Hypochondria, hypochondriac

Hypochondria is a constant feeling of a painful condition, a belief in the presence of a serious illness, excessive concern about one’s health in the absence of objective reasons for this. As an ongoing condition, hypochondria becomes a personality trait, and when it becomes the predominant focus of a person’s life, it becomes a personality type. The person turns into a hypochondriac.

Most often, hypochondriacs “discover” various tumors, diseases of the heart, gastrointestinal tract or genital organs. Recently, a new kind of hypochondria has appeared — the conviction of a person that he is HIV-positive. Of course, negative test results are ignored.

A person who really suffers from hypochondria is quite easy to recognize by the following signs: complete preoccupation with one’s own health and sensations from the body, suspiciousness, psychosomatics and depressive moods without delusions. In a mild form, hypochondria is the usual dreary sadness, spleen, continuously lasting empty suffering.

So, in everyday life, hypochondriacs are often called whiners and people with romantic experiences, suffering from the imperfection of the world and the lack of meaning in life. Watch the video “Ah, auntie, why did I leave the light?” (Film «Formula of Love»)

How to tell a whiner from a hypochondriac

Sometimes ordinary whiners and malingerers are called hypochondriacs, but this is not so, and it is not difficult to distinguish a whiner from a real hypochondriac. The whiner and the simulator is not so much concerned with the state of his health as he is eager to attract attention to himself. He does not need to feel bad at all — it is enough to talk about it, wringing his hands and demanding a special attitude towards himself. In the same case, when the attention is so close that they try to impose unpleasant examinations or procedures on the whiner, he immediately recovers (the appointment of a colonoscopy is especially effective). True, after a couple of days he gets sick again, but … with something safer.

Unlike a whiner, a real hypochondriac suffers absolutely genuinely, he is constantly tormented by a constant exhausting fear of death, suffering, helplessness, he sincerely wants to be treated and cured. All his thoughts are painfully focused on the state of his own health. Dissatisfaction with doctors is not caused by a desire to manipulate or assert oneself, but by the fear that they are treating him incorrectly, and by the certainty that a neglected disease will soon lead him to a deplorable end.

A hypochondriac can torment himself with diets, medical checkups, and very unpleasant painful procedures. He has no obvious bonuses from his condition, and we can say that he suffers disinterestedly.

How to Treat a Hypochondriac

Who to contact? Hypochondriacs run to the doctors all the time, but doctors, of course, cannot help them: the disease is imaginary, which makes it truly incurable. The first step to healing for any hypochondriac is to realize that the problem is not health. Further see →