Health Anxiety and the 'Emotional Reasoning' Thinking Error

Learn practical techniques to challenge anxious thoughts about your health.

Posted June 24, 2025 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley

People with health anxiety tend to engage in cognitive distortions or thinking errors when it comes to health-related situations. It can be helpful to learn to evaluate thoughts, identify these thinking errors, and challenge them. One common thinking error with health anxiety is emotional reasoning .

What is emotional reasoning?

Emotional reasoning happens when we conclude that something must be true simply because it feels true. We bypass facts, context, or data and say to ourselves, “I feel scared, so I must be in danger,” or “I feel something is wrong, so it must be serious.” This thinking trap is especially powerful for people with health anxiety because we often experience anxiety in our bodies, which, of course, makes the feelings feel even more real and urgent.

I’ve seen emotional reasoning show up in two major ways, both in my practice and in my own life:

When anxiety is interpreted as danger

This happens when someone assumes their anxious feeling is a sign or premonition that something terrible is going to happen. For example, a client once noticed tingling in her foot after a workout. Nothing painful, just a strange sensation. But something about it felt “off,” and she became convinced that her body was trying to warn her. Even though there was no objective evidence of a serious issue, her anxiety felt so intense and specific that she interpreted it as proof.

When calm is interpreted as danger

Ironically, emotional reasoning can also show up when we don’t feel anxious. I’ve had clients whose health anxiety was improving, and when they finally reacted to a symptom with calmness, they panicked about their lack of panic. One client noticed a blemish and didn’t worry. A few hours later, he spiraled, telling me, “This is exactly how people miss cancer. They feel nothing. And then it’s too late.” He was so used to anxiety being present that its absence felt suspicious. He couldn't trust his own peace.

Feelings aren't facts. They are just one piece of the puzzle.

Feelings are powerful, but they aren’t always reliable. In fact, when you live with clinical anxiety, your feelings are often biased. Anxiety shifts your attention toward threat, increases your sensitivity to discomfort, and makes you interpret normal bodily sensations as dangerous. Of course, we’re going to feel like something is wrong. That is exactly what anxiety wants us to feel.

It’s also easy to rationalize our emotional reasoning. You might say, “But I had a gut feeling once and I was right.” Sure, that can happen. But what about the 50 times you were wrong? What about the days you were absolutely convinced that you were seriously ill, only for the symptoms to disappear after a few days of rest or hydration or distraction? That counts too.

The goal here isn’t to ignore your feelings. It’s to stop giving them so much power and credibility , as though they are your only source of truth.

So, what can you do about it?

Here are a few strategies to help you catch and challenge emotional reasoning when it sneaks in:

Identify when you’re using emotion as evidence

Start by noticing moments when your fear is driving your conclusion. If the sentence in your mind starts with “I just feel like...,” that’s often a red flag. Remind yourself: “Just because I feel it doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Ground your thinking with factual context

Ask: What are the observable facts about this situation? What do I know versus what I fear/feel? Is there objective data, recent test results, or other feedback I’ve received that I’m overlooking because of how I feel?

Track the history of your anxious predictions

Make a quick list of past times when you felt certain that something was wrong, but it turned out it wasn’t. This is a powerful way to build counter-evidence against the assumption that your feelings are accurate predictors of danger.

Get curious, not convinced

Instead of treating your emotion like a final conclusion, treat it like a hypothesis. “I feel like this might be serious...but what else could it be?” Curiosity opens the door to more balanced thinking.

Practice tolerating uncertainty

A big part of emotional reasoning is the desire for certainty. But certainty is an illusion. Sometimes we have to sit with discomfort without jumping to a conclusion. This is a muscle that gets stronger with practice.

Use behavioral experiments to test beliefs

If you feel something is wrong but aren’t sure, delay action by 24 hours (if it’s safe to do so). See if anything changes. Often, symptoms lessen once the panic response cools. This helps break the link between “bad feeling = urgent action.”

Try asking yourself these grounding questions when you feel stuck in emotional reasoning:

I get it. These questions can feel annoying when you're in the middle of panic. They take effort. But each time you pause and reflect instead of automatically reacting, you’re retraining your brain. And it adds up. Little by little, your mind learns that emotion does not equal emergency.

I’ll leave you with this: Is the fear of illness or death so great that it’s worth spending your one precious life obsessing over it daily, whether you live a couple more months or another 70 years?

I hope you can take some space this week to let your feelings be just that: feelings. You can acknowledge them while not letting them completely drive your decisions. You can feel anxious and uncertain and still choose an informed, calculated response. You can take steps toward living well, even when you feel afraid.

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Brittney Chesworth, Ph.D., LCSW , is a psychotherapist with a private practice that focuses exclusively on the treatment of anxiety disorders through cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.