STOP Googling Symptoms: The 3-Step Plan to End Cyberchondria & Health Anxiety | Ep. 471
If you find yourself compulsively Googling symptoms and feeling more anxious than reassured, this episode offers a compassionate, evidence-based 3-step plan to help you break free from cyberchondria and health anxiety.
We are partnered with NOCD, a leading provider of OCD treatment. With NOCD, you can do live video sessions with a therapist who specializes in OCD and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy, and get 24/7 support between sessions. NOCD Therapists accept most major insurance plans to make treatment more accessible.. Book a free 15-minute call to learn more.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why Googling symptoms actually intensifies health anxiety instead of calming it
- The sneaky cycle that keeps cyberchondria going—and how to interrupt it
- How SEO, legal disclaimers, and AI can unintentionally fuel fear and worst-case thinking
- The role of response prevention and why it’s a game-changer for health anxiety
- Practical tools to ride out uncertainty without reassurance-seeking
- A gentle “delay method” that helps you stop Googling without relying on willpower
How to Stop Googling Symptoms: A Compassionate 3-Step Plan to Break the Cycle of Health Anxiety
Hello, my loves.
Before we dive in, I want to pause for a moment and check in with you. How are you really doing today? Is there tension you’re carrying in your body right now? Are you being kind to yourself as you read this?
If you’re here because you feel pulled—almost magnetically—to Google symptoms every time your body does something unfamiliar, I want you to know this: nothing is wrong with you. And you’re not alone.
Let’s talk about why this happens, why it makes anxiety worse, and most importantly, what you can do instead.
Content
What Is Cyberchondria?
Cyberchondria is a term used to describe excessive, repetitive online searching for health information. It’s closely related to health anxiety (and sometimes OCD), and it often leads to:
- Increased fear and distress
- More self-diagnosis of serious illness
- Greater uncertainty—not reassurance
Many people tell me, “I just wanted a little relief.”
But instead, hours pass… and anxiety skyrockets.
If this resonates, you’re in the right place.
Why Googling Symptoms Feels So Compelling
When a new sensation shows up—a headache, dizziness, a bump, an itch—your brain interprets it as a potential threat.
Your nervous system flips into high alert, and uncertainty becomes unbearable.
And right there in your pocket? Google. AI. Instant answers.
Your brain isn’t seeking truth in that moment—it’s seeking certainty. And unfortunately, that’s where the trap begins.
Step 1: Understand the Health Anxiety Cycle
If you want to stop cyberchondria, the first step is learning how the cycle works.
Here’s what typically happens:
- A physical sensation appears
(Headache, pain, dizziness, lump, itch) - Anxiety surges
Thoughts like “What if this is serious?” or “I can’t ignore this.” - You seek reassurance
Googling symptoms, asking others, checking your body - Temporary relief—or intensified fear
Sometimes there’s brief relief. Often, anxiety gets much worse. - The cycle repeats
Understanding this cycle is powerful. Because once you see it, you can interrupt it.
Why Googling Makes Health Anxiety Worse (Not Better)
I want to gently but clearly explain why Googling symptoms almost always backfires.
1. Search Results Are Designed to Hook You
Search engines prioritize SEO, not accuracy for your body.
The articles that appear first are often the ones that:
- Use dramatic keywords
- Keep you scrolling
- Trigger fear to hold attention
They are not personalized medical advice.
2. Legal Language Fuels Worst-Case Scenarios
Health websites are legally required to include rare but serious possibilities.
So even if 99.9% of headaches are harmless, you’ll still read about aneurysms and cancer—because they have to include them.
Your anxious brain locks onto those words instantly.
3. You Don’t Know Who Wrote the Article
Many health articles are outsourced.
Often, they’re not written by medical doctors—or anyone who knows your history.
That matters.
4. AI Can Hallucinate
AI tools can and do generate false information.
