14. Caroline Crampton: Overcoming Health Anxiety
"I became an unreliable narrator of my own body."
EPISODE 14 | 31 min | Jun 6, 2024
At 22, writer and podcaster Caroline Crampton was cured of her second round of Hodgkin lymphoma, with doctors giving her the green light to live her life without worries about it returning.
"But I am not free," she writes in her beautiful memoir and history of hypochondria, A Body Made of Glass. The emotional toll of her cancer left her perceiving symptoms and scanning herself for signs of illness. Caroline had lost trust in her body. "I became an unreliable narrator of my own body", she writes.
As unsettling as that may seem, she was not alone. In her book, Caroline traces the fascinating evolution of hypochondria, from the medieval belief in fragile glass organs to Freud's interpretation of its psychological origins. She looks at how Proust, Darwin, and Austen explored the subject in their writings and considers the contemporary phenomenon of cyberchondria.
In today's era of abundant online information, at a time when the global wellness industry has become big business and medical information is at our fingertips, is it a wonder people question the reliability of their bodies?
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Website: Caroline Crampton
Book: A Body Made of Glass