Stop doing THIS if you have health anxiety..

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]everybody, welcome back to my channel.

[00:00:02]If you're new here, I'm Sheryl. Thanks.

[00:00:04]I'm an ex health anxiety sufferer and a now health anxiety specialist helping you guys recover, too.

[00:00:11]So, if you have health anxiety, you need to stop doing this.

[00:00:18]This is going to sound like really odd, maybe strange advice. Maybe it's going to feel really counterintuitive, but I promise you this is the key.

[00:00:28]I have worked with thousands of people now.

[00:00:31]On average, I see about 35 to 40 people a week. And if there's one thing that I noticed, is people are trying too hard to problem solve their health anxiety.

[00:00:43]I often will meet people and they'll say to me, "You know, Sheryl, you know, I feel like I've done everything.

[00:00:51]I've done all the therapy. I've read all the books. I've done the acupuncture.

[00:00:55]I've changed my diet. I've exercised.

[00:00:57]I've meditated. I've gone on the fancy 5,000-lb retreat.

[00:01:04]And I'm still suffering."

[00:01:06]And I was exactly the same. When I had health anxiety, I turned recovery into basically a full-time job.

[00:01:15]I was just obsessed with recovery to the point where it made things a million times worse because I was not living in the meantime.

[00:01:24]So, intellectually, I understood my health anxiety. I got to a point where I'd read every book on anxiety, mental health, nervous system regulation. I knew it all.

[00:01:38]I had done rounds and rounds of therapy, tried different therapists. So, on paper, I was doing everything that you would need to do, right?

[00:01:47]But the obsession of recovery and the obsession of trying to get rid of my symptoms more so actually prolonged my anxiety in the long run because by doing all of that, I was basically telling my nervous system that anxiety and all of the symptoms that would come with that was something that I could not feel. And then if I felt them, then I was somehow failing.

[00:02:12]So, in that pursuit of constantly problem-solving, it actually made me so deflated with time and it led me to feel just really demotivated because everything that I was trying wasn't working.

[00:02:30]You know, so I would get all excited.

[00:02:32]I'd think, "Oh, I found this amazing woman. You know, she offers these these sessions or I'm going to do hypnotherapy or I'm going to try this new thing, EFT tapping or I'm going to do EMDR."

[00:02:45]And I'd get myself all psyched up because I would be convinced that maybe this is the missing key.

[00:02:49]Maybe this is the thing that I've been looking for the entire time.

[00:02:54]And so I would try it and the problem is is that we're looking for complete cures, right? That's step one part of the problem is that we want cures.

[00:03:04]And so, you know, these things, maybe they would help perhaps like a little bit, right? They'd help a little bit, but then the anxiety would still be there. So, I would ultimately think, "Oh, see, that didn't work either. So, back to the back to the drawing board."

[00:03:16]By the way, look how beautiful.

[00:03:18]Uh I'm just walking the dog. I don't know if you can see him. Sunny.

[00:03:21]There he is playing around there.

[00:03:23]I'm actually just in between Well, I should be seeing a client right now, but my client had to cancel.

[00:03:28]Um so, I thought I'd use the spare hour before I see my other client to just go on a walk and this is what is um literally opposite my house. So, I'm super lucky. The kids are in school, so uh it's just me and Sunny right now.

[00:03:42]Um anyways, back to topic. Yeah, so I, you know, I used to find myself just feeling extremely let down and I was looking for this cure.

[00:03:53]Um and I felt that if I just spent enough money or kept looking enough that I would find it somehow.

[00:04:01]Um but ultimately, I I needed to do less. And if it's one thing that I do when I first meet any client that is new to me, is I figure out what they're already doing or what they've already done.

[00:04:17]And I often surprise people when I tell them that they probably need to be doing less.

[00:04:24]And they're like, "Sheryl, what do you mean? What do you mean I should be doing less?" And I say to them, "Well, because you're problem-solving so much that it's it's causing more problems, right? You're trying too hard."

