Treatment Areas · Health Anxiety Therapy
Health Anxiety Therapy in Burlington & Across Ontario
Spend less time wondering if something is wrong.
Health anxiety can make every symptom, sensation, or change in your body feel important to figure out. Therapy can help you step out of the cycle of monitoring, checking, and seeking certainty about your health.
Session Fee
Free Consultation
$180
15 minutes
No charge
50-minute session
Format
Availability
In person in Burlington
Daytime & evening
Virtual Across Ontario
Appointments available
About · Health Anxiety
When every sensation starts to feel like something you need to figure out.
Noticing something in your body can quickly turn into needing to know what it means.
Health anxiety can make it difficult to experience physical sensations without wondering whether they could be a sign of something serious. A new symptom, something you read online, or even hearing about someone else's illness can be enough to set the cycle in motion.
You might check your body, search symptoms online, ask others for reassurance, seek medical information, or repeatedly think through whether you've missed something important.
These responses can bring relief or certainty for a little while. But when your brain learns that health-related uncertainty needs to be resolved, reassurance rarely lasts for long. Another sensation, thought, or possibility can bring the doubt right back.
When your health starts taking up more mental space.
Health anxiety isn't only about worrying that you're sick. It can affect how closely you monitor your body, how you interpret ordinary sensations, and how much time you spend trying to determine whether you're okay.
Monitoring your body
Frequently scanning for sensations, symptoms, or physical changes.
Checking your body
Examining, touching, measuring, or comparing parts of your body for signs of illness.
Searching symptoms online
Researching sensations or conditions in an attempt to determine what they mean.
Difficulty trusting reassurance
Feeling better after receiving reassurance, only for another doubt or possibility to arise.
Seeking reassurance
Asking others whether something seems normal or looking for confirmation that you're okay.
Avoiding health-related triggers
Avoiding medical information, appointments, illness-related conversations, or other things that bring up health fears.
When you're worried about your health, reassurance can bring real relief. But when another sensation or possibility appears, the doubt can return, sometimes sending you back to checking, researching, or asking for reassurance again.
Therapy focuses on changing this cycle, not by ignoring genuine health concerns, but by helping you become less dependent on certainty and reassurance to feel okay.
Reassurance can feel helpful. So why doesn’t it last?
How therapy can help with health anxiety
Reduce checking and reassurance
Gradually rely less on the behaviours you use to determine whether you're okay.
Notice when a sensation quickly becomes evidence of a feared outcome and develop a more flexible way of relating to those interpretations.
Stepping back from catastrophic interpretations
Become more able to engage with situations you've avoided because they trigger health-related fear.
Approaching instead of avoiding
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Through therapy, we may help you…
reduce checking and reassurance behaviours
decrease fear surrounding physical sensations
improve tolerance for uncertainty
feel less consumed by health-related fears
rebuild trust in your body and yourself
At Ascend, we use evidence-based approaches including CBT, ACT, and exposure-based therapy to address the patterns that can keep health anxiety going.
Together, you and your therapist can identify the situations, sensations, thoughts, checking, reassurance seeking, and avoidance involved in your individual cycle. Treatment may involve gradually reducing safety behaviours, approaching health-related uncertainty, and practicing experiencing physical sensations without immediately trying to determine what they mean.
The goal isn't to stop noticing your body or to never have concerns about your health. It's to help those concerns take up less of your attention, time, and life.
Treatment goes beyond telling you not to Google your symptoms.
Therapy at Ascend for Health Anxiety
Meet Our Health Anxiety Therapists
At Ascend Anxiety Clinic, our therapists understand how consuming health anxiety can become, especially when reassurance never seems to last. We use evidence-based approaches including CBT, ACT, and exposure-based therapy to address checking, reassurance seeking, body monitoring, avoidance, and difficulty tolerating health-related uncertainty.
Jordan Best
Emma Weber
Therapy that fits your life.
Meet with your therapist face-to-face at our Burlington office, located at The Therapy Commons. In-person sessions are available for teens and adults.
In Person · Therapy In Burlington
Virtual · Therapy Across Ontario
Meet with your therapist securely online from wherever you are in Ontario, making it easier to fit therapy into your schedule without needing to travel.
How To Get Started
Finding the right support can start with a conversation.
Complete the form below and we'll be in touch to help you connect with a therapist who fits what you're looking for. You can also book a free 15-minute consultation if you'd like to speak with us first.
Email Us
info@ascendanxietyclinic.ca
Visit Us
3425 Harvester Road Unit 213, Burlington, ON, L7N 3M7, Canada