How I Overcame Health Anxiety
Sam O'Keefe is a content creator and one of the Condri creators. Her health anxiety started at 12 years old, escalated through university, and at its worst left her unable to leave the house for months. We spoke to her about the full arc, from the first panic attack to the practical steps that helped her take her life back.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube.
The moment it started
Sam can pinpoint the exact moment. She was 12, sitting in an RE lesson discussing the ethics of euthanasia.
"All of a sudden I had this wave -- and I'd never had this before in my life. It was anxiety. I remember feeling my body freeze. It was almost like I came to this realisation that life does end at some point."
She went home panicking. Her mum was confused. Over the following years, Sam began to latch onto bodily sensations (a headache, a twinge) and catastrophise. At 15, she watched a film with a cancer storyline and something shifted.
"It was like a switch had been flipped in my brain. All of a sudden I was in fight-or-flight mode since probably that moment."
She did not have a word for what she was experiencing. She just knew she was different from her friends, who did not seem to be panicking about diseases in their body.
When it spiralled
University was the breaking point. Two weeks in, Sam had a panic attack triggered by dizziness. She had not been eating or drinking properly. That same week, her dad was hospitalised with pneumonia, and her childhood cat died.
The panic attacks continued. Then came something she had never experienced before: depersonalisation-derealisation (DPDR).
"I looked at my boyfriend and I was like, 'I don't feel real.' He was like, 'What do you mean you don't feel real?' I said, 'I feel like I'm in a video game.' He said, 'That's not normal.'"
For six months, Sam could barely function. She was waking up in tears every morning, could only eat soups and bread, and was losing weight rapidly. The DPDR made everything feel unreal, which in turn fed her health anxiety. She became convinced she was experiencing psychosis.
"I got to a point where I was like, 'I'm dead and I'm in heaven and I am experiencing psychosis.'"
She was not. But nobody she knew had ever experienced DPDR, and there was almost nothing about it online at the time.
The turning point
Sam's recovery was not one single moment. It was a set of practical decisions, stacked over time.
Medication. She spoke to her GP and was prescribed sertraline (an SSRI). She takes a small dose daily and finds it takes the edge off. She has tried coming off it and gone back when she needed to. No shame about it.
Therapy. She had several sessions with a psychiatrist who became, in her words, "the rock of my life." Professional support gave her a framework for understanding what was happening.
The two-week rule. This was one of the biggest practical tools. When a symptom appeared, she wrote it down and committed to waiting two weeks before going to the doctor.
"Likelihood is, nine times out of 10, I forgot every single symptom that I ever wrote down."
Structured body checking reduction. Instead of going cold turkey on checking behaviours, she scheduled dedicated checking time: three sessions per day, then two, then one, then none.
"Once you give yourself something, it's like when your mum asks you to clean your room. Now that you're giving me the option to check my body, I don't want to."
Getting rid of the health monitors. Sam had a Whoop watch that tracked her heart rate and sleep. She had to sell it.
"I'd be looking at that watch all the time. If it said 47 beats per minute, I was like, 'That's not normal.' My mum would just be like, 'Sam, please.'"
Confronting avoidance. This was the hardest part, and the most important. After months of barely leaving the house, Sam got back on a train.
"I was so insanely panicked in the moment, but then within like 10 minutes, my brain was like, 'Oh yeah, we can do that.' But you only get to that point if you put yourself in those situations."
What did not work
Sam was honest about the things she tried that made no difference: ashwagandha, valerian root, calming tablets, rescue remedy. None of them addressed the underlying cycle.
"I'm not going to sit here and be like, 'I healed myself by taking ashwagandha.' No, I did not."
She also described the way social media algorithms actively worked against her recovery. During her worst period, she would open TikTok for a distraction and find her feed full of cancer stories and celebrity deaths.
"I would go on my phone as a distraction. What am I being distracted from? It was genuinely sending me into a spiral."
Clearing the cache did not help. As soon as she searched for anything health-related, the algorithm recalibrated.
Health anxiety is like addiction
Sam drew a comparison that resonated throughout the conversation:
"Health anxiety is so similar to addiction. The reassurance, the checking behaviour -- it's such a similar addiction-like behaviour."
The treatment mirrors addiction recovery too. You do not go cold turkey. You gradually reduce the compulsive behaviour. You schedule it, track it, and slowly prove to your brain that you do not need it.
Her message
Sam closed with something direct:
"If anyone with health anxiety is listening to this, I want to tell you that it will get better. You've just got to trust in yourself, believe in yourself, and put the work in. Because you're not going to get any results from not putting in the work. But it is possible, and you will be okay."
Recovery is not linear. Sam still has bad days. But she has a life that health anxiety no longer controls -- and that matters more than perfection.
Where to go from here
- Take the SHAI-14 quiz to understand where you stand
- Learn about the approach that combines exposure techniques with mindfulness
- Read what the evidence says works for health anxiety
This article is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. If you're concerned about your health or mental health, speak to a qualified professional. If you or someone you know is in crisis, contact a helpline near you.