Health Anxiety Coach

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Health Anxiety Coach

Grab my free guide below to start improving your health anxiety! Hi, I'm Dr. Britney Chesworth. I am a licensed therapist, researcher, educator and coach.

Dr. Brit, PhD, LCSW | Health Anxiety Therapist | Author | CBT Coach | Personal History w/ Health Anxiety

I help people improve health anxiety w/ cognitive behavioral therapy & exposure. I’ve spent the past 15 years helping people become unburdened by health anxiety so they can live more freely and joyfully. Health anxiety is one of my favorite things to work with because I personally struggled with this for so long. I’ve wasted many of my years living in fear of disease and dying. I know how real this struggle can be. You are not alone. It wasn't until I tried cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that I started to notice significant changes in my fear of disease. CBT is a short-term, skill-based, action-oriented type of intervention that reshapes unhelpful thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. CBT is considered a first-line psychological treatment for health anxiety. Inspired by my personal growth and change, I decided to specialize in CBT and began using these methods with my clients. I've watched my clients experience remarkable transformation in their lives, in relatively short periods of time, through retraining their brain to see health and illness more adaptively.

09/16/2025

When you live with health anxiety, avoidance can feel protective. Skipping the check-up, putting off that phone call, or distracting yourself from a symptom may seem like a way to dodge bad news. But there is a catch. Avoidance doesn’t protect you. It feeds your anxiety. Every time you avoid, you learn, “See? That must have been dangerous.” The fear grows, not because the doctor’s office is dangerous, but because you never give yourself the chance to find out otherwise.

Improvement isn’t about forcing yourself into the scariest situation right away. It’s about retraining your brain through small, consistent experiences that show you your fears are exaggerated and that you can handle uncertainty. Cognitive strategies help you see the distortions in your thinking, like assuming anxiety means danger or believing one bad doctor visit predicts all future visits. Behavioral strategies take it further. By actually facing the situations you avoid, you gain firsthand evidence that your predictions are unreliable.

Think of it like exercising a weak muscle. At first, lifting even a light weight feels uncomfortable. But over time, as you practice, your strength builds. The same is true with tolerating uncertainty around your health. Each step you take toward facing what you avoid, you are teaching yourself that you can handle the anxiety and uncertainty and that your predictions are often wrong.

If you have health anxiety, my book, Help I’m Dying Again, is officially out!! 🎉

Pick it up at many major retailers or comment “order” and I will send the info your way!

09/11/2025

It isn’t reasonable to expect that you will be able to have answers immediately (or that you will always get it right). Get out of emergency mode. It is not only screwing up your life but It isn’t necessary. Here’s how to start:

1) Challenge catastrophic thoughts: Instead of immediately assuming the worst, practice looking for alternative, non-catastrophic explanations. Your headache? Could be tension, dehydration, or screen time. Muscle twitching? Perhaps it is stress or fatigue. Try this:Identify thinking errors (like catastrophizing or black-and-white thinking). Then use Socratic questions: “What’s an alternative, non-catastrophic explanation for this symptom? What would I tell a friend? Remind yourself: Common things are common. Rare things are rare.

2) Stop feeding the anxiety cycle: Reassurance-seeking (Googling, doctor hopping, asking for constant validation) doesn’t help long-term. It only reinforces anxiety. Same with excessive body checking. The more you check, the more you find, and the more you panic Instead, try this: (A) Set a waiting period before acting on the urge to Google or seek reassurance (e.g., wait 3 days); (B) Have a symptom management plan: “If this persists or worsens after X time, I’ll check with a doctor” and (C) Remind yourself that anxiety makes everything feel urgent but it rarely is.

3) Build your uncertainty tolerance. We can never be 100% certain about our health. But we can get better at tolerating that uncertainty. Think of it like a muscle. The more you practice sitting with it, the stronger you get. What helps: (A) When anxiety overwhelms you, redirect your focus to the present moment (grounding, mindfulness, or engaging in a task); (B) Remind yourself: “I don’t need certainty to be safe” and (C) Let the fear exist without acting on it.

