Improve Anxiety and Self-Doubt

Anxiety and self-doubt are the WORST. 

On the outside, everything might appear to be just fine. You have it all together. You are motivated, intelligent, successful, accomplished and organized. You probably have achieved a great deal in academics, your career, family life, friendships, or life experiences. Because of all of this, people might not even realize you have anxiety. Or if they do notice something, they might chalk it up to you being a perfectionist, an over thinker, a go-getter, an overachiever, a planner or detail-oriented. 

But you know this image of you doesn't capture the full picture of what is going on inside of you.  

Behind the scenes is an underlying anxiety and self-doubt that you are desperately trying to overcome with all of this 'doing.' All of the striving, accomplishing, planning, perfecting, people-pleasing and/or workaholism is how you try to prove your worth to yourself and others. And you are exhausted. You are tired of feeling bogged down by all of the unreasonable expectations you place on yourself.

All of the anxiety and self-doubt has you feeling like you are in somewhat of a 'stuck place.'

You feel stuck between the life you are currently living and the life you know is possible. At one point or another, you might have pictured another version of yourself. It is still you but it is the version of you that you know you are capable of becoming. The you who believes you are lovable, worthy and competent, with no need to prove yourself. The you who is confident about the value you add. The you who is finally free from all of the worry, self-criticism and insecurity that has kept you from feeling good about yourself and living your best life. You are ready to take the next step but are unsure of where to start. 

A few examples of how high-functioning anxiety and self-doubt can play out in daily life:

• Feeling inadequate in personal and/or professional life despite clear evidence to think otherwise
• Often feeling compelled to prove you are 'good enough' despite plenty of reasons to show you have accomplished a lot in personal and/or professional life
• Engaging in people-pleasing and/or difficulty setting boundaries at the home or work setting (i.e. often putting the needs of others before your own)
• Doubting whether you belong or 'deserve' your personal or professional success
• Being overly critical of yourself in your personal or professional life 
• Engaging in perfectionism to prove your worth, value or capability 
• Having unrealistic expectations of yourself or overextending yourself 
• Putting a lot of effort into maintaining a certain image in personal or professional life
• Assuming personal or professional accomplishments are due to external factors (e.g. luck, timing, connections) rather than due to internal factors (e.g. skill, ability, intelligence, diligence, commitment)
• Assuming others are more capable, effective or likable than you
• Worrying about how you are perceived in various social situations

Perhaps you have tried talking to loved ones or a therapist about this. 

But just talking about it hasn't made a big difference. You still wind up in the same old place of feeling anxious or unworthy. There is a reason that just talking about it hasn't helped much. You don't need another listener. You need new skills. 

What you need is to retrain or rewire your brain.

What a lot of people with health anxiety don't realize is this: you have thoughts, beliefs and behaviors that are actually making your anxiety and self-doubt worse over time. 

You can retrain your brain by making small (but intentional and consistent) changes in the way you think and behave each day. This is what we teach you to do in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT is a skill-based, action-oriented intervention that reshapes the thoughts, beliefs and behaviors that feed anxiety and self-doubt. CBT is one of the most evidence-based treatments available.

Hi, I'm Dr. Britney Chesworth. 

I'm a therapist, researcher, educator and coach. I've spent the past 15 years helping high-achieving individuals with anxiety and self-doubt transform into more confident and secure versions of themselves who believe they are worthy, capable and lovable.

High-functioning anxiety and self-doubt are some of my favorite struggles to work with because I battled these issues for so long. For many years, I felt compelled to earn by self worth through achievement, impression management and trying to keep everyone around me happy.  But no matter how much I accomplished in my personal and professional life, I still never felt good enough. I know how real this struggle can be. You are not alone.  

It wasn't until I tried cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that I started to notice a significant change in the way I saw myself. CBT is a skill-based, action-oriented approach that helps you to reshape unhelpful thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. Inspired by my personal growth and change, I decided to specialize in CBT and began using these methods with my clients. I've watched my clients experience remarkable transformation in their lives (in relatively short periods of time) through retraining their brain and changing how they see themselves. 

What you will accomplish if you take the time to learn the concepts and practice the skills in the Reclaim Your Life from Health Anxiety program:

Make less estimation errors about symptoms

Live more comfortably with some uncertainty about your health

Have a reasonable amount of hope in medical resources to help you detect & treat a disease 

Trust in your ability to cope with a medical condition or illness

Refrain from unhelpful behaviors like excessive checking & reassurance seeking

Be less afraid of the idea of death

Be less afraid of bodily sensations, symptoms & changes

Reduce avoidance & face your fears

Have less anxiety while managing a medical condition

CBT coaching to retrain your brain.

Drawing on 15 years of professional expertise and personal experience, I’ve created an online self-paced course designed to help you improve health anxiety with evidence-based techniques. In my signature course, Reclaim Your Life from Health Anxiety, I take you through a guided, step-by-step process to transform the way you see health, disease and death—empowering you to regain control of your life. 

