Applying Common Sense to Health Anxiety, Hypochondria, and Contamination OCD: A Path to Calmness

Overcoming Health Anxiety and Hypochondria: Practical Steps to Reclaim Your Calmness

By John Glanvill, Author of The Calmness in Mind Process for Overcoming Anxiety, OCD, and Depression

I’m John Glanvill, author of The Calmness in Mind Process for Overcoming Anxiety, OCD, and Depression. Welcome to video forty-nine, part one in my Calmness in Mind series, where we explore common-sense solutions for a calmer life. Titled Applying Common Sense Principles to Health Anxiety, Hypochondria, and Contamination OCD, this article (and video) delves into what these conditions are, who experiences them, and the traps they set. In part two, I’ll outline how to reprogram your brain to overcome them. My goal is to help you reduce fear, embrace courage, and live fully now, using practical strategies to find calmness. Visit www.calmnessinmind.com for more resources on overcoming anxiety, OCD, and depression. Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice—just common-sense insights to support your well-being.

Understanding Health Anxiety, Hypochondria, and Contamination OCD

Health anxiety, hypochondria, and contamination OCD are emotionally charged conditions rooted in deep fears, often about death or illness. As a therapist, I’ve found these among the hardest to address due to entrenched early-life conditioning. The fear is reinforced by abundant ‘evidence’—media, medical systems, and societal pressures that benefit from a fearful, compliant population. The ultimate fear—death or losing loved ones—looms like a dark cloud, draining energy, even though it’s inevitable.

The challenge is that the cautious, ego-driven part of you (like an inner eight-year-old) tries to fix itself, often through rigid, rules-based approaches. This creates drama or entanglement in others’ dramas, while resisting new beliefs or actions, even when current strategies fail. For some, these behaviours ‘work’ but are biologically exhausting, fueling more anxiety—a flawed long-term strategy, like overworking to achieve perfection.

Having worked with thousands sharing their health and contamination fears, I’ve overcome my own health anxiety, giving me insight into these conditions. They’re more common than you think, affecting about 20% of the Western population, who consume 80% of healthcare resources through reassurance-seeking, tests, and medications.

Characteristics of Those Affected

People with health anxiety or contamination OCD typically share these traits:

1. Personality Profile: They’re clever, dominant, stubborn, emotional, caring, and creative (though often unaware of their creativity). They avoid conflict outside family and suppress significant anger, consciously or not.

2. Triggers from Childhood: Health anxiety often stems from early experiences like a loved one’s death or illness, hospital stays, family break-ups, relocations, or events causing shame or disgust. A parent with health anxiety or a medical background may imprint these fears.

3. Suppressed Traits: Their natural dominance (Warrior) or playfulness (Nomad) is often repressed by parents, school, culture, or religion, leading to an overdeveloped sense of self, striving to be ‘nice’ or ‘perfect’, which fuels self-consciousness and perfectionism.

4. Erroneous Amygdala Responses: Their amygdala misfires, flagging non-dangerous items (e.g., a kitchen bin) or imagined threats (e.g., contamination) as dangerous, making their nervous system hyper-vigilant. This requires desensitisation through ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention).

5. Left-Brain Dominance: They’re highly logical, rules-oriented, and resistant to unprovable perspectives challenging mainstream science or medicine, which complicates recovery.

Common Traps and Behaviours

Health anxiety and contamination OCD manifest in distinct but overlapping ways:

• Health Anxiety Behaviours:

  • Constantly scanning the body for aches, pains, or lumps.

  • Obsessively researching symptoms online.

  • Seeking reassurance through doctor visits, tests, or second opinions.

  • Avoiding or fixating on medical TV shows or working in medical settings for control.

  • Struggling with travel, holidays, or being alone due to fear of inaccessible medical help.

• Contamination OCD Behaviours:

  • Obsessive thoughts about germs, bodily fluids, HIV, or indefinable ‘dirtiness’ (e.g., radiation).

  • Excessive hand-washing, showering, or avoiding public spaces, touch, or new people.

  • Controlling family to follow cleanliness routines, causing conflict.

  • Limiting themselves to ‘safe’ rooms or avoiding certain colours (e.g., red, brown) linked to phobias.

  • Believing contamination spreads through proximity, despite no rational basis.

These behaviours are driven by the brain’s Reticular Activating System (RAS), which prioritises what you focus on as survival-relevant. Constantly scanning for threats trains your amygdala to flag benign stimuli as dangerous, reinforcing fear via pattern-matching (as discussed in videos 8 and 18). This cycle is logical to the brain but fails the common-sense test.

