Many people we meet in our social lives and at work still believe that the answer to an emotional problem is to ‘understand where it comes from’. This idea is based on the assumption that there is clearly identifiable past event to which a person’s problem can be traced, and that once the sufferer recalls this, the magic of ‘insight’ will lead to a

This in turn creates another feedback loop in which you lose your confidence and feel incapable of doing certain things.

have an emotional problem with being excessively worried by my health and my ‘solutions’ have become my problem and feed my worry.

EXERCISE 4.8: AN EXERCISE IN DISTANCING In this exercise, you will need to get into a relaxed position and just observe the flow of your thoughts, one after another, without trying to work out their meaning or their relationship to one another. You are practising an attitude of acceptance of your experience. Imagine for the moment sitting next to a

being over-protected as a child, especially from illness. being over-protected as a child from deaths, funerals, illnesses in the family.

Health anxiety can be regarded an overloaded system, with your mind trying too hard to solve what it thinks is an actual or potential physical illness. In such cases, your mind’s solutions become the problem. The system is overloaded because of the way you try to escape from unpleasant thoughts, images and feelings, or the way you try to control yo