What is hypochondria, or How to be, if you have every disease in the world

If you regularly discover various tumors, heart disease, rash, rare, mental disorder, etc., but no doctor was able to confirm this, I hasten to disappoint you: you're really sick, and this "illness" is called hypochondria.

Hypochondria is called the human condition, which manifests itself in fear of something of sickness and constant anxiety about their health. Often people with hypochondriacal syndrome is physically unable to feel the "symptoms" of the disease, which in fact they do not. And when they are convinced that they are completely healthy, one disease to another... and so on.

If you recognize this description of yourself, I advise you to read the article below. In it we tell how to recognize hypochondria and what to do with it.

Over the last 10-15 years, people's attitude towards health has changed. If the student could go to lessons with a cold or even a temperature, but now the parents will leave him at home and likely to cause doctors. Sometimes even a healthy child caring mom and dad may find some disturbing symptoms...

The development of this tendency, we can say, has contributed to modern technology: on the Internet you can find a lot of articles on the subject of health. And popular bloggers are encouraged to monitor their health and regularly visit doctors.

In addition, there is the opportunity to control some body functions through various apps and gadgets (fitness trackers, sleep trackers, etc.). It would seem, what in it bad? In the journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine recently published an article in which he argued that the entire amount of information of the people played a cruel joke and led to the increase in the number of hypochondriacs.

For example, it is proved that the continuous use of sleep trackers contributes to the development of artesania. By analogy with orthorexia — obsessive pursuit of nutrition, artesania called obsession with the "right" dream. Often artesania refers to a variety of hypochondria, because in both cases the person perceives every signal his body as disturbing. Hence increases the number of "false" disease — the doctors of these diagnoses, of course, not confirmed, but hypochondriacs continue to invent new ones.

Modern man to find the disease is very simple — it is not necessary to visit libraries or finish medical school. Just go to the Internet and you will see the list of diseases that supposedly fit under your "symptoms". The diagnoses with the help of the Internet even has a name — cyberchondria, a species of hypochondria.

By the way, often suffer from hypochondria, the students of med school already in the process of learning they start "finding" symptoms of various diseases.

There are two extremes of hypochondria. The first option — when a person is constantly visiting the doctors, even the most insignificant occasions. Such people are hard to prove that they are sick, pass millions of tests and not calm down even when doctors dismiss all diagnoses.

People from the second category of hypochondriacs, on the contrary, afraid of doctors like the plague, because they believe that they can diagnose a very rare and dangerous incurable disease. At the same to doctors they don't go and torture yourself thinking of possible diagnoses, by studying the information on the Internet and consulting with friends.

Hypochondria can be confused with the usual concern about your health, but in this disorder there are several distinguishing features:

The most obvious sign of hypochondria excessive concern different signals of the body. For example, a small "stake" in the heart of hypochondriac perceives as a heart attack or stroke, headache like a tumor or, at best, a migraine and a cough as pneumonia, tuberculosis or cancer.

If you find similar thoughts or at the slightest cold run to the doctor, congratulations, most likely you are a hypochondriac. Fortunately, this problem can be solved.

The easiest and most effective way to get rid of hypochondria is to go to a therapist. The specialist will determine the cause of your condition: perhaps it is the desire to keep everything under control, the unnecessary guardianship of relatives in childhood, or, conversely, complete disregard of your ailments. Learn the origins of the problem, it will be possible to get rid of.

Of course, we do not encourage you to ignore health problems and to postpone trips to doctors. But it is important to understand the difference between real and imaginary symptoms.