They don’t know:
- Your medical history
- Your medications
- Your stress level
- Your sleep, nutrition, or environment
They are not a safe substitute for medical care.
Step 2: Commit to Putting the Phone Down
This part sounds simple—but it’s not easy.
Stopping cyberchondria is not about willpower. It’s about making a clear, compassionate commitment.
That might look like:
- Putting your phone in another room
- Using website blockers
- Locking apps during vulnerable moments
- Handing your phone to someone you trust
Even “just one quick search” keeps the cycle alive.
This is a full stop—not a partial one.
Step 3: Practice Response Prevention
This is the most important step—and the most challenging.
Response Prevention means not engaging in any behaviors meant to reduce uncertainty.
That includes:
- Googling symptoms
- Body checking
- Asking loved ones for reassurance
- Mentally reviewing “what if” scenarios
- Catastrophizing
- Self-punishment for feeling anxious
Instead, we allow anxiety to rise… and fall… on its own.
And it will fall.
What Happens When You Don’t Seek Reassurance?
When you stop Googling, anxiety usually spikes at first.
That’s normal.
But here’s what I want you to know:
Anxiety is a wave. It rises—and it always comes down.
Your job is not to eliminate discomfort.
Your job is to build tolerance for uncertainty.
Skills to Use While Riding the Wave
Here are tools I teach clients to help them move through anxiety without reassurance:
1. Willingness to Be Uncomfortable
You are stronger than you think.
Each time you allow discomfort without reacting, you expand your capacity.
2. Stay Present
Bring attention back to:
- What you see
- What you hear
- What you’re doing right now
Fear lives in the future. Life happens now.
3. Practice Acceptance
Sometimes bodies hurt—and then they heal.
Acceptance does not mean ignoring serious symptoms.
It means not panicking over every sensation.
4. Choose Values Over Fear
Ask yourself:
“What would I be doing right now if anxiety wasn’t in charge?”
Then do that—with uncertainty present.
A Gentle Option: The Delay Method
If stopping immediately feels impossible, try delaying.
- “I won’t Google for 10 minutes.”
- “I’ll revisit this tomorrow.”
- “I’ll wait one more hour.”
Small delays build big change.
A Compassionate Reminder
This is hard. And that does not mean you’re failing.
With practice, patience, and self-compassion, this cycle can loosen—and even stop altogether. I’ve seen it happen again and again.
If rumination keeps pulling you back in, my course The Rumination Reset was designed specifically to help with that.
And as always, if symptoms persist, worsen, or interfere with daily life, please seek appropriate medical care—just not Dr. Google.
Final Thoughts
Thank you for spending your time here with me. I know how precious your energy is, and I don’t take that lightly.
You are doing the best you can—and recovery is absolutely possible.
I’ll see you in the next episode.
Transcription: STOP Googling Symptoms: The 3-Step Plan to End Cyberchondria & Health Anxiety
Hello, my loves. It has been a while since I’ve sat down and recorded a more traditional chat audio with you. I’ve been doing my best here on the podcast to just dive into the information, dive in, give you as much high quality evidence-based skills as I can. But I’ve really missed just checking in on you and saying, how are you doing?
What’s going on? Is there any tension you’re holding in your body? Is, are you being kind to yourself? I hope so. I just wanted to check in. There has been so much happening over here, over at CBT School and in my private practice. We now, as many of you may know, we have a YouTube channel, which I am really putting so much time and effort into as well as the podcast.
I have recently launched a new course, which you may also have known about, called The Rumination Reset. This is a course that will help you to stop ruminating. It is all science-based. It is me teaching you the exact skills that I teach my client. This is a smaller course. It’s just a focused solution for a specific problem.
If you struggle with rumination, if you struggle with overthinking and catastrophizing and mental compulsion, please do go over to cbt score.com, or you can click the lyric link in the show notes and sign up for the rumination reset. It is my new favorite little. Baby course. In addition to that, I just wanted to let you know that we are pushing ahead with the content here.
