Therapy

Hypochondria: Easing Health Anxiety and Reclaiming Peace A twinge in the chest. Within thirty seconds, the mind has reached “heart attack”. A small skin spot. Cancer. A ringing in the ear. Tumor. An unusually tired day. Multiple sclerosis, probably. Google is open, twenty tabs of medical forums, frightening images. The heart pounds, the palms sweat, the stomach clenches. Maybe a trip to the ER, the fourth test this month. The doctor says “everything looks fine”, you leave relieved, but the relief lasts a few hours. Then the thought comes back: “what if something was missed?” ...

Phobias and Fear of Flying: Understanding and Overcoming Them Ten kilometers in the air, a person with a fear of flying does not go through “some discomfort”. They go through an experience equivalent to a panic attack: the heart pounding so loudly it seems audible in the cabin, cold sweaty hands, the irrational urge to open the door, the thought that the plane will crash in the next second. And all this, paradoxically, inside one of the safest means of transport in human history. Phobias do not care about statistics; they care only about what the primitive brain feels in front of a signal perceived as dangerous. ...