Customer Reviews

It's Not All in Your Head: How Worrying about Your Health Could Be Making You Sick--and What You Can Do about It

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None of the other books listed by Amazon sounded like they dealt with health anxiety, so I tried this one. It is EXCELLENT!!! It is very thorough and simple to understand. It has wonderful tips to use as well as suggestions on how to work with doctors and when to get additional help. Not much is written for the regular person on health anxiety, so this is a very valuable resource. Health anxiety is a form of anxiety in which the person worries excessively about his health and bodily sensations. Going to the doctor repeatedly for assurance does not help because you can get addicted to the reassurance! By the time you get home from the doctor after he tells you that you are fine, you have convinced yourself that he must have made some type of error or omission of tests, and you are super worried all over again! This book uses cognitive behavior therapy to help break the cycle of worry and fear over symptoms.

This book does an excellent job of not blaming patients. It simply asks them to focus on improving their accuracy rate of whether something is physical or anxiety related. Dr. Asmundsom and Taylor get the right feel to the balance of encouraging patients to consider what is physical and what is cognitive. Patients, and families, have responded well to this book in my experience. And this book is greatly needed for patients who are highly anxious, terrorized at times, of the danger of their physical concerns.

If you suffer from health anxiety or hypochondriasis, you may benefit greatly from reading this book. For a while, I thought I was literally going to lose my mind. I worried a great deal about every little thing that was going on in my "noisy" body.
The book is written by two experts in the field. They are authorities on this subject and they really hit on all of the issues that people might be facing.
This is a thorough book with stunning insight, options, brilliant self-help plans and it is clearly written with compassion for the sufferer.
After many, many years with health anxiety and getting little or no help from therapists, I turned to this book and also to the authors' other book entitled, Health Anxiety. These books helped me, comforted me and fostered my self-awareness in ways that health professionals could not. A+
And if you are a sufferer, please know that there is help awaiting you. And you are definitely not fighting alone.

This book has been a tremendous help to me! The book is well organized and is designed for logical thinkers. One section was especially helpful for me; a section that explains how no amount of checking or reassurance makes your health any better. When I read that section, I STOPPED checking and reassuring myself for good! Why did I stop? Because the book makes logical sense and is written by two psychologists who really know what they are talking about. I use to be horrible at checking my blood pressure and blood sugar, but now I only have my pressure checked at the doctor's office. I have also gone to the doctor less often after reading this book. Anyone who has health anxiety problems or know someone who does should get this book! The book should be used by Clinical Psychology students in ALL grad schools in my opinion.

For ALL Therapists: The book allows your patient to became pro-active in treating their health anxiety. You can work with them during your sessions to help them overcome their Health Anxiety.

For ALL Patients: Don't just read the book. Put what you are reading into action and it should work for you. First and foremost, don't read the book in a negative (Oh this book will never work for me) mindset.

I don't know why this book has not received more attention than it has actually. Bad marketing possibly?

Easy to read, good concepts in cognitive behavioral techniques. Good exercises to perform to alleviate anxiety. Good for reference and to go back to during times of high health anxiety. Probably just as good or better than someone you could find in your home town to help you through an issue like this, as it is very focused on how to deal with constant health worries..When you find yourself slipping back into the old patterns, you can use this as a quick tool to calm yourself down.