This topic comes up at regular intervals in therapy so I thought I would write about it so that those of you who do it will have some assistance in stopping it (you know who you are) and those of you who are considering doing it will withstand the temptation.
Basically: don’t do it!
I’m talking about googling physical symptoms. We google almost everything these days from our latest date to a cooking recipe and more often than not Google is a really helpful resource (in fact I find it hard to remember what we did BG (Before Google) when we needed to find out a quick fact). However, I do not believe, as a general rule, that Google is very helpful when it comes to physical illnesses. Especially if you have an anxious temperament and let’s face it, it is often people with anxiety who end up worrying excessively about physical symptoms and therefore googling them.
When you notice a physical symptom it can either mean nothing or it indicates the presence of illness. You have no way of knowing until you see a doctor so what are you really gaining by googling your symptom? In fact, given the human tendency to catastrophyse in combination with the natural activation of the fear system when we feel under threat the only thing you may be gaining is a sleepless night worrying about cancer and amputation of limbs and other scary stuff. There is a lot of information on the internet and if we google non-specific symptoms (e.g., fatigue, nausea or headache) many different things come up but if we feel anxious our cognitive bias will be towards threat-related information so that we pay selective attention to the scary information (e.g., cancer) at the expense of other more benign information (e.g., coming down with a cold).
The formula may go something like this: Physical symptom + stress response + catastrophysing = conclusion of worst possible outcome
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
My advice is therefore simple: resist, resist, resist
So next time you encounter a worrying symptom call your GP. He or she has two clear advantages over you: 1) because they are not stressed they can think a lot clearer about your symptom, 2) they know – medically – a lot more than you and if they are unsure at least they know where to refer you.
So repeat after me: I will never google a physical symptom again 🙂
How did you know I do that??
Googling a physial symptom is indeed a highly addictive self-infliction of mental torture – not least when you have kids and start to google THEIR physical symptoms. I hereby promise to never to it again, not my own or other people’s. Thanks for the heartfelt advice.