You don’t have to live in emergency mode. Assume first that symptoms are minor. Go about your life. And if real red flags appear, you’ll know when to take action.

My book, Help I’m Dying Again, is out! If you want practical, evidence-based techniques to reduce your health anxiety, grab your copy! Comment “order” ❤️

09/10/2025

The intolerance of uncertainty (IU) is one reason why some of us with health anxiety seek test after test after test and find it difficult to accept it when there are no concerns. It can be really hard to accept that we cannot guarantee there won’t be a negative health outcome. It sucks, I know. And it can be scary to let go and accept a little bit of uncertainty.

But here is the thing- you already have this skill and do this in other ways… you just might not realize it. There are no guarantees in life and, so, every single day we go out into the world and assume the small risk that something bad could happen to us- in so many different ways. This uncertainty is embedded in every aspect of life (in our relationships, in our health, in our careers, with our children). We, more or less, accept a bit of uncertainty in all of these areas of life and we learn to live with it and accept it… to some extent. And, yet, we don’t even give ourselves credit for this!

Ask yourself a few questions: 1) What other ways am I able to accept uncertainty because I know the risk of a harmful outcome is small? For example, flying or driving. Can I try this approach with my health? 2) Have there been uncertain situations with my health that have turned out to be okay or at least not catastrophic? Is it possible to be uncertain about my health and still be safe? 3) How does living in an uncertain world make life more fun and interesting? For example, a surprise party, meeting someone new, a surprise adoption or pregnancy? Give some thought to these questions and try to slowly reshape how you see uncertainty.

My book, Help I’m Dying Again, is available! If you want to tackle health anxiety with practical, evidence-based strategies, grab your copy now. Comment “order” and I’ll send the info your way.

09/05/2025

The baby tiger analogy is one of the clearest ways to understand why avoidance and safety behaviors keep health anxiety alive. Every time you feed the “tiger” with reassurance seeking, Googling, or checking, you’re teaching your brain that anxiety is too dangerous to face. That relief feels good in the moment, but the long-term cost is that your anxiety grows bigger and stronger.

Instead of feeding the tiger, you want to practice sitting with the discomfort and uncertainty. You gradually face the situations you fear and resist the urge to engage in safety behaviors. Each time you do this, the “tiger” gets smaller. It stops demanding so much from you, and you can begin to live your life again.

The goal isn’t to eliminate anxiety completely but to stop letting it control you. Exposure helps you build confidence that you can handle the discomfort without feeding it. Over time, you teach your brain that anxiety doesn’t need to be feared or constantly managed.

My book is out! Grab it and learn how to tackle your health anxiety with exposure-based CBT techniques. Comment “order” and I’ll send you the link.

08/22/2025

My book is finally out!!!

In this book, you’ll learn a TON of cognitive and behavioral strategies to tackle all of the problematic thoughts, beliefs and behaviors that are allowing your health anxiety to thrive!

Grab at most major retailers or comment “order” and I’ll send it your way!

08/21/2025

When we feel anxious about our health, it’s easy to fall into the trap of excessive medical visits. The relief from a normal test result or a doctor’s reassurance can feel powerful in the moment. But as many of my clients discover, that relief doesn’t last long. In fact, it often fuels stronger anxiety the next time a symptom shows up. This is why CBT emphasizes looking at the bigger picture through a tool called a cost-benefit analysis.

It isn’t just about making a list. It’s about uncovering the assumptions behind your behaviors. You might believe that rushing to the doctor every time you feel a symptom is keeping you safe. But when we step back and weigh the short-term comfort against the long-term costs, the disadvantages usually far outweigh the benefits. For many, the cycle of reassurance actually creates more doubt about their health and more mistrust of doctors.