In fact, where I am really considering doubling down and doubling the content I put out and really pushing to make sure you get access to actual skills that actually help. The more I’m on social media, the more I see absolute craziness and horrible advice in. Very concerning, like quick fixes. And I am on a mission to help you suffer less, not suffer more with those types of skills and faulty strategies.
So that being said, let’s get over to the show. I hope you’re doing well. I am sending you every single ounce of my love, and I’ll talk to you soon. Have you ever felt almost the magnetic pull to pick up your phone and Google your most recent sensation in your body or medical symptom? Before you know it, you have lost hours of your day and.
You’re actually more freaked out now than you were before you picked up the phone. If this is you, you are not alone. What I often see with clients is that this urge to resist is so incredibly difficult to overcome. They also experience that something in their body feels very unfamiliar and scary or strange, and it creates their brain to be in full alert.
And what happens is. AI and Google are right there offering answers immediately, and that is what pulls you in. Now in today’s video, I’m going to go over exactly a three step plan to end cyberon. I’ll explain what that is here in a second and how things I, and I’m going to help you stop Googling and get back to your life.
So before we get started. What is hypochondria? To be honest, this is a newer term even for me as a clinician who specializes in health anxiety. Hypochondria is a combination of both the word cyber and hypochondria, which is another word for health anxiety or health anxiety or health anxiety. OC. What happens with Hypochondria is there is an excessive repetitive online search done for health information.
It usually will cause a significant increase in self-diagnosis of what people can consider serious illnesses, and it leads to even more. And in many cases, poor medical outcomes because you’ve gotten the wrong information. Now, I, as I mentioned, I have a three step plan to help you and hypochondria so that you can put your phone down and hopefully help you with your overall picture of how to manage health anxiety.
So these are the three steps, and I wanna first go through number one. The first step in which you’ll need to understand is the cycle of health anxiety. If you do not understand. The health anxiety cycle, you’ll find it will trick you into the trap it has and will keep you stuck. So let’s take a look at this cycle, what we talk about with the cycle of hypochondria.
This is technically the same cycle as health anxiety, but we’re gonna speak to it specifically for folks who get stuck. With the phone and their Googling symptoms, what might happen first is you have the onset of a physical symptom, a headache, a dizziness. Maybe something starts to hurt or you notice a bump or something is itching, and then what happens?
You start to experience a fairly significant degree of distress. You’re anxious, you’re having a lot of repetitive thoughts. You feel like there’s a sense of doom, something bad’s about to happen. It would be quote unquote irresponsible not to go and make sure that you don’t have. A new massive cancer or some kind of life-threatening illness.
Sometimes people will also Google whether they have an STI or an STD, whether they have HIV, whether they have some kind of very bad li, like I said, life-threatening illness. And that’s what they do is when they have that uncertainty. It’s so easy to just reach out and pick up your phone. The amount of information that is out on the internet is overwhelming, and a lot of the time you can Google your exact symptoms and somebody on the web has written an article about it, but there is a problem.
You will either go online and get whew some relief or. You’re gonna get evidence that what you’re experiencing, that headache is the beginning of a brain aneurysm or some other life-threatening illness, which is going to feed you back into the cycle of going around and around and around. Often people will report way more distress after Googling, then they get relief.
Sometimes they get relief, but most of the time they feel so much worse. So much more distress and so much more uncertainty. So understanding this cycle is very important. Now, what we wanna do here is we want to identify this cycle and we want to break it. Now again, we are not breaking it by reducing anxiety.
That is not where we stop this cycle. We actually stop ourselves when we go to pick up our phone. And I’m gonna explain that here in just a second. So one thing I wanna address with you, and I really talk to my clients about this in depth, is I want you to understand why Googling makes it worse, why you feel so much worse once you have Googled.
Well, I’ve done a lot of research here and I have looked at what it is about these articles that are so triggering.
