. Although medications are not typically prescribed directly for hypochondriasis, hypochondria tends to be associated with depression and/or anxiety disorders, which there are medications for. These medications may then indirectly improve symptoms of hypochondria. If you think you may benefit from treating depression and/or anxiety, explain the situation to your doctor. Your doctor may decide to prescribe a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) to help you. Be sure to always consult with your doctor before starting, stopping, or changing how you take a medication.

Summary:
Seek therapy. Check your beliefs. Educate yourself about normal bodily sensations. Reduce sensation checking. Stop looking for reassurance. Try progressive muscle relaxation. Consider medication.