Do you have the fear of bad health?
The fear of bad health manifests itself in your mind through various forms of insecurity related to your health. You might be worrying not to get sick. Or maybe you are be extra watchful not to touch things for fear you might get germs on your hands. Or it might be one of your habits to talk about various forms of sickness too much. Therefore, you occupy your mind with thoughts about bad health for too long.
There are many ways in which you can stop yourself from taking action. However, you must realize that you are not doing what is necessary in order for you to improve your life. Because of this, I want to raise awareness and give you the means to identify your fear. So, please remember that admitting you have this fear is the only way to start fighting it.
Self-evaluation questionnaire
The questions you should ask yourself in order to understand if you are under the influence of the fear of bad health are the following:
- Do you have the habit of using self-suggestion negatively? This is done by looking for symptoms of all kinds of disease within yourself and expecting to find them. (e.g. you see someone talking about some illness on TV and immediately you think you have that, because of some dubious symptom that you think you have)
- Is it one of your habits to have an imaginary illness and speaking of it to others as if it were real? (such thoughts might lead you to actually getting that particular illness)
- Do you use various kinds of treatments recommended by others as having therapeutic value, even though those people are not qualified to make such recommendations? (like friends or family who “just want to help” and say they have used such treatments on themselves)
- When you are talking to others, do you often discuss of operations, accidents and other forms of illness?
- Are you experimenting with diets, physical exercises, weight loss systems without professional guidance? (Like any other goal, losing weight is mostly a process of will – you need to want it strongly enough, but also need to see it as a process. It is therefore important to ally yourself within a proper mastermind group with people who know how to do it properly, in order to achieve your goal)
- Are you trying home remedies and other forms of “old school” medicine? Do you prefer these, instead of asking for specialized medical care?
- Do you suffer from hypochondria (medical term for a person who suffers from imaginary disease and has the habit of excessively talking about illness)?
- Are you not doing exercise for fear you might get hurt doing it? (fear of ill health can interfere with exercise – what if I hurt my back doing sit-ups? – and results in the person being overweight)
- Are you susceptible to illness? Do you get sick easily? The fear of bad health in the mind influences the natural resistance to disease that your body has, making you susceptible to real diseases.
- Do you seek sympathy from others for various health related issues?
- Is it your habit to feign illness to cover your laziness or serve as an alibi for lack of ambition, using it to avoid work? Did you ever falsely call in sick, to avoid going to work?
- Do you use alcohol or drugs to alleviate various forms of pain, instead of eliminating the cause?
- Do you read books or articles about various illnesses and worry at the possibility of being affected by them?
- Are you overprotective with your children, for fear they might get sick or hurt? In my country, we call this “putting the child in a glass bubble”.
- Are you taking medicine or various forms of supplements without authorized medical guidance?
How to escape the fear of bad health?
You can overcome the fear of ill health by taking the decision to be pragmatic about your health. In order to do this, you must focus your mind away from worry about health issues.
It is important to do regular medical checkups (do a set of blood tests every 6 months to 1 year). Thus, you have a good chance to identify possible illnesses early, in time for optimal medical treatment. You should follow the medic’s advice on the treatment, not go by the “I know better” paradigm. Unless, of course, you’re the actual expert in that field yourself. After all, if they’re the experts, they should be able to find the better solution.
By letting the specialized people take care of health issues, you can keep your mind on your goals, not on your illness.
Have faith that the treatment you receive from authorized medical personnel will work. After all, they usually know much more than you about the various illnesses and their treatments. Their recommendation should have more value than opinions of friends or relatives.
Also, practice having faith in positive outcome, in general. Many medical practitioners can confirm that people with strong faith get well much faster and easier than those who do not have faith.
Please check out the other posts related to overcoming fears here.