Health Anxiety Coach

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.

If you’re a therapist or other type of mental health/medical professional who wants to learn how to treat health anxiety...
11/03/2025

If you’re a therapist or other type of mental health/medical professional who wants to learn how to treat health anxiety with exposure-based CBT, check out my new course. It is a comprehensive course on how to implement evidence-based cognitive and behavioral strategies to help your clients/patients reduce health-related fears. 75 bite-sized CBT video lessons and 300 pages of supplemental materials to walk your clients through these strategies, step by step.

If you’re a licensed clinical social worker, you will earn 13 clinical continuing education credits for completing this course. This course is ASWB-ACE approved!

Comment “treatHA” and I’ll send the info your way.

10/22/2025

I think sometimes there is a misconception that those of us who treat health anxiety are telling people to just not go to the doctor or to not bother about symptoms. Not. at. all. We don’t want either extreme for you, whether it is complete avoidance or excessive use of safety behaviors. What we want is for you to manage your health in moderation.

However, this isn’t easy to do, right? Learning to live in moderation when it comes to managing your health requires you to be able to live with a little uncertainty when it comes to your health.

We health-anxious people have a hard time not knowing FOR CERTAIN that we don’t have something serious going on somewhere in this body of ours. But there is no possible way to know this with 100% certainty. We can be fairly certain, sure. But nothing in this life is 100% certain.

I get into my car every day knowing there is a tiny chance I could get into a lethal car accident, even if I drive safely. But I’ve learned to live with that tiny bit of uncertainty because, well, I don’t want that stopping me from living life! It is the same with our health. The key is growing more comfortable with just a little uncertainty when it comes to our health.

If you haven’t yet, grab my free guide to improve health anxiety! Comment “guide” and I’ll send the link your way.

10/22/2025

When you live with health anxiety, it’s easy to fall into patterns of trying to feel safe. These “safety behaviors” are the things you do to reduce uncertainty or discomfort about your health but, ironically, they’re the very things that keep the anxiety going. Three common types of safety behaviors are reassurance seeking, excessive body checking, and preventive behaviors.

Reassurance seeking includes asking loved ones for constant reassurance, researching symptoms online, or visiting doctors and requesting tests to make sure nothing serious is happening. Body checking involves repeatedly scanning your body, touching or pressing areas that feel “off,” checking your pulse, blood pressure, or heart rate, or examining your skin or eyes for signs of illness. Preventive behaviors include going to great lengths to avoid perceived danger, like reading endlessly about how to prevent diseases, carrying “safe” items or people with you, or researching hospitals before going somewhere new.

While these actions bring short-term relief, they reinforce the belief that you’re only safe when you’re vigilant or certain about your health. We want to break this cycle by helping you gradually reduce these behaviors and build tolerance for uncertainty. The goal isn’t to eliminate all caution, but to learn that you can handle not knowing everything about your body or health.

Start by noticing when you engage in safety behaviors and what emotions or thoughts drive them. Next, experiment with small reductions. For example, delay checking your symptom or asking for reassurance for a set amount of time. Practice sitting with the discomfort rather than reacting immediately to it. When you do, you teach your brain that anxiety can rise and fall naturally, even without reassurance.

Over time, this helps your brain learn a new association: uncertainty doesn’t equal danger. The less you rely on safety behaviors, the less power anxiety has over you. Getting better involves learning to live peacefully with the parts of life that are uncertain.

Grab my free guide to start doing this! Comment “guide” and I’ll send it your way.

10/10/2025

I mean, I barely escaped death. Why isn’t he ecstatic? Of course, we know why, lol. Only WE think we are dying. They always just thought it was… a symptom. I’ve realized over the years just how helpful it has been to observe my husband’s reactions to symptoms (both mine and his own). 

When you struggle with health anxiety, your brain automatically zooms in on danger and runs through every catastrophic possibility. You forget there are other interpretations available. Watching someone without health anxiety is like seeing a glimpse into another world. They feel a symptom, they notice it, maybe they’re mildly annoyed or curious, and then they move on. No spiral. No Google deep dive. No writing a eulogy in their head. They just…keep living their day. That used to shock me. But it also taught me that not everyone’s brain jumps to worst-case scenarios and that my reactions, while understandable given the health anxiety, weren’t the only way to respond.

A great socratic question is: What would someone without health anxiety think or do in this situation? It creates distance from the fear and helps us access a more balanced perspective. I take it a step further and ask: What would Don (my husband) do? Don has the least amount of health anxiety of anyone I’ve ever met. If his heart skips a beat, he shrugs and keeps eating his sandwich. If his stomach hurts, he assumes he’s hungry or ate something weird…not that he’s in organ failure. Learning to mentally “borrow” his mindset has helped me interrupt the automatic catastrophizing and consider more realistic explanations.

We are not trying to dismiss symptoms or ignore our bodies. We are learning from people who interpret symptoms in a healthy, adaptive way. They are living proof that there is another option. So the next time a symptom shows up, ask yourself: If I didn’t have health anxiety, how would I see this? Who in my life sees health-related situations in an adaptive way? How would they interpret and respond to this situation?

If you have health anxiety, grab my free comprehensive guide to improve health anxiety with CBT! Comment “guide” and I’ll send it your way.

When you live with health anxiety, avoidance can feel protective. Skipping the check-up, putting off that phone call, or...
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!

It isn’t reasonable to expect that you will be able to have answers immediately (or that you will always get it right). ...
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” ❤️

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