3 Signs TikTok Might Be Making Your Anxiety Worse
· Vice
As someone with health OCD and a rare chronic illness, I know just how easy it is to go down the rabbit hole that is TikTok. While the social media app can be informative in many ways, it can also lead you to false self-diagnoses. Josef Newton, founder of the health anxiety app Condri, calls this “symptom borrowing.”
“’Symptom borrowing’ is a term used to describe an instance where frequent exposure to somebody else’s symptoms leads you to progressively notice, reinterpret or expect similar sensations and behaviours in yourself,” he explains. “This does not mean that a person is consciously copying, pretending, or imagining an illness. The sensations may feel entirely real. Instead, attention, expectation and anxiety can amplify everyday physical feelings or behaviours that previously went unnoticed.”
Visit goldparty.lat for more information.
Of course, we all know how the TikTok algorithm works: the more you interact with a video on a given topic, the more they push similar content. So, if you’re convinced you have, say, a specific autoimmune disease and conduct much of your research on TikTok, you might start noticing more videos about the condition on your FYP.
Trust me, I completely understand and see the value in doing your own research while connecting with others in a similar boat. In fact, if I hadn’t done my own investigative work through various online communities, I likely wouldn’t have received the proper diagnosis, because most medical professionals were not connecting the dots or taking me seriously.
That being said, this behavior can quickly spiral into compulsive health anxiety, which only adds fuel to the flame.
“Social media often provides valuable education, language and validation, but short-form videos don’t replicate clinical assessments,” Newton points out. “Of course, TikTok can be the reason a user recognises a genuine problem and seeks support, which is a positive. It becomes problematic when recognition evolves into monitoring. Once you have learnt a list of symptoms, your brain may begin to search for them.”
Wondering if you’re symptom-borrowing? Here are a few signs to look out for—without invalidating your experience.
1. You Only Developed the Symptom After Learning About It Online
Experiencing a true symptom that TikTok later validates is far different than developing a symptom after learning about it on TikTok. Trust your intuition on this one.
“A great example of this is if somebody asks you to notice how your tongue feels in your mouth; it suddenly becomes difficult to ignore,” Newton explains. “The sensation was always there, but attention has made it prominent. Health videos can replicate a similar effect.”
“This does not prove that a symptom is insignificant, but timing matters,” he stresses. “Ask yourself whether it existed consistently before you encountered the content, whether other people had noticed it, and whether it caused meaningful difficulty in your everyday life.”
2. You Compulsively Monitor Your Symptoms
Symptom-tracking can become a compulsion for many people with health anxiety. This doesn’t mean your symptoms aren’t real, but when you anticipate them, you might become hypersensitive to your body’s signals.
I want to be careful when I say this, because again, I have been there, done that—and brushing off my own symptoms as health anxiety led to a delayed diagnosis. Two things can be true: you might be compulsively checking your body’s signals while symptom-borrowing; and you might also be experiencing real symptoms that are part of a real condition. The key is to block out external noise and use your discernment here.
“If you find yourself always checking your symptoms, make an effort to ask yourself what the checking is achieving and what your objective is,” Newton advises. “If checking your symptoms or watching another video calms you for only a few minutes before you need to do it again, it is probably maintaining the fear rather than answering it.”
3. Your Symptoms Are Non-Specific
General, non-specific symptoms can point to a variety of diagnoses, and it might feel infuriating when doctors brush them off as nothing. However, it’s just as harmful to accumulate false self-diagnoses based on random TikTok videos. Rather than taking everything you hear at face-value, make sure you’re viewing yourself and your health individually and holistically, while considering your unique medical and family history.
“It’s important to recognise relatability vs diagnostic accuracy,” says Newton. “Content reels rarely provide context and instead focus solely on the result. Rather than asking how many online symptoms you can match, consider three things: how long they have been present, whether they appear in several areas of your life, and whether they create significant impairment.”
The post 3 Signs TikTok Might Be Making Your Anxiety Worse appeared first on VICE.