ABSTRACT
Maria, a forty-seven-year-old high-school teacher, came to the clinic after reading a newspaper article describing health anxiety. For years she had scrutinized her body constantly, afraid she would miss an early sign of cancer and suddenly find herself with advanced, untreatable cancer. She felt overwhelmed by everyday experiences with illness or death and, when she was struggling with a specific worry, she was distracted from her work. As a child, Maria had had many difficult experiences with illness and death. When she was nine she had to stand by the open coffin of an aunt who was murdered by a family member. At fifteen she lost two close friends, one to cancer and the other killed in a car accident. Even as a child she worried about having a serious disease and she could remember being afraid she would find blood in her urine and her stool. Whenever she experienced a new symptom, she could concentrate on nothing else until she felt reassured it was not serious. At the same time, she dreaded visits to the doctor and worried that the examination and tests would confirm her worst fears. One year before she came to the clinic, her mother died of colon cancer after a long and painful illness. Maria felt almost paralysed by her intense health worries.
