Health Anxiety Therapy
Serving San Jose, Sacramento & all of California
Health Anxiety
Health Anxiety Therapy to Overcome Fear of Illness
Health anxiety therapy can help you with exaggerated worries about your health or the health of loved ones. Health anxiety can slowly take over your life without getting help. Here are a few common ways you may be experiencing health anxiety:
- Worrying about your health even after doctors say you are okay
- Spending hours Googling symptoms or checking your body for signs of illness
- Avoiding medical information or appointments because you’re afraid of what you might learn
- Getting reassurance from loved ones but it never works and heath anxiety comes back
If some of these sound like you, you may be experiencing health anxiety. The good news is health anxiety therapy can help you put your excessive worry about health into perspective.
Laura Johnson, LMFT, LPCC, is a Health Anxiety Therapist who can help you step out of the anxiety cycle and learn skills to handle worry, fear or stress. I have unique skills using CBT and Schema Therapy and clients across California seek me out for help in San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
Could I Have Health Anxiety?
You may be wondering if the worries you have about your health are reasonable or maybe someone you love is concerned about you. Here are a few questions to ask yourself.
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Do you find yourself worrying about your health even after doctors reassure you?
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Do you spend hours Googling symptoms or checking your body for signs of illness?
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Do you avoid medical information or appointments because you’re afraid of what you might learn?
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Do health worries interfere with your ability to focus on work, school, or relationships?
If health worries are interfering with your daily life, you may be experiencing Health Anxiety.
What is Health Anxiety?
Health Anxiety, sometimes called illness anxiety disorder or hypochondria, happens when worry about having a serious medical condition takes over your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Even normal body sensations—like a headache, stomach pain, or a skipped heartbeat—can trigger intense fear.
People with health anxiety often know their fears are excessive but still feel powerless to stop worrying. It can feel exhausting, isolating, and disruptive to everyday life.
Common Symptoms of Health Anxiety
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Constantly researching symptoms online (“Google” spirals)
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Frequent doctor visits or, in contrast, avoiding doctors out of fear
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Repeatedly checking your body for lumps, bumps, or other changes
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Feeling intense anxiety over everyday sensations like fatigue, indigestion, or aches
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Struggling to focus on work, school, or relationships because of health worries
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Short-lived reassurance after negative test results—only for the anxiety to return again
How Therapy Helps with Health Anxiety
The good news: health anxiety is highly treatable. Therapy can help you break free from the cycle of worry, reassurance-seeking, and avoidance so you can get back to living your life.
I often combine Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and Schema Therapy for health anxiety, depending on your needs. That means you get both short-term strategies for relief and long-term change that lasts.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Health Anxiety
CBT is a structured, evidence-based approach that helps you build skills to live with more confidence and less fear. CBT for health anxiety generally includes:
- Understanding how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors reinforce health anxiety
- Practicing new ways of responding to body sensations and worries
- Exposing yourself to things you fear (taking your blood pressure, reading about a disease, having a medical procedure, etc.)
- Reducing unhelpful things you do (reducing checking, reassurance seeking, Googling, and doctor visits, etc.)
Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Health Anxiety
Schema Therapy is especially powerful when health anxiety has been around for years or keeps repeating in different forms. Instead of just addressing the surface worries, Schema Therapy helps uncover deeper “life traps” like:
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Vulnerability to harm (“something bad could happen any moment”)
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Abandonment fears (“if I get sick, no one will be there for me”)
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Over-responsibility or perfectionism (“I have to be 100% healthy at all times”)
By working through these deeper patterns, Schema Therapy helps you feel less reactive, less stuck, and more at peace with uncertainty.
Why Work with Me?
I specialize in treating health anxiety with approaches that are both practical and research-based. By combining Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and Schema Therapy, I help you break the cycle of constant worry and reassurance-seeking while also addressing the deeper patterns that make health anxiety keep coming back.
As one of the few therapists in California certified in CBT and advanced certified in Schema Therapy, I offer a rare combination of skills to treat both the immediate symptoms and the long-term roots of health anxiety.
Frequently Asked Questions about Health Anxiety
How is health anxiety different from normal health concerns?
It’s normal to feel worried when you have symptoms or face a real medical issue. With health anxiety, the worry is much more frequent, intense, and hard to control—even when doctors reassure you or tests show you’re healthy.
Is health anxiety the same as OCD?
Health anxiety shares similarities with OCD, especially the cycle of obsessions (health worries) and compulsions (checking, reassurance-seeking). The treatment approaches often overlap.
Why doesn’t reassurance from doctors help me?
Reassurance usually works for a short time, but with health anxiety, doubts creep back in quickly. The worry is more about uncertainty than about one specific illness. That’s why therapy focuses on changing how you relate to the worry—not on finding the “perfect” reassurance.
What kind of therapy works best for health anxiety?
Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) has the strongest evidence base for treating health anxiety. Schema Therapy can also help when health anxiety is long-standing or tied to deeper life patterns. Sometimes a combination of the two is most effective.
Take the First Step for Help for your Health Anxiety
specialize in evidence-based therapy for health anxiety, using CBT and Schema Therapy. Whether you’re in San Jose, Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, or anywhere in California, I can work with you through secure video therapy. Video therapy makes it possible to access therapists with hard-to-find specialties like CBT and Schema Therapy, so you don’t have to settle for less than the best care for health anxiety.
Reach out today and let’s work together to help you break free from the grip of health anxiety and start feeling more confident and calm.