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Your Anxiety Toolkit - Practical Skills for Anxiety, Panic & Depression
471 STOP Googling Symptoms: The 3-Step Plan to End Cyberchondria & Health Anxiety
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Hello my loves. It has been a while since I've sat down and recorded a more traditional.
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Chat audio with you.
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I've been doing my best here on the podcast to just dive into the information, dive in, give you as much high quality evidence based skills as I can. But I've really missed just checking in on you and saying how are you doing? What's going on?
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Is there any tension you're holding in your body?
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Is are you being kind to yourself? I hope so. I just wanted to check in. There has been so much happening over here over at CBT School and in my private practice. We now as many of you may know, we have a YouTube channel which I am really putting so much, so much time and effort into. As well as the podcast, I have recently launched a new course which you may also have known about called the Rumination Reset. This is a course that will help you to stop ruminating. It is all science based. It is me teaching you the exact skills that I teach my client. This is a smaller course. It's just a focused solution for a specific problem. If you struggle with rumination, if you struggle with overthinking and catastrophizing and mental compulsions, please do go over to cptschool.com or you can click the link in the show notes and sign up for the Rumination Reset. It is my new favorite little baby course. In addition to that, I just wanted to let you know that we are pushing ahead with the content here, in fact where I am really considering doubling down and doubling the content I put out and really pushing to make sure you get access to actual skills that actually help. The more I'm on social media, the more I see absolute craziness and horrible advice and very concerning like quick fixes and I am on a mission to help you suffer less, not suffer more with those types of skills and full tea strategies.
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So that being said, let's get over to the show.
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I hope you're doing well. I am sending you every single ounce of my love and I'll talk to you soon.
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Have you ever felt almost the magnetic pull to pick up your phone and google your most recent sensation in your body or medical symptom? Before you know it, you have lost hours of your day and and you're actually more freaked out now than you were before you picked up the phone. If this is you, you are not alone. What I often see with clients is that this urge to resist is so incredibly difficult to overcome. They also experience that something in their body feels very unfamiliar and scary or strange and it creates their brain to be in full alert. And what, what happens is AI and Google are right there offering answers immediately and that is what pulls you in. Now in today's video, I'm going to go over exactly a three step plan to end cyberchondria. I'll explain what that is here in a second and health anxiety and I'm going to help you stop googling and get back to your life. So before we get started, what is cyberchondria? To be honest, this is a newer term even for me as a clinician who specializes in health anxiety anxiety. Cyberchondria is a combination of both the word cyber and hypochondria, which is another word for health anxiety or health anxiety or health anxiety ocd. What happens with cyberchondria is there is an excessive repetitive online search done for health information. It usually will cause a significant increase in self diagnosis of what people can consider serious illnesses. And it leads to even more distress and in many cases poor medical outcomes because you've gotten the wrong information. Now I, as I mentioned, I have a three step plan to help you and cyber chondria so that you can put your phone down and hopefully help you with your overall picture of how to manage health anxiety. So these are the three steps and I want to first go through number one, the first step in which you'll need to understand is the cycle of health anxiety. If you do not understand the health anxiety cycle, you will find it will trick you into the trap it has and will keep you stuck. So let's take a look at this cycle, what we talk about with the cycle of cyberchondria. This is technically the same cycle as health anxiety, but we're going to speak to it specifically. For folks who get stuck with the phone and their googling symptoms. What might happen first is you have the onset of a physical symptom, a headache, a dizziness, maybe something starts to hurt, or you notice a bump or something is itching. And then what happens is you start to experience a fairly significant degree of distress. You're anxious, you're having a lot of repetitive thoughts, you feel like there's a sense of doom, something bad's about to happen. It would be, quote, unquote, irresponsible not to go and make sure that you don't have a new massive cancer or some kind of life threatening illness. Sometimes people will also google whether they have an STI or an std, whether they have hiv, whether they have some kind of very bad lie. Like I said, life threatening illness. And that's what they do is when they have that uncertainty, it's so easy to just reach out and pick up your phone. The amount of information that is out on the Internet is, is overwhelming. And a lot of the time you can google your exact symptoms and somebody on the web has written an article about it, but there is a problem. You will either go online and get some relief or you're going to get evidence that what you're experiencing, that headache is the beginning of a brain aneurysm or some other life threatening illness which is going to feed you back into the cycle of going around and around and around. Often people will report way more distress after Googling than they get relief. Sometimes they get relief, but most of the time they feel so much worse, so much more distress and so much more uncertainty. So understanding this cycle is very important. Now what we want to do here is we want to identify this cycle and we want to break it. Now again, we're not breaking it by reducing anxiety. That is not where we stop this cycle. We actually stop ourselves when we go to pick up our phone. And I'm going to explain that here in just a second. So one thing I want to address with you and I really talk to my clients about this in depth is I want you to understand why Googling makes it worse. Why you feel so much worse once you have googled. Well, I've done a lot of research here and I have looked at what it is about these articles that are so triggering.