Now, as you know, I have a private practice. I have six amazing therapists in Calabasas, California. However, we do not take insurance. Now, if you are looking for insurance covered OCD or BFRB treatment, I wanna let you know about no cd, no CD provides. Face-to-face live video sessions with specialized licensed OCD therapists.
Now their therapists use exposure and response prevention. We know this is the gold standard for OCD, so you can be absolutely confirmed that you’re in the right place there. And they have a clinically proven app that helps you stay connected to your therapist. And others who have OCD between sessions, so you’ll always feel supported.
Now the cool thing is OCD is available in all 50 US states and even internationally, and they accept most insurance plans making it affordable. And accessible. We love that. Now, if you think you might have OCD or you’re struggling to manage your symptoms, you can book a free call. Just click the link in the show notes@nocd.com.
I am honored to partner with no cd. I want to remind you that recovery is possible. Please do not forget that now, big hugs, and let’s get back to the show. Now number one, as a business owner who has a lot of podcasts on the internet, I know a little bit about SEO. This is called search engine optimization, and what this means is every time I create a podcast, I upload it to the web and with it goes an article.
And if someone was to Google it. It would not show up in the Google search unless I have optimized it for all of the potential words that people might be Googling. Now, the reason I’m telling you this is not to bore you with my backend business strategy. It’s to make you understand. The articles that come up first are going to be the articles that have used a lot of very strategically placed words that capture your attention.
They, it’s a very strategic way of keeping you on that webpage. It’s just like the internet algorithm and the YouTube and the social media algorithm. They are there to keep you on their page and they are there to hit. On the thing that you are Googling. So if you were to Google, does a headache mean I have a brain aneurysm?
It’s not there to give you the correct answer. It is there. The SEO, the search engine optimization is there to give you the article with the most words. Headache and brain aneurysm, and you’re going to find the article, not that you need to read, that’s specifically for your situation. You’re gonna read the article that has the most use of that keyword, so it’s important that you understand what you’re reading is not an article that is the most correct.
It’s often the one that has the best SEO and that can often get you into trouble. The second thing is legalities, as you write articles. There are legal things you have to cover. Otherwise, websites get sued. So even if they’re doing an article, let’s say, on headaches, they legally have to say, if you’re noticing some symptoms, please go to the doctor because they don’t wanna be held liable of giving you relief.
You think you’re fine and then something bad were to happen. So legally, a lot of these websites like WebMD and, and these bigger hospital websites that you’re probably coming along often. They legally have to put in worst case scenarios, just like on advertisements, on medications, they have that really fast moving a ad at the end going, this may cause blindness and headaches and all these things.
They have to legally mention that, and so you are going to read it. As soon as you see the word cancer or brain aneurysm, you’re gonna freak out, but it’s there not because it’s valid to you, it’s there because legally they need to put that in. The next thing is. Who is writing these articles often?
They’re definitely not doctors. In fact, I’ve been reached out by many, many companies saying, would you please write me an article on A, B, and c? It’s, I have nothing to do with these companies. I’m not affiliated with them. They are just outsourcing to whoever they can find. They’ve Googled somebody. They think that they’ve done their little bit of due diligence, but how do they know that I’m gonna give the right information?
We don’t even know who’s writing these articles, so it’s important that you understand that what you’re Googling is probably not accurate for your specific medical stuff. The next thing is. If you are using ai, and a lot of people are using AI now, AI does hallucinate. I actually have a friend who wrote their own name into AI and said, tell me about this person themselves and AI hallucinated and told them.
That this person, the, when they had AI in themselves, had written a book and they’ve never once written a book. And in AI it even listed the book’s name and it listed who it was published by. This person has never written a book, so you have to understand that AI is going to hallucinate. You cannot trust it as an super helpful advisor for your medical symptoms.
And the next thing to know is they don’t know your medical history. They don’t know exactly what medications you’re taking. They don’t know what you’ve been eating and what your environment’s like and what else is going in your life. So please do not rely on Google to give you accurate advice on your medical situation.
