Hey, it's Friday. And that means it's time for a little five minute episode. This week on

health anxiety. Just enough to tickle your taste buds. And if you want to hear the full episode,

do please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com. You can find me on there. Just search for

Richard Nichols or you can find the link in the episode

description if you fancy it. So, health anxiety then. Sometimes people still call it hypercondria,

but that's kind of fall out of favour and health anxiety is a far more accurate term anyway.

Hypochondria makes it sound like it's about exaggeration, and it's not, nor is it about attention seeking.

It's about fear.

Fear that something's wrong, something serious, something that you or worse, your doctor, might have missed.

And the really cruel part is that it feels real every single time.

Now, we've probably all had a taste of it.

You get a weird twinge in your chest and suddenly you think you need to write your will.

And a sore throat that Google says is probably cancer and needs checking out.

Now that is human.

That's just a brain doing what it thinks it needs to do to keep you alive.

The problem is when that system gets stuck, when the normal background hum of, am I okay, becomes a siren that never switches off.

When this happens, you're constantly scanning, checking, Googling, reassuring yourself and then doubting that reassurance two minutes later.

Imagine a man called Jeff, if I combine all the different case studies I've read about and

people that I've worked with, you end up with this guy, Jeff.

So, Jeff had a panic attack one day and he noticed that his chest felt tight.

Now, panic can do that,

but his brain had already linked that sensation to the idea of heart failure, and never

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