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Now as you know, I have a private practice. I have six amazing therapists in Calabasas, California. However, we do not take insurance. Now if you are looking for for insurance covered OCD or BFRB treatment, I.
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Want to let you know about nocd.
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NOCD provides face to face live video sessions with specialized licensed OCD therapists. Now their therapists use exposure and response prevention. We know this is the gold standard for ocd. So you can be absolutely confirmed that you're in the right place there.
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And they have a clinically proven app that helps you stay connected to your.
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Therapist and others who have OCD between sessions so you'll always feel supported. Now the cool thing is NOCD is available in all 50 US states and even internationally and they accept most insurance plans, making it affordable and accessible. We love that. Now if you think you might have OCD or you're struggling to manage your symptoms, you can book a free free call.
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Just click the link in the show.
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Notes@Nocd.Com I am honored to partner with NOCD, I want to remind you that recovery is possible. Please do not forget that. Now, big hugs and let's get back to the show.
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Now, number one, as a business owner who has a lot of podcasts on the Internet, I know a little bit about SEO. This is called search engine optimization. And what this means is every time I create a podcast, I upload it to the web and with it goes an article. And if someone was to Google, would not show up in the Google search unless I have optimized it for all of the potential words that people might be googling. Now, the reason I'm telling you this is not to bore you with my backend business strategy. It's to make you understand that the articles that come up for first are going to be the articles that have used a lot of very strategically placed words that capture your attention. It's a very strategic way of keeping you on that web page. It's just like the Internet algorithm and the YouTube and the social media algorithm. They are there to keep you on their page and they are there to hit on the thing that you are googling. So if you were to Google, does a headache mean I have a brain aneurysm? It's not there to give you the correct answer. It is there. The SEO, the search engine optimization is there to give you the article with the most words headache and brain aneurysm. And you're going to find the article not that you need to read, that's specifically for your situation. You're going to read the article that has the most use of that article keyword. So it's important that you understand what you're reading is not an article that is the most correct. It is often the one that has the best SEO and that can often get you into trouble. The second thing is legalities. As you write articles, there are legal things you have to cover, otherwise websites get sued. So even if they're doing an article, let's say on headaches, they legally have to say, if you're noticing some symptoms, please go to the doctor. Because they don't want to be held liable of giving you relief. You think you're fine and then something bad were to happen. So legally a lot of these websites like WebMD and, and these bigger hospital websites that you're probably coming along, often they legally have to put in worst case scenarios, just like on advertisements, on medications, they have that really fast moving ad at the end going, this may cause blindness and headaches and all things. They have to legally mention that. And so you're going to read it. As soon as you see the word cancer or brain aneurysm, you're going to freak out. But it's there not because it's valid to you. It's there because legally they need to put that in. The next thing is, who is writing these articles? Often they're definitely not doctors. In fact, I've been reached out by many, many companies saying, would you please write me an article on A, B and C. It's I have nothing to do with these companies. I'm not affiliated with them. They are just outsourcing to whoever they can find. They've googled somebody. They think that they've done their little bit of due diligence, but how do they know that I'm going to give the right information? We don't even know who's writing these articles. So it's important that you understand that what you're Googling is probably not accurate for your specific medical stuff. The next thing is, if you are using AI and a lot of people are using AI now, AI does hallucinate. I actually have a friend who wrote their own name into AI and said, tell me about this person themselves. And AI hallucinated and told them that this person, when they had AI'd themselves, had written a book. And they've never once written a book. And in AI, it even listed the book's name and it listed who it was published by. This person has