Research indicates that mental health therapy is an effective treatment for IAD . Ask your doctor for a referral for a counselor in your area. If you don't have a doctor or would rather find a counselor on your own, the National Board for Certified Counselors has an online directory. If you’re convinced that you have a serious medical issue, you may find it insulting to sit and talk with someone who is telling you that you aren’t capable of accurately perceiving your own body. But if you want to overcome the fear and anxiety that is causing you so much emotional turmoil, you need to trust someone who understands your condition. Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable. Part of your treatment will involve forcing yourself to stop monitoring your physical symptoms, something that may fill you with anxiety if you’ve been closely attending to your symptoms for weeks or months.  Invariably, this process will cause you some discomfort. Much of your treatment will hinge on challenging your thinking. You might be asked to stop taking your blood pressure or feeling for lumps on your body, and your therapist will push you to examine the fears that underlie your worries about your health. You must resist the temptation to fall back into a pattern of obsessive self-monitoring. Remind yourself that this uneasiness is evidence that the process is working and that you're making progress. You're not going to get better without making some significant changes, and the change process is always going to be difficult on some level. In some cases, anxiety actually creates physical symptoms such as stomach distress, so part of your counseling will involve learning about what makes you particularly vulnerable to being overcome with worry about your health.  You may feel more anxiety over perceived symptoms during times of stress in life. Working with a therapist will teach you to identify the signs so that you can stop those negative thoughts before they consume you. Attend all of your scheduled treatment sessions. Inevitably, there will be days when you don’t want to attend therapy, either because you’re feeling sick or you simply don’t think the counseling is making any difference. You must resist this temptation. If you don’t take your treatment seriously, it won’t work, and you’ll create a self-fulfilling prophecy. While hypochondriasis is less well researched than many mental illnesses, there is a body of research available if you do a little digging.  Read the accounts of people who have written about their hypochondria. There are numerous blogs and forums where people relate the stories of how they came to understand their illness and learned to manage it. Though you might not want to consider the fact that you’re one of them, reading their stories will help you identify many of the same thoughts and fears in your own life. Channel your anxiety into better understanding your disorder. No matter how much you research the physical symptoms that are causing you so much worry, it will never be enough to calm your mind. Instead, use the time you would have spent searching for evidence that your aches and pains are signs of your impending doom to read up on hypochondriasis. Writing down your thoughts will provide you with a record of your symptoms and experiences. If your symptoms repeatedly lead to nowhere, you will be able to provide yourself evidence that your fears have been unfounded all along.  When you're feeling anxious or wish you had someone to talk to, write down your thoughts instead. Are you terrified of experiencing physical pain? Have you watched someone close to you suffer with an illness and you're afraid that you'll go through the same thing? Where did those feelings originate for you? Exploring some of those bigger questions will help you uncover the thinking patterns that are underlying your anxiety.   Writing down your thoughts will allow you to track the progression of your symptoms and give you an opportunity to see what sorts of moods and situations make it more likely for you to enter the spiral of worry and anxiety. This can also help you identify your triggers. For instance, do you tend to start to worry during a particularly stressful time at work? Are you more likely to stay up late at night searching for evidence of your illness when you’re fighting with your partner? Once you can identify those triggers, you can start to manage them more effectively.
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One-sentence summary -- Find a mental health professional. Be prepared for feelings of resistance. Test the validity of your fears. Discover what triggers your anxiety. Educate yourself about your condition. Keep a journal.

Q: You don’t want to have to carry your dirty laundry in your arms all the way to the laundry room. Look for a bag or basket with handles or straps so it’s easy to carry. If you have a lot of clothes, get something big enough to hold all your laundry in. Don't wash your light-colored clothes in the same load as your dark-colored clothes or the colors might transfer. Make one pile with your white clothes, one pile with clothes in light colors like gray and beige, and another pile with all of your dark clothes. Pack anything you wore or used from the previous week. Try to keep your lights and darks separated when you pack them in your laundry bag. Fabric softener and dryer sheets are optional, but you’ll need laundry detergent to get your clothes clean. Put these items in your laundry bag on top of your clothes so you can access them easily. If your school’s machines take quarters, put some quarters in a small baggie or in your pocket. If there’s a coin machine, you can bring cash instead. Some laundry machines take debit cards or student IDs as payment, so bring yours along if you’re not sure.
A: Get a laundry bag or basket. Separate your darks from your lights. Pack your dirty clothes, towels, and bedding in your laundry bag. Grab laundry detergent, fabric softener, and dryer sheets. Bring money for the laundry machines.

Article: Go to social gatherings and spend time with friends or make new ones. Allowing yourself to have genuine connections with other people will start giving you positive experiences to talk about and relate to. These experiences can start shifting a negative mindset to a more optimistic one.  You may or may not talk to your friends about what is bothering you, but just knowing that they are there is reassuring. And if you decide to confide in someone you trust, you may experience some relief, or your friend's feedback may be useful. Create works of art to help your brain integrate emotions and thoughts. By creating something, you form new neural pathways in your brain and utilize your entire brain during the process. Aside from being a great way to pour your focus into something positive, creating a work of art can be healing. This does not have to be a “traditional” kind of art. You might choose to paint a picture, but you can create art in many other ways, too. For example, you could build a birdhouse as a creative project, or use online coloring apps or puzzles. If your pain is severe and causes you to feel depressed, anxious, or otherwise mentally unstable, you should seek help from a mental health professional. You should also seek out a professional if you have dealt with the pain for a long time and still struggle to cope with the incident. Your doctor can refer you to a mental health professional. The time required to heal from an incident can vary from incident to incident and person to person. For example, it may take you longer to heal after a parent dies than it takes someone to heal from losing their dog. Support groups will allow you to connect directly with people who are struggling with the same pains. These groups will allow you to share your story and encourage others with similar stories. You will also be held accountable for taking steps to heal yourself since you will be talking about it at each meeting. Support groups are understanding of people working through all stages of pain. You will not be required to share or talk in most support groups.
Question: What is a summary of what this article is about?
Connect with another person. Find a creative outlet. Discuss the situation with a professional. Join a support group.