[00:04:36]And again, I know that seems counterintuitive because in other areas of our life, if we try harder, you know, it'll solve the problem. So, if we have like a money problem, for example, well, maybe it does make sense to try harder with that because maybe then you find another job because you've looked hard or maybe you, you know, sell something. So, in other areas of life, it makes sense.

[00:04:58]But with this, the more that we obsessively try and solve our problem, the more we're telling ourselves that we have a problem in the first place. And we do have a problem, but that's not the message that we want to give the nervous system. We actually want to very slowly but surely just naturally desensitize to our anxiety and to our symptoms and to actually lean into saying, "Do you know what? I'm just going to go and get a coffee today and I'm just going to go for a walk and I'm going to get my work done and I'm just going to live."

[00:05:29]I'm just going to live because I, like honestly, my days back when I was obsessing over recovery, I'd wake up early. I'd have to journal.

[00:05:39]I'd have to meditate. I'd be like, "Right, now I need to go on my walk and then I need to go to my acupuncture appointment and then I've got to be careful what I eat because I'm trying to do an anti-inflammatory diet because I want to get rid of this joint pain in my knees and I I need to get my magnesium in because I've got muscle twitching and I need to sort that out." And so it was just this endless pursuit of me trying to do everything in my power to get rid of my symptoms. When really what I needed to do is to stop engaging quite so much.

[00:06:09]I was engaging so much. Every day was daily engagement with my anxiety. It was It was every day doing something to get rid of it. And I I remember for me it was like such a surprise that I got to a stage where I just kind of gave up because I'd spent a lot of money, time, energy on so many resources.

[00:06:31]And I was still feeling pretty bad and I just thought, "Sod it.

[00:06:36]I can't be bothered anymore. I'm just going to live my life."

[00:06:40]You know, and at that point, I I would say that was also coming probably partly from a place of depression, which I don't recommend. But I think me feeling that way allowed me to just give up this endless pursuit.

[00:06:55]And then what I found was that I was then able to just focus on the very basics. The very basics of just taking care of myself and Oh, we've reached a block end, Sunny.

[00:07:08]I don't think we can go that way.

[00:07:11]Oh, [snorts] they must be building something here. There's something behind me that wasn't here before.

[00:07:17]So, slight detour.

[00:07:19]Um Oh, there's long grass. It's tickling my legs. I don't like that.

[00:07:24]Um Now I've lost my train of thought. That was silly of me. Um Oh gosh, what was I saying?

[00:07:32]It'll come back to me in a second. I always do this because I just start filming and hope for the best.

[00:07:39]Um but yeah, ultimately, you know, I I felt that in that kind of surrendering, almost giving up kind of mentality, and I just focused on "I'm not going to let my anxiety control my life anymore."

[00:07:57]And I'm just going to do the basics. You know, it was something about just doing the basics that actually really made a difference for me in the long run. I just stopped fighting because it was a it was a fight that I just felt that the more I tried to fight it, the stronger it become anyway. Like the more I would the more that I would obsess over getting rid of my symptoms, the stronger the symptoms would be.

[00:08:21]And that was just an incredibly frustrating journey. And like I said, it's just so demotivating when you're trying all these different supplements and you know, you're seeing a different therapist and then I'm going to see a psychiatrist and actually I'm going to see a a holistic doctor this time and I just think that the body and the mind can heal by itself if we just give it the time and the space. That's what it needs, time and space and normality.

[00:08:49]That's what your nervous system is craving, just normality.

[00:08:52]And I know it's hard. Like I'm saying it like it's easy. I'm well aware that this is really hard because there's nothing worse than having weird symptoms and there's nothing worse than just wanting it all to go away. I was exactly the same. I was completely plagued by symptoms. And all I wanted I would have paid any money to have got rid of my symptoms because I was obsessed with them. I could not think of anything but my symptoms. But I realized that that was just such a vicious cycle that it wasn't going to stop until I did.

