the life of anguish and questions of hypochondriacs

At the slightest symptom, a headache, a lump in the throat, always think of the worst. Then look for answers on the internet, and pass dozens of medical examinations: Laure Bach knows this by heart. This mother has been a hypochondriac for several years. “They never find me anything, to my great despair”, she says. The idea of ​​illness obsesses him from morning to night.

“I get up in the morning, I say to myself: ‘What more symptoms will I have'”, she says. For his companion too, daily life has become difficult, because he no longer knows how to react. Michel Leeb, under his humorist shell, is an imaginary, obsessive patient, who analyzes this as a lack of self-confidence, in the other. The hypochondriac “will always suspect some form of failure or inadequacy”, explains the psychologist Antoine Spath. For some, the stress has only increased with Covid-19.