ABSTRACT
Avoiding an anxiety-provoking situation will perpetuate the anxiety. Anxiety levels will go up but if one remains in the situation, the anxiety levels will diminish again. There are plenty of mental health problems which involve recurrent mental events. These can be considered to be part of an obsessive-compulsive spectrum. Somatisation disorder is a form of the state of affairs where the main features are multiple, recurrent and frequently changing physical symptoms. In hypochondriacal disorder the essential feature is a persistent preoccupation with the possibility of having one or more serious and progressive physical disorders. The level to which patients accept and believe reassurance varies. The theory is that certain emotional material is too painful to cope with consciously so it is repressed into the unconscious; it manifests itself by conversion into physical symptoms.
