If I get nervous at the doctor's office, is it "white coat syndrome" or illness anxiety disorder? Learn how to tell the difference and how to react healthily to medical anxiety.
"Care-seeking" and "care-avoidance" are common responses to illness-related anxiety.It is not uncommon to feel somewhat uneasy in a doctor’s office. Colloquially, we refer to this as “white coat syndrome,” and it is experienced by many patients. After all, medical settings are clinical and often less than inviting. Many people experience feelings ofas they await a doctor, sit in an examination room, receive a shot, or undergo a physical check-up.
The answer is best viewed through a lens of anxiety. In an anxious state, we misinterpret benign situations as threatening ones. Here are some common anxious thoughts that patients experience related to medical care:The doctor may miss something important and give me a clean bill of health when, actually, there is something wrong.In a heightened state, we may anxiously question our health status even if we are given a “clean bill of health.
How can you tell if you are experiencing plain old “white coat syndrome” or a more intense anxiety response? First and foremost, we need to pay attention to our behavioral response. Aresponse might look like moving a scheduled appointment to a sooner date, visiting a different doctor in advance of the appointment to quell anxiety, or scheduling additional appointments or unprescribed tests to supplement the physical. All of these can be viewed as over-responses.
All behavioral responses are reactions to situations and stimulus, and behavioral responses to medical treatment are no different. Left unchecked, these fear-based responses can quickly escalate to full-blown illness anxiety. Awareness of our responses, understanding of care-seeking and care-avoidant behavior, and acknowledgment of our own unique way of responding is our path to ensuring a healthy reaction to a sometimes frightening part of living in a human body.
The simplest question to ask yourself if you are feeling anxious about your physical health is, “Does this feeling require immediate action?” When we stop before we react, we create space for clearand a true, unbiased view of the situation that does not result in a behavioral response on either side of the extremes.As the lines between real and fake blur, Americans increasingly chase the idea of authenticity.
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