John Glanvill • Anxiety Specialist & Researcher • Anxiety • OCD • Bipolar • ADHD • Energy • Online Treatment Course • Sensible Spirituality

from health anxiety to health resilience & natural immunity

In this 63-minute video, we explore and discuss practical ways to regain control from health anxiety and contamination OCD.

Even if you don’t have these conditions, I think you will find this video fascinating and packed full of things you can do to calm yourself down and trust your body.

Information about this video

In this video, I will detail actions you can take and new perspectives you can try – to help lessen the grip health anxiety, hypochondria and contamination OCD may have on you.

Can you ensure you have watched part one of this video, where I discussed that 4 out of 5 people don’t have health anxiety – therefore, what might we learn from how that calmer 80% live their lives?

I also discussed the common sense perspective that if our health is important to us (rather than fearing sickness or contamination), then, surely, doing everything we can to enhance our fitness and natural immunity through diet, exercise, placebo, minimising medications – then walking towards our fears to normalise them – is the only sensible path to follow, even if it is initially scary and causes agitation in your body.

And, if you’re not seriously working on those aspects of your life, then you haven’t even begun to recover – as this is the first stage of ERP – exposure to positive wellness rather than negatively fearing illness!

It’s my observation from working with people who have complex anxiety for many years that those with health anxiety seem to have the biggest resistance to change and the greatest ability to sabotage themselves out of action.

I think it is because they rigidly stick to their existing beliefs (even if they are not working well) and look to others for reassurance and decision-making – and this is why my videos teach so many new ways of looking at life to allow you to become more courageous and flexible in how you think and behave.

This is why going back and rewatching all the videos, re-exposing yourself to the content, reading the books I suggest, listening to the audio meditations and completing the workbooks are crucial to your transformation, and this repetition is the second tier of exposure therapy that I would advise you to embrace.

It’s my experience that people with health anxiety and contamination OCD are not silly, but they are doing silly things, and they need to break those patterns.

I don’t know who said it, but I like the quote, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone!” And that’s the zone you must get closer to and learn how to function within until that discomfort normalises – like the first week in a new job often brings a lot of discomfort, but after a couple of weeks of repetition, it just becomes normal.

And a note here for any partners, parents or carers of people with these conditions who are watching these videos because the person with anxiety (that you support) won’t watch them.

I suggest you get tough with them, stop reassuring them, stop driving them around, stop lending them money, stop limiting your life to appease them – negotiate with them, tell them you’ll help them in return for them watching these videos and discussing them with you, try to make them accountable for their own recovery.

Escaping health anxiety or contamination OCD – will take a lot of effort, and there is no way to avoid that – it will take a new mindset of courage and determination to facilitate your transition into the type of person who can calmly accept what is, change what is possible and remove yourself from that which limits your life.

It’s by deeply surrendering to what is, letting go of the Virtual Reality Stories of the brain, and selfishly re-engineering your life to break your old habits of procrastination, fearful worry, excessive checking, cleaning and researching.

If you could spend 50% of the time you currently waste worrying – doing daily ERP routines and learning new ways to be in this world, your life would change radically.

How will it change? Who can know? But surely that is the excitement of life – it’s not knowing (but still trying) where you’ll find adventures, meet people, fall in love and find the ways you wish to express yourself – not by living your life trapped in your home worrying about everything!

Continued in the video…