330: Why Health Anxiety Feels Impossible to Shake (And What Actually Works)
Welcome to the Joyful Mom Podcast!
I remember talking to a mom who told me she felt like she was barely living because of her health anxiety. She said, “Megan, every single day, I wake up already bracing for something to go wrong with my body. A weird sensation, a pain in my chest, a tingling in my arm—it doesn’t matter how small it is, my brain instantly jumps to What if this is serious? What if I die?".
She had seen doctors. She had done all the tests. Everyone told her she was fine, but she didn’t feel fine. She couldn’t relax. She felt like she was constantly searching for reassurance, yet nothing ever fully calmed the fear.
If you relate to this, you are not alone. And today, I want to help you understand why this is happening and how to break free from it. In this episode, I’ll show you why health anxiety isn’t actually about your health—and why the only way to truly eliminate it is by rewiring your subconscious mind. And if you want to take this deeper, I have a free training where I walk you through the exact blueprint to eliminate health anxiety for good—so you don’t just manage it, you heal it at the root level.
A lot of people after COVID have experienced health anxiety or worries. I’ve worked with many people who now have Fears about sickness, fears about dying, fears about health in general. And if you’ve ever had a health scare where something was wrong, and you have some trauma from that, or you have experienced a health scare where you thought something was wrong and it turned out fine, and yet you’re not anxious about any symptom that pops up, this is going to be useful for you.
“Healing health anxiety at the root level through subconscious reprogramming is the best and fastest way to eliminate it.”
This is where I want to invite you to consider something that might shift the way you see your anxiety:
What if your health anxiety isn’t about your body at all? What if it’s actually about your brain’s wiring? What if the constant scanning, the worry, the urge to check symptoms—it’s all happening because your brain is stuck in a fear loop, trying to ‘protect’ you, but it’s doing it in a way that’s making you feel unsafe all the time?
If your subconscious mind believes your body is in constant danger, then no amount of logic, reassurance, or even medical tests will ever be enough—because your brain is the one that needs healing, not your body.
Think of it this way. That if you’ve had a health scare, or even a health trauma, your subconscoius mind has now catergorized health/sickness as threat or danger. That if you don’t pay attention to this thing you are absolutely going to die. And so yes, of course you have been googling symptoms. Of course you’ve been rushing to the doctor. Because you mind and body is literally in a state where it believes that if you don’t take action you are going to die. It’s a survival mechanism. There’s not something wrong with you because you can’t relax about it or not worry about it. It’s literally built that way, and until you fix this issue within the system, and get the subconscious mind to understand that every symptom is not life threatening, and your mind is clear of the past trauma data so it can see more clearly what is actually something you need to take care of versus something every symptom that pops up.
Health anxiety is a false alarm system
Imagine you had a smoke alarm in your house that went off constantly—even when there was no fire. Every time you burned toast, every time you took a hot shower, it blared as if your house was in flames. That’s what health anxiety does to your brain. Your body is fine, but your nervous system is reacting as if it’s in immediate danger. And the more you listen to it, the more your brain believes that something really is wrong.
Why logic and reassurance don’t work
You’ve probably tried everything to calm your fears—doctor visits, tests, asking your partner, ‘Are you sure I’m okay?’ Googling symptoms late at night. And maybe, for a moment, you feel better. But then a new symptom shows up, and you’re right back in the fear cycle." This feeds the loop of anxiety and danger. When you follow that push of anxiety, checking symptoms, when you continue to do these things, you reinforce the subconscious mind belief that that a symptom is life threatening or you need to do something about every pain in the body.
That’s because health anxiety isn’t a rational problem—it’s a subconscious one. Your brain isn’t using logic to decide if you’re okay. It’s running a fear pattern that keeps playing over and over until you change it at the root level.
How subconscious reprogramming stops the cycle
Think of your subconscious mind like a software program. If your mind has been programmed to associate normal bodily sensations with danger, then it will keep running that same fear cycle on autopilot—until you rewire it.
And the good news? That’s exactly what we do inside my free training. I’ll show you how to shift the way your subconscious perceives safety, so your brain can finally relax, and your body can stop feeling like a ticking time bomb.
If you are living with health anxiety, know this- that there is a reason it’s happening to you. And it’s not because you are broken, but simply because your subconscious mind is misreading data and causing alarms to go off when they don’t need to. No amount of trying to cover up the alarm will help, you have to stop the alarm from going off in the first place!
If you want to learn more about how you can clear anxiety more automatically by rewiring how the mind is working and processing things, go to my website www.meganhillukka.com where you can click on a link to register for my free training, where I will show you what you need in order to do this.