[00:09:24]And so I stopped the problem-solving. I stopped researching. I stopped Googling.

[00:09:29]I stopped going on the Reddit forums and asking other people what they were doing.

[00:09:33]You know, I stopped obsessively checking my body and just all the appointments. You know, it was so draining. It was so draining like just like from a soul point of view, you know?

[00:09:45]Um so, like I said, when I work with clients, I know that I surprise some people because I think when people book a session with me, sometimes they're expecting me to go, "Right, you've got to do this, this, this and this, and we've got to work on that, and we need to do this.

[00:10:01]And often it's the opposite.

[00:10:03]Often it's more Oh, what a cool bird.

[00:10:08]I don't know what that is.

[00:10:10]Some kind of bird of prey.

[00:10:14]Anyways, um yeah, it's often about actually just normalizing people's lives and getting them to lean into sitting with uncertainty and and giving up that desire to problem solve.

[00:10:28]And I know it's hard because we're human beings, so instinctively we want to problem solve. That's what we're good at.

[00:10:35]We've got to think about where this problem solving has gotten you so far.

[00:10:40]And if you're anything like me, if you really sit and reflect, I bet you'll tell yourself that if anything, it's just kind of made things worse.

[00:10:50]And that's the cruel irony of having health anxiety is that we do all of these things in an attempt to feel better.

[00:10:59]And then we feel worse, and it's like, gosh, that sucks. I really tried, and then it backfired.

[00:11:07]So, sometimes it's about doing less, not more.

[00:11:12]Sometimes the body and the nervous system and and the brain just wants things to be a lot more simple than than we make out.

[00:11:24]And again, I'm not saying that it's easy because it may seem simple on paper, but actually doing nothing is the hardest thing of all. It's easier to problem solve, right?

[00:11:35]It it it's easier to be proactive because at least you feel like you're doing something. You feel like you've got some level of control.

[00:11:42]When you give up that control, your brain doesn't like that.

[00:11:46]But that's what your nervous system needs.

[00:11:49]So, sometimes less is more.

[00:11:51]That's my I guess my message for today.

[00:11:57]And sometimes you've just got to give yourself the space to breathe again.

[00:12:05]Allow your nervous system just to catch up just a moment.

[00:12:09]So, if you found this video helpful, please give it a thumbs up.

[00:12:14]Leave a comment. I always read them.

[00:12:17]And subscribe if you haven't done so already. It really means a lot to me.

[00:12:21]Um and if you want to work with me, guys, you can head on over to my website, www.sherylthinks.co.uk.

[00:12:29]I offer one-to-one sessions, texting sessions.

[00:12:34]Uh the one-to-one sessions are are through Zoom, by the way, so I work with anyone. I I work with people all over the world. It's one part of my job that I love. Um yeah, I do texting sessions for people who prefer text.

[00:12:47]I do a monthly workshop for a big group of people, normally about 50 people, and I've also now added to my website, something that I'm kind of trialing, is uh support groups. So, this is available for 10 people.

[00:13:03]And this is a safe way to connect with like-minded individuals that isn't Reddit or Facebook groups because they're regulated by me.

[00:13:12]Um and so, it's a nice way to comfortably meet people but in a non-triggering environment, if that makes sense. So, if you want to book any of those things, you can head on over to my website.

[00:13:23]Thank you so much for being here. And to to my subscribers who have been here from the beginning, I often see you guys comment, and I just want to say that I really appreciate you guys. Like you've just been here through my entire journey, and it and it actually genuinely means a lot. I know I don't say it very often, but some of you were there when I was at my absolute worst, when I was posting, you know, 10 years ago when I couldn't even function, and a lot of you are still here watching my videos almost a decade later, so I just wanted to say that I really, really appreciate you guys um for being here so long. So, you take care, everyone, and uh I'll see you on the next video. Bye.