The Reclaim Your Life Health Anxiety course, Module by Module:

MODULE 1:

Understand Your Health Anxiety

• Lesson: Overview of Health Anxiety
• Lesson: Identify Your Triggers & Thinking Errors
• Lesson: Identify Your Core Beliefs
• Lesson: Identify Your Problematic Behaviors
• Lesson: Tying it all Together to see the Vicious Cycle of Health Anxiety

MODULE 2:

Reduce Errors in Estimation

• Lesson: Understand Errors in Estimation
• Lesson: Thinking Errors, Socratic Dialogue & Thought Records
• Lesson: Relative Versus Absolute Statistics
• Lesson: The Examine the Evidence Exercise
• Lesson: The Pie Chart Technique
• Lesson: The Core Belief Exercise
• Lesson: The Content Cleanse

MODULE 3:

Recognize Your Ability to Cope with Disease

• Lesson: Understand Beliefs aout Inability to Cope
• Lesson: Thinking Errors, Socratic Dialogue & Thought Records
• Lesson: The Health Spectrum Exercise
• Lesson: The Interview Experiment
• Lesson: The Core Belief Exercise

MODULE 4:

Live More Comfortably with Bodily Sensations and Symptoms

• Lesson: Understand the Fear of Bodily Sensations
• Lesson: Thinking Errors, Socratic Dialogue & Thought Records
• Lesson: The Examine the Evidence Exercise
• Lesson: The Twist & Finish Out the Image Technique
• Lesson: The Survey Experiment
• Lesson: Attention Redirection & Relaxation Exercises
• Lesson: Interoceptive Exposure 

MODULE 5:

Stop Using Avoidance & Safety Behaviors

• Lesson: Understand the Cycle of Safety Behaviors & Avoidance
• Lesson: Finding the Balance in Managing Your Health
• Lesson: The Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Lesson: Understand & Prepare for Exposure Hierarchies
• Lesson: Design & Implement Your Exposure Hierarchy

MODULE 6:

Live More Comfortably with Uncertainty

• Lesson: Understand the Role of the 'Intolerance of Uncertainty' with Health Anxiety
• Lesson: Thinking Errors, Socratic Dialogue & Thought Records
• Lesson: Recognizing the Benefits of an Uncertain World
• Lesson: Harnessing Your Existing Skills
• Lesson: Mindfulness of Worry Thoughts
• Lesson: The Waiting Experiment

MODULE 7:

Find Some Hope in Medical Resources

• Lesson: Understand How Beliefs about Medicine Increase Health Anxiety
• Lesson: The Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Lesson: Exploring Common Beliefs about Medicine
• Lesson: Thinking Errors, Socratic Dialogue & Thought Records
• Lesson: The Content Cleanse
• Lesson: The Interview Experiment
• Lesson: The Core Belief Exercise
• Lesson: Strategies to Improve Interactions w/ Providers
• Lesson: Addressing Avoidance of Healthcare with Exposure

MODULE 8:

Become Less Afraid of Death

• Lesson: Understand Death Anxiety
• Lesson: Improve Fears of the Dying Process
• Lesson: Improve Fears of Leaving Loved Ones Behind
• Lesson: Improve Fears about What Happens After Death

BONUS MODULE:

Manage Health Anxiety in the Face of a Medical Condition

• Lesson: Understand Health Anxiety in the Context of Medical Conditions
• Lesson: Thinking Errors, Socratic Dialogue & Thought Records
• Lesson: Distinguish Between Anxiety & Valid Health Concerns
• Lesson: Distinguish Between Productive & Unproductive Worry
• Lesson: The Twist & Finish Out the Image Technique
• Lesson: Dialing Down Catastrophic Thinking
• Lesson: Gratitude Journaling
• Lesson: Reshaping Illness-Related Beliefs
• Lesson: Waiting for Test Results
• Lesson: Changing Behaviors
• Lesson: Managing Anxiety During Testing & Treatment

Imagine if you weren't so worried about your health. Imagine if you felt safe. Your life might look quite different. Perhaps you would be able to:

• Notice a symptom and still be able to go about your day like normal
• Be less scared of diseases because you are able to see the probability and impact of disease more realistically
• Be more comfortable with the inevitable uncertainty about health
• Pay more attention to the common stories about healthy people instead of focusing mostly on the tragic stories
• Spend your time and money doing things you love with the people you love instead of going to the doctor unnecessarily, ruminating on your fears, going down google rabbit holes or incessantly checking your body for concerns.
• Take good care of your health but let go of trying to reach the unnecessary (and unattainable) goal of “perfect health”
• Enjoy healthier relationships with your loved ones that are not strained from the impact of your health anxiety
• Be less afraid of death and more able to enjoy the life you have today

Using systematic, evidence-based methods, CBT can help you acccomplish these goals by helping you reshape how you see health and disease. In the words of some of my clients:

Given the large body of scientific evidence supporting the effectiveness of CBT for health anxiety (see meta-analyses: 1, 2, 3), it isn't surprising that these strategies have been transformative for so many of my clients.  

My private clients pay $3,900 for my intensive one-on-one CBT coaching program. Knowing its value (and that I can only see so many one-on-one clients), I decided to package it all into an online program that anyone can follow in order to make it more accessible. 

A Sneak Peak Inside the Course...

9 Modules (60+ Lessons), 9 Packets of Supplemental Materials 

10+ Hours of Lessons Teaching New Skills to Improve Health Anxiety 

Some Course Features/Benefits:

• The entire Reclaim Your Life from Health Anxiety online course is available in both video and audio formats (in case you want to absorb the information on your commute or during a workout). 
• Each lesson introduces a new CBT technique designed to help you reshape your thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. There are over 60 bite-sized CBT lessons in total, allowing you to master these proven strategies in a manageable and efficient way. 
• Each of the 9 modules includes a packet of supplemental materials. These packets offer clear, actionable steps to reinforce each lesson, helping you solidify your new skills and build confidence in applying these techniques to effectively manage health anxiety. 
• You will be able to ask me questions any time via email or comments within the course lessons.
• You will have lifetime access to the course materials. 

If all this program did was...

• If all this program did was help you become a little less anxious when a new symptom pops up, would it be worth it?
• If all this program did was help you learn how to overcome your fear of going to the doctor for check ups, preventative screenings or health concerns, would it be worth it?
• If all this program did was help you save money and not spend an excessive amount of time, money and energy constantly going to the doctor to alleviate your anxiety, would it be worth it?
• If all this program did was help you get back to living a bit more in the present moment and enjoying some of the things that used to bring you joy, would it be worth it?