The exercise doesn’t stop at identifying costs. It helps you imagine what life could look like with a healthier coping strategy…one that includes reasonable medical care but also acceptance of uncertainty. And it’s flexible: you can use it for other health anxiety habits like Googling symptoms, seeking reassurance from loved ones, or avoiding anything health-related. You can also use it to evaluate the costs and benefits of holding certain maladaptive beliefs.

The real value of this exercise is that it gives you perspective. Instead of reacting automatically to fear, you begin to make deliberate choices about how you want to respond. I’ve seen it serve as a powerful source of motivation for my clients… to change unhelpful behaviors.

If you have health anxiety, my book, Help I’m Dying Again, is officially out!! 🎉

In my book, I teach you how to tackle all of the problematic thoughts, beliefs and behaviors that are fueling your health anxiety.

Pick it up at many major retailers or comment “order” and I will send the info your way! 😀

08/20/2025

If you tend to excessively check your body for new or old symptoms, you already know how exhausting it can be. Many people with health anxiety believe that checking is the only way to feel safe. If you don’t press that spot, monitor your heart rate, or compare one side of your body to the other, you fear you might miss something important. The intention makes sense. You want to protect yourself. But the outcome is often the opposite. The more you check, the more you notice. And the more you notice, the more anxious you feel. It becomes a cycle that fuels itself. Even the brief relief that sometimes comes from checking never lasts. A new sensation pops up, or the old one feels different, and you’re back to square one.

That’s why I teach clients to use behavioral experiments. Instead of scanning or testing, you design small, structured challenges to see what really happens when you refrain from checking. For example, if you believe that not checking your pulse will put you in danger, you can test that by delaying the behavior. At first, maybe you wait 15 minutes before checking. Then you gradually increase the delay. During the experiment, you track your anxiety and what actually happens. More often than not, people find that their anxiety decreases naturally and the feared catastrophe never occurs.

This process is not about ignoring your body forever but about building tolerance for uncertainty. The more you practice, the more you learn that safety does not come from checking. Safety comes from your ability to cope with discomfort and trust your body without constant reassurance.

My book is out!!! In my book I teach step-by-step strategies for conquering all of these bad little habits.

Comment “order” and I’ll send you the info!

08/20/2025

If you have health anxiety and want to take practical steps toward getting better, grab my book, Help I’m Dying Again. I wrote it specifically for people like us, struggling with health anxiety.

You can grab it from many major retailers (e.g. Barnes and Noble, Target, Amazon, Bookshop). If you reside in an area that Amazon doesn’t deliver to or are unable to find it at your local bookstores, Amazon has a kindle/ebook option.

Comment “order” and I’ll send the link your way! ❤️

08/19/2025

When you live with health anxiety, it often feels like your brain is wired to expect the worst. At the heart of this are what are known as core beliefs. These are deep-rooted assumptions about health, illness, and safety that usually form early in life. Maybe you had a frightening health scare, watched a loved one suffer, or grew up in an unsafe environment where your nervous system learned to stay on high alert. Whatever the cause, these experiences shaped how you interpret health and illness today.

The problem is that once these beliefs take hold, your brain begins reinforcing them. You pay attention to anything that confirms them and filter out what doesn’t. If you see a tragic story online, hear about a friend’s diagnosis, or watch a documentary about disease, it feels like proof. Meanwhile, all the quiet evidence of wellness and resilience around you barely registers. Over time, this selective attention builds a world where it seems like everyone is sick and dying.

These beliefs drive daily anxiety. You monitor your body closely, misinterpret normal sensations, and jump to catastrophic conclusions. To manage the fear, you Google symptoms, seek reassurance, or avoid certain situations. But each of these behaviors only strengthens the original belief.

The way forward is to identify the unhelpful belief, examine the evidence you’ve collected, and challenge the distortions. From there, you can begin to form a new, more adaptive belief and intentionally gather evidence to support it. This takes time, but every step you take in this direction begins to rewire how you see health, illness, and your own ability to cope.

My book, Help I’m Dying Again, is out!!! Comment “order” to get your copy!

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http://coachbritney.com/healthanxietyguide

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