never written a book. So you have to understand that AI is going to hallucinate. You cannot trust it as a super helpful advisor for your medical symptoms. Now, the next thing to know is they don't know your medical history. They don't know exactly what medications you're taking. They don't know what you've been eating and what your environment's like and what else is going in your life. So please do not rely on Google to give you accurate advice on your medical situation. So it's very important that you know this so that you can start to be a little more. You can be a little more skeptical when you go to pick up your phone. Now, what we want to do now is move on to step two, which is simple but hard. It's actually to put your phone down. It might sound redundant, of course, Kimberly, that's why you're here. I want to put my phone down. But I want you to understand that on either side of putting your phone down are two important strategies. It's not a matter of willpower. It's not a matter of just Put it down, slap your hand. No, we first want to understand the anxiety cycle. We want to understand that the websites and all the things aren't going to help. In fact, they're going to make it feel worse. Then you're going to work at either putting your phone away, putting it down, locking it in a drawer. They do now have things called the brick. A brick. I'm not sponsored by them, but a brick. The brick is ultimately a thing that locks down certain websites so that you cannot access them. You can put holds, you can hand your phone over. I'm serious. This is about. The most important thing is you actually do not engage with your phone. Even if it's just like, oh, I'll just do a one minute search, it won't be a big deal and then I promise I'll put it down. No, we're committing to putting it down as you remember. And that cycle is if you go around the cycle, you have the symptoms, you have the uncertainty, then you usually pick it up. Now we are agreeing now not to do this. What happens with that is you won't get that scary life sentence that you're reading about, but you also won't get that view, right? And so let's talk about what to do once you don't get that relief from that uncertainty. What we want to think about here is the third skill, which is called response prevention. Response prevention is a gold standard skill that we use. It's under the umbrella of cognitive behavioral therapy. And what that involves is it's the removal of all safety behaviors that are done to reduce or remove anxiety or uncertainty. So it's not just reducing picking up your phone, it's this overall blanket approach that is sort of like a full 360 approach where we don't do any other behavior either to reduce or remove that uncertainty. So this would include not checking. It would include not asking a loved one for advice. And we can be very, very skilled here. We might be like, oh, that's odd, I have this little bump on my wrist. Do you ever get bumps in your wrist or do you think this is fine? Like we often will go to others for that reassurance inst to going to Google. The next one is rumination. Instead of looking at your phone, I don't want you to just replace that by going round and round and round about how you may or may not have an aneurysm. We also don't want to catastrophize, right, and say this headache is getting worse and it's so bad that's only going to create more distress for you. And the last one is we're not going to engage in self punishment for the fact that you're triggered. Now, this is a commitment. This is no easy feat. So I want to just recognize that if we were to go back here, understanding the cycle, Check. Easy Putting down your phone. Check. Moderately easy to do for short periods of time. But this response prevention piece is a little bit harder. And it's really important that you give yourself lots of compassion as you do that and you really sign up for this. So let me teach you a little trick. Now we can see this little cycle here that we've already reviewed and we're committing to not engaging in Googling. Now what we are going to do when we take out the Googling and take out the reassurance seeking is you will find that that discomfort will rise and fall on its own. It will go up, but it will come down. It will not last forever. Now, in no way am I saying don't go to the doctor. If this is a symptom that hasn't gone away, that's getting worse, it's impacting your functioning, by all means, seek appropriate medical care. That's a good step. Do not consult with Dr. Google. It'll send you down the wrong trap. But ideally you would practice riding this wave out. You don't want to run to the doctor every time you have a little bump or a little headache and you have uncertainty in these thoughts that it could be life threatening. You have to understand your brain's always going to be catastrophizing, especially if you have health anxiety or hypochondria. So we want to get really good at being patient and waiting out symptoms so that we're not constantly seeking reassurance from doctors either. Now, what will happen here is this again. It will rise and fall. Where I want you to focus is on where this little arrow is right