Illness fears: What to do if fears keep rising?

Diseases are part of life. Repeatedly. Usually we don’t allow ourselves to be bothered by neck, chest or knee pain. But sometimes he pulls, stings or scratches somewhere in the body – and then thoughts begin to circulate: what could it be? Is that bad?

“Everyone has fears,” says psychotherapist Barbara Gunter-Haug on the Spiegel Smarter Lives podcast. She reassures her: “The fact that you sometimes worry is not a disorder or a disease.” But when we start running from practice to practice, repeatedly searching for symptoms on Google and searching for better specialists, we also have to look at our mental state.

“When we are mentally healthy, we don’t think about diseases. But we all have many stages where it is not so easy. Life always demands new demands. And then the eye can fall on a mole, or our pulse suddenly becomes very strange. And anxiety, which is already there In us for other reasons, he orients himself to this point”, says Günther-Hogg.

Fears about illness can develop after traumatic experiences, for example from a heart attack, severe Covid-19 disease among friends, or a genetic disease in the family. But it can also happen when we are already struggling with other problems. Then it may be that stress or anger chooses to turn around by fear.

Behavior plays a role, too. Those who have fearful parents are often prone to fearing themselves. However: “Not every germ that exists comes to grow. And there are other germs out there, too. Everyone can develop courage and self-confidence.”

So how can we better control our fears? What behaviors do more harm than help? What kinds of disease concerns are there?

Barbara Gunter-Hogg explains it in the Spiegel podcast “live smart”.

You can hear the episode here: