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Track health anxiety episodes — the trigger, misinterpretation, anxiety level, safety behaviour used, and the actual outcome.
Record each health anxiety episode as soon as possible. Note what triggered it (sensation, news, conversation), what you thought it meant, how anxious you were, what you did about it, and what actually happened. This builds awareness of the pattern and provides evidence to review in sessions.
Use throughout treatment to monitor health anxiety episodes, their triggers, and the safety behaviours employed. The log helps identify patterns in health anxiety fluctuations and provides data for cognitive and behavioural interventions.
Frame as a curiosity-driven observation tool rather than a symptom diary. Explain that noticing the pattern of how health anxiety waxes and wanes, and what influences it, is key to understanding and managing it.
For clients with very frequent health anxiety episodes, use a simplified daily summary format rather than recording each episode individually. For clients who find monitoring triggers increased body scanning, limit monitoring to specific time windows initially.
If the monitoring log becomes a vehicle for reassurance (e.g., the client records symptoms to show the therapist for validation), address this directly and restructure the purpose of the log. Monitoring should generate therapeutic data, not feed the anxiety cycle.
Look for patterns in triggers (e.g., health-related news stories, bodily sensations after exercise, medical appointments) and the specific safety behaviours that follow. The time lag between trigger and peak anxiety is clinically useful for identifying the role of cognitive elaboration in escalating the threat appraisal.
Suitable for clients working with health anxiety, monitoring diary, cbt, salkovskis, body checking, reassurance. This tool can be used as a standalone worksheet or as part of a structured homework plan.
Create a free account to access 10 worksheets per month.
Track gradual reduction in body checking behaviours — setting targets, monitoring frequency, and recording what happens when you check less.
Test how attention to the body creates and amplifies sensations — demonstrating that body scanning is part of the problem, not the solution.
Track urges to seek reassurance, whether you resisted, and what happened — building evidence that you can tolerate uncertainty without reassurance.
Weigh up the costs and benefits of specific health anxiety behaviours — checking, Googling, reassurance-seeking — to build motivation for change.