here, right at the very bottom of that wave. Because that's usually when you start to pick up the phone, you're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I cannot tolerate this discomfort. And you immediately go to that reassurance seeking Google. The next time in the wave I want you to be concerned about is when it's starting to get really high. This is often where we have a mom and we are only responding to anxiety. We're not asking what's really rational in that moment. We're just like, I need to get rid of this uncertainty and we don't want to engage in that, because when we, when we engage in uncertainty in that way, we're reinforcing fear, we're reinforcing this idea that we have to get certainty to be able to move on. My goal is to help you move on with that uncertainty. Now, how you do that, number one, it's going to take a degree of willingness to be uncomfortable. Now, I want to remind you, you are way stronger than you think. Really believe me on that. You are so much stronger than you think. So do practice widening your ability and your, your degree of willingness that you can tolerate, your ability to tolerate discomfort is going to benefit you in so many ways in your lifetime. The second thing I want you to do is to stay very present. If your attention is on dying or whether or not you're dying, you are going to be absolutely freaked out and you're not going to be present in the life that you have. And so we want to learn at engaging in this present moment. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What are you doing? Who are you with? Pay attention to that and you'll have to do that over and over again. The next one is acceptance. Acceptance is accepting discomfort, accepting uncertainty, and also accepting that sometimes our body has a headache and it heals itself. Sometimes our body has pain and it heals itself. Again, I am in no way saying don't attend a doctor if you are struggling with some kind of medical condition. But I don't think we need to run to the doctor for every ache and pain that we have. The fourth piece here is, as I mentioned before, identify what actions you can do that line up with your values. Not the ones that line up with your fear, but the ones that truly matter to you. So that might mean that while you're uncertain, you might do your homework or do a report for work while you're uncertain, or maybe you have some discomfort, you go and get the exercise that you said that you are going to get today. Gently. You might meet up with that friend if that helps you. And you'd already plan to meet up with a friend. You might do your regular daily hygiene because it's important that we don't change anything just because we're uncertain. We want to stay on task and build our capacity to be uncertain as much as we can. Now, this is your reminder that response prevention involves not just the absence of picking up your phone. It also involves reducing, checking, other reassurance seeking, other rumination, other catastrophization, and self punishment. Now, if you struggle with rumination, we have a Whole course called the Rumination Reset. You can head over to cbtschool.com and it will teach you specifically how to reduce rumination. If that's something, something that you get stuck on, overthinking, spiraling, out of control mental compulsions, you will love the Rumination Reset. Okay, so here is the cycle of cyberchondria. We understand this cycle. We also understand that we want to put down our phone so we can practise response prevention. Your job is to remember that if you are struggling, it doesn't mean you have to do this perfectly. You can also try what we call the delay method, which is, I'm going to delay picking up my phone for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 3 hours, and pick times in which you can say, okay, I am struggling not to use my phone, but I am willing to do it, not pick it up for 30 minutes. Some people say I'm going to be willing to not do it today, and if I'm still struggling, I can pick it up tomorrow. Then they wake up tomorrow and they go, okay, I'm still struggling. Can I go another day? Yes. Or another hour? Break it down into small, manageable parts. I promise you it will make it so much easier. So again, please do this gently. This is not easy, right? It might seem simple, but it's not easy. And I want you to remember that just because it's hard doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. You're doing the best you can. So many of my clients have overcome this with time and practice and patience. So I want you to remember this is totally do. Just might take some reps and some practice. Now, as always, thank you so much for having me. It is an absolute honor to be on the show with you, spending time with you. I know how important your time is. I know how hard you're trying. So the fact that you chose me makes me so, so happy. All right, I'll see you in the next video and I cannot wait to see you there.
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Please note that this podcast or any other resources from CBTSchool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day and thank you for supporting CBTSchool.com.