So it’s very important that you know this so that you can start to be a little more dis. You can be a little more skeptical when you go to pick up your phone. Now, what we wanna do now is move on to step two, which is simple. But hard. It’s actually to put your phone down. It might sound redundant. Of course, Kimberly, that’s why I’m here.
I wanna put my phone down, but I want you to understand that on either side of putting your phone down are two important strategies. It’s not a matter of willpower, it’s not a matter of, just put it down, slap your hand. No, we first wanna understand the anxiety cycle. We wanna understand that the websites and all the things aren’t going to help.
In fact, they’re going to make it feel worse. Then you’re gonna work at either putting your phone away, putting it down, locking it in a drawer. They do now have things called the brick. A brick. I’m not sponsored by them, but a brick. A brick is ultimately a thing that locks down certain websites so that you cannot access them.
You can put holds, you can hand your phone over. I’m serious. This is about the most important thing is you actually do not engage with your phone. Even if it’s just like, oh, I’ll just do a one minute search. It won’t be a big deal. And then I promise I’ll put it down. No, we’re committing to putting it down.
As you remember, and that cycle is if you go around the cycle, you have the symptoms, you have the uncertainty, then you usually pick it up. Now we are agreeing now not to do this. What happens with that? Is you won’t get that scary life sentence that you’re reading about, but you also won’t get that few, right?
And so let’s talk about what to do once you don’t get that relief from that uncertainty. What we wanna think about here is the third skill. Which is called response prevention. Response prevention is a gold standard skill that we use. It’s under the umbrella of cognitive behavioral therapy, and what that involves is it’s the removal of all safety behaviors that are done to reduce or remove anxiety or uncertainty.
So it’s not just. Reducing, picking up your phone. It’s this overall blanket approach that is sort of like a full 360 approach where we don’t do any other behavior either to reduce or remove that uncertainty. So this would include, not checking, it would include not asking a loved one for advice. We can be very, very skilled here.
We might be like, oh, that’s odd. I have this little bump on my on my wrist. Do you ever get bumps in your wrist or do you think this is fine? Like we often will go to others for that reassurance instead of to going to Google. The next one is rumination. Instead of looking at your phone, I don’t want you to just replace that by going ran and ran and ran about how you may or may not have an aneurysm.
We also don’t wanna catastrophize, right? And say, this headache is getting worse and it’s so bad and that’s only gonna create more distress for you. And the last one is, we’re not gonna engage in self punishment for the fact that you’re triggered. Now, this is a commitment. This is no easy feat. So I wanna just recognize that if we were to go back here.
Understanding the cycle check easy, putting down your phone check. Moderately easy to do for short periods of time, but this response prevention piece is a little bit harder, and it’s really important that you give yourself lots of compassion as you do that, and you’re really sign up for this. So let me teach you a little trick.
Now we can see this little cycle here that we’ve already reviewed and we’re committing to not engaging in Googling. Now, what we’re all gonna do when we take out the Googling and take out the reassurance seeking is you will find that that discomfort will rise and fall on its own. It will go up, but it will come down.
It will not last forever. Now, in no way am I saying don’t go to the doctor. If this is a symptom that hasn’t gone away, that’s getting worse. It’s impacting your functioning by all means. Seek appropriate medical care. That’s a good step. Do not consult with Dr. Google. It’ll send you down the wrong track.
But ideally, you would practice riding this wave out. You don’t wanna run to the doctor every time you have a little bump or a little headache, and you have uncertainty in these thoughts that it could be left threatening. You have to understand. Your brain’s always gonna be catastrophizing, especially if you have health anxiety or hypochondriac.
So we wanna get really good at being patient and waiting out. Symptoms so that we’re not constantly seeking reassurance from doctors either. Now, what will happen here is this, again, it will rise and fall. Where I want you to focus is on where this little arrow is right here. Right at the very bottom of that wave.
