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You’re not paranoid if they’re really after you

 •  • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

Hypochondria is medical anxiety, a phobia of pathology. While fear and hypervigilance may erode quality of life, the pure hypochondriac is not suffering from a medical problem — not yet anyway. It’s a mental illness.

Of course, you’re not paranoid if they’re really after you, and we can learn fear of disease from actual disease. Or, if you were hypochondriac to begin with, the disease is like gasoline on that fire.

Importantly, most people with fibromyalgia — undiagnosed chronic widespread pain — have no obvious fear of pathology. They are not hypochondriacs, by definition. They are probably appropriately anxious about their health problems, of course, but that’s not hypochondria. Repeat after me:

  • being worried about medically unexplained symptoms is not hypochondria
  • being worried about medically unexplained symptoms is not hypochondria
  • being worried about medically unexplained symptoms is not hypochondria

That’s an excerpt from my article about fibromyalgia, which got a bunch of extra attention this week. It works quite well as a standalone point, and it’s an important one.

PainSci Member Login » Submit your email to unlock member content. If you can’t remember/access your registration email, please contact me. ~ Paul Ingraham, PainSci Publisher