From Austen to Larkin: Why Writers Could Be More Prone to Hypochondria
Hypochondria is an extremely isolating condition. Afraid of being mocked or dismissed for our anxieties about our health, we hypochondriacs can be inclined to keep it all inside. It can be a lonely way to exist. Even the word “hypochondria” carries the substantial baggage and stigma borne of centuries of ridicule—“health anxiety” is the preferred term today. My own anxieties began with a cancer diagnosis when I was 17.
Five years later when I was declared cured, I couldn’t let go of the concern that the disease would return. That thought pattern then began to apply itself to feelings and symptoms that definitely weren’t cancer-adjacent, until I was a full-blown hypochondriac. Although it is archaic and sometimes stigmatized, I like that word because of the historical connections it brings. It can make me feel less alone with my worries.
It wasn’t until I started searching for my fellow hypochondriacs in the pages of my books that I began to find something like a community. “Hypochondriac” isn’t an official designation that appears frequently, but digging into memoirs, letters and autobiographies can reveal the thought patterns and behaviors that I recognize so well. In this way, I built teetering piles of hypochondriacal literary lives, and began to draw comfort from the sheer number of people who had walked this way before me. Here is a small selection of them.
