Checking Your Body for Signs Something Is Wrong

You found it three weeks ago and you have checked it every day since, sometimes twice an hour. You have pressed it, photographed it, compared it with the other side and read nine pages about it.

You know that checking does not help, which is the strange part. And the next time the thought arrives, your hand goes there anyway.

Why checking cannot give you what you want

The aim of a check is certainty, and a check cannot produce certainty, because bodies are lumpy, asymmetrical and changeable.

So each check gives you a few seconds of relief and then a new question. Was it bigger yesterday? Is that a different color? Did it hurt before I pressed it, or because I did?

Worse, checking creates the very evidence it is looking for. Press anything repeatedly and it gets tender. Take your pulse while worried and it is fast. Keep swallowing to test your throat and your throat starts to feel tight. Search a symptom and you will find the frightening explanation long before the boring one.

And the relief is what keeps the habit alive. Your brain learns that checking fixes the fear, briefly, so the urge comes back sooner and stronger.

Notice the whole family of checking

It is rarely only looking. The behaviors that do the same job include taking your pulse, weighing yourself repeatedly, examining the same spot, swallowing to test, breathing deeply to see if it hurts, reading medical pages, and asking someone whether it looks all right.

Reassurance from other people is a check too, which is why asking your partner for the tenth time does not help either of you.

So is the opposite: avoiding looking at all, avoiding exercise in case of a symptom, or putting off an appointment in case of what you might hear. Both ends run on the same fear.

Get it properly checked once

This is the part that makes everything else possible.

Make the appointment, tell the doctor everything you have noticed, and ask directly: do you need to see this again, and what would you want me to come back for?

That last question is the one worth getting an answer to. A plan you can hold on to — come back if it changes shape, grows, bleeds, or if it is still there in six weeks — gives you something to follow other than your own monitoring.

Then take the answer as the answer. Going back repeatedly for the same thing is another kind of checking, and more scans rarely settle a fear that reassurance cannot settle.

Put the checking on a diet

Stopping dead usually fails. Reducing it on a schedule usually works.

Decide a specific allowance: once a day, at a set time, for thirty seconds. Then cut it to every other day, then twice a week, then stop. Write it down, because without a plan you will negotiate with yourself at the moment you are least able to.

In between, when the urge arrives, let it be there without acting. It will rise, peak and fade, usually in a few minutes, and each time you let it pass without checking, the urge turns up a little weaker.

Keep your hands busy, go into another room, put the phone in a drawer. The aim is to get through the wave, not to feel calm.

And stop looking things up. Delete the history, block the sites if you need to. Searching is the most reliable way to turn a slightly odd sensation into an afternoon of terror.

Say something accurate instead

Not reassurance, which your mind will argue with, but something true.

I have had this checked, and my job now is to let the plan do its work. Or: this is my alarm, not new information. Or simply: not today, I check on Fridays.

Flat and factual beats positive. You are not trying to convince yourself nothing is wrong; you are declining to relitigate it every hour.

What this is not

None of this means ignoring your body, and it does not mean a symptom is imaginary.

Real things need looking at: a lump that is new or growing, bleeding that is not normal for you, a mole that is changing, losing weight without trying to, a cough that will not clear, chest pain on exertion, anything your doctor told you to report. Have them seen.

The difference is between seeing something once, properly, and monitoring it continuously. The first is sensible. The second gives you no new information and costs you your week.

When to get help with the worry itself

Please talk to a doctor or a therapist if checking is taking up a large part of your day, if you cannot accept reassurance for more than an hour, if you have had the same thing looked at several times, or if the fear is keeping you from work, sleep or the people around you.

This is one of the best-understood patterns in therapy and it responds well, usually in a small number of sessions, by doing roughly what is above with someone keeping you honest about the checking. Say to the doctor or counselor you see that the problem is the checking and the fear rather than the symptom; that sentence will get you to the right kind of help quickly.