’cause that’s usually when you start to pick up the phone. You’re like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. I cannot tolerate this discomfort. And you immediately go to that reassurance seeking Google. The next time I in the wave I want you to be concerned about is when it’s starting to get really high. This is often where.
Have a moment of weakness and we are only responding to anxiety. We are not asking what’s really rational in that moment. We’re just like, I need to get rid of this uncertainty and we don’t wanna engage in that because when we, when we engage in uncertainty in that way, we’re reinforcing fear. We’re reinforcing this idea that we have to get certainty to be able to move on.
My goal is to help you move on with that uncertainty. Now, how will you do that? Number one, it’s gonna take a degree of willingness to be uncomfortable. Now, I wanna remind you. You are way stronger than you think. Really, believe me on that. You are so much stronger than you think. So do practice widening your ability and your, your degree of willingness that you can tolerate your ability to tolerate discomfort is going to benefit you in so many ways in your lifetime.
The second thing I want you to do is to stay very present. If your attention is on. Dying or whether or not you’re dying, you are going to be absolutely freaked out and you’re not going to be present in the life that you have. And so we wanna learn at engaging in this present moment. What do you see?
What do you hear? What do you smell? What are you doing? Who are you with? Pay attention to that, and you’ll have to do that over and over again. The next one is acceptance. Acceptance is accepting discomfort. Accepting uncertainty and also accepting that sometimes our body has a headache and it heals itself.
Sometimes our body has pain and it heals itself. Again, I am in no way saying don’t attend a doctor if you are struggling with some kind of medical condition, but I don’t think we need to run to the doctor for every ache and pain that we have. The fourth piece here is, as I mentioned before, identify what.
Actions, you can do that line up with your values, not the ones that line up with your fear, but the ones that truly matter to you. So that might mean that while you’re uncertain, you might. Do your homework or do a report for work while you’re uncertain or maybe you are, have some discomfort, you go and get the exercise that you said that you are going to get today gently.
You might meet up with that friend. If that helps you and you’d already planned to meet up with the friend, you might do your regular daily hygiene because it’s important that we don’t change anything just because we’re uncertain. We wanna stay on task and build our capacity to be uncertain as much as we can.
Now, this is your reminder that response prevention involves not just the absence of picking up your phone. It also involves reducing, checking, other reassurance, seeking other rumination, other catastrophization and self punishment. Now. If you struggle with rumination, we have a whole course called the Rumination Reset.
You can head over to cbt school.com and it will teach you specifically how to reduce rumination. If that’s something that you get stuck on overthinking, spiraling out of control, mental compulsions, you will love the rumination reset. Okay, so here is the cycle of hypochondria. We understand this cycle. We also understand that we wanna put down our phone so we can practice response prevention.
Your job is to remember that if you are struggling, it doesn’t mean you have to do this perfectly. You can also try what we call the delay method, which is I’m going to delay picking up my phone for three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, three hours, and pick times. Which you can say, okay, I am struggling not to use my phone, but I am willing to do it, not pick it up for 30 minutes.
Some people say, I’m gonna be willing to not do it today, and if I’m still struggling, I can pick it up tomorrow. Then they wake up tomorrow and they go, okay, I’m still struggling. Can I go another day? Yes. Or another hour? Break it down into small, manageable parts. I promise you it will make it. So much easier.
So again, please do this gently. This is not easy, right? It might seem simple, but it’s not easy, and I want you to remember that just because it’s hard doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. You’re doing the best you can. So many of my clients have overcome this with time and practice and patience, so I want you to remember this is totally doable.
Just might take some reps and some practice. Now as always, thank you so much for having me. It is an absolute honor to be on the show with you spending time with you. I know how important your time is. I know how hard you’re trying, so the fact that you chose me makes me so, so happy. All right, I’ll see you in the next video and I cannot wait to see you there.
Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbt school.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting cbt school.com.