The Common-Sense Perspective

Consider the 80% without health anxiety—‘normal’ people who trust their biology, assume they won’t get ill, and intuitively navigate life. They’re less conditioned, more aligned with nature’s design, and prioritise connection, love, exercise, and fun, minimising stress. Unlike animals, which instinctively avoid harmful substances without overthinking, those with health anxiety let their ego and logical forebrain override intuition, complicating life unnecessarily.

For example, if milk smells off, your body recoils—no thinking needed. On a cliff, you instinctively step back. If food feels wrong, you spit it out. Yet, humans stay in harmful situations (e.g., abusive relationships) due to guilt or obligation, ignoring nature’s signals. The 80% align with biology, optimising immunity through a balanced life, not over-worrying.

My father’s experience illustrates this. His mysterious condition, worsened by multiple medications, improved when he stopped them, revealing statins as the likely culprit. He intuited this but trusted doctors over his gut, a common trait among the 20% with health anxiety. The 80% balance medical advice with intuition, avoiding datasheets that list side effects, which can trigger nocebo (negative placebo) effects, as discussed in video 43.

Reframing Anxiety as Agitation

Reframe anxiety as agitation—your atoms energised for action. Like ice melting into water or evaporating into steam, agitation signals transformation. Embrace fear and the unknown, as they already dominate your experience. Use this energy to pursue dreams, not avoid fears. Health anxiety and OCD’s obsessive nature are superpowers when redirected towards what you want, not what you fear.

The 20% consume disproportionate healthcare resources because their external locus of control makes them feel at life’s mercy, seeking reassurance from others. The 80% have an internal locus, taking responsibility for their health through diet, exercise, and rest, limiting stress chemicals. Dr. Bruce Lipton’s Biology of Beliefs shows how calm, happy chemicals nourish cells, while stress chemicals hinder growth, as epigenetics confirms. Stressing about illness paradoxically worsens health, bathing cells in toxic peptides.

Lessons from the 80%

The 80% without health anxiety:

• Trust their biology and intuition over excessive data.

• Avoid overthinking side effects, reducing nocebo risks.

• Live actively, embracing connection, creativity, and fun.

• Build natural immunity through sensible exposure to pathogens, like childhood chickenpox parties.

• Take responsibility for their health, balancing medical advice with self-governance.

During the epidemic, some friends avoided masks, seeking natural immunity, and lived fearlessly, while others isolated and still got sick. A gardener, constantly exposed to pathogens, never fell ill, likely due to robust immunity from nature. Dr. Andrew Weil’s quote underscores this: successful immune responses strengthen it, while over-reliance on interventions weakens it.

Overcoming Seemingly Logical Justifications (SLJs)

Health anxiety and contamination OCD thrive on Seemingly Logical Justifications (SLJs)—creative, smart rationalisations for irrational behaviours. For example, a man avoided bins due to contamination fears but let his dog sleep on his bed, unaware of the contradiction. SLJs normalise life-limiting actions, like restricting a dog’s walks to ‘protect’ it, harming both. Questioning SLJs—e.g., “Why is this contaminated? What happens if I’m exposed?”—reveals their flaws. Bin workers, dogs, and rats don’t get sick from bins; germs are part of life.

The best medicine is a nourishing life: work, play, and sleep eight hours each, love deeply, and pursue joy. This leaves less time for virtual fears. Health anxiety’s focus on ‘what might happen’ contrasts with the calm acceptance often seen in those facing real illness, who handle it competently when it’s tangible.

Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) Connection

GAD, where anxiety feels ‘everywhere’ without a clear cause, is a clever unconscious trick to pull you back from life to recharge. It’s childlike, urging safety without specifics, making home seem safest. This reinforces the need to trust intuition over logic, as overthinking deepens the trap.

Preparing for Change

To escape these conditions, reconnect with suppressed Warrior dominance or Nomad playfulness (video 16). They fuel courage and creativity, key to recovery. Health anxiety and OCD resist change, acting like a parasitic energy fighting for survival. ERP, done correctly, breaks this cycle, but conventional methods may fall short—I’ll share my approach in part two.

Rewatch videos 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18, and 32 (part 1) to understand your brain’s mechanics and set intentions. Watch video 30 on self-sabotage with someone who reassures you most (e.g., parent, partner). Resistance to watching indicates unconscious sabotage—acknowledge it. You can ERP slowly, battling fears over years, or realise in an hour you’re not living naturally. Thoughts and feelings can be ignored, your body desensitised, and brain reprogrammed. It’s hard, but so is your current life.

Conclusion

Health anxiety, hypochondria, and contamination OCD trap you in fear, but common sense reveals a path out. Trust your biology, live fully, and redirect agitation towards dreams. In part two, I’ll detail ERP techniques to reprogram your brain. Thank you for engaging with this tough love—I believe in your potential for calmness, as I’ve achieved it myself.