Where do you go for help when no one believes you're really sick? The doctors can.t explain your symptoms, but you know there.s something wrong because you can sense it in your body. Living with the specter of an unresolved health issue isn't just painful, it's isolating. The preoccupation and stress it causes can disrupt your career or interfere with personal relationships. If you continually experience symptoms of illness, or worry a lot about disease, you may be suffering from health anxiety--a condition that can produce physical effects of its own, including muscle tension, nausea, and a quickened heart rate. In this compassionate and empowering book, noted psychologists Gordon J. G. Asmundson and Steven Taylor provide simple and accurate self-tests designed to help you understand health anxiety and the role it might be playing in how you feel. Concrete examples and helpful exercises show you how to change thought and behavior patterns that contribute to the aches, pains, and anxiety you're experiencing. The authors also explain how to involve friends and family--and when to seek professional help--as you learn to stay well without worry.

Contents:
I. Understanding Health Anxiety
1. Do I Worry Too Much about My Health?
2. Body and Brain: It's Not All in Your Head
3. Do I Have Some Other Anxiety Disorder?
4. Sick and Sad: Am I Depressed, Too?
II. Breaking the Health Anxiety Cycle
5. Understanding and Managing Stress
6. Thoughts That Influence Your Anxiety and How to Change Them
7. Behaviors That Influence Your Anxiety and How to Change Them
III. Maintaining Your Gains
8. Dealing with Doctors
9. Helping Friends and Family Help You
10. Living Life and Maintaining Your Gains
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