What This Episode Is About
You wake up, and before your feet touch the floor, you reach for your tracker. A number on the screen decides how you feel about your day before you have even started living it. Sound familiar? You are not alone, and this episode explores what happens when health tracking hurts your well-being instead of helping it.
In this special bonus episode, I walk through the research, the warning signs, and a practical two-week plan to reset your relationship with wellness wearables. This episode is for anyone who wears a consumer fitness tracker, smartwatch, sleep ring, or similar device and wonders whether the constant monitoring has crossed a line.
Important note: This episode focuses on optional consumer wellness wearables such as Fitbit, Apple Watch, Oura Ring, and Whoop. It does not apply to medically prescribed monitoring devices like continuous glucose monitors for diabetes, cardiac monitors, or pulse oximeters prescribed by your healthcare provider. Those devices serve a clinical purpose, and changes to that monitoring should only happen with your medical team.
If you use both types of devices, parts of this episode may still help you rethink your relationship with the optional tracking while you continue the monitoring your doctor recommends.
Recognizing When Health Tracking Hurts Your Mental Health
I am not anti-tracking. Wearables can increase awareness, motivate movement, and reveal patterns you would never notice on your own. However, there is a real difference between a tool that supports you and a tool that stresses you. The question is not whether tracking is good or bad. Instead, the question is whether your specific relationship with tracking is serving you or creating anxiety.
If your earlier listen to Episode 7 on measurement struck a chord, this episode goes deeper. When taking off your tracker makes you anxious, that anxiety is a signal worth paying attention to. It often means the tracker has shifted from being a tool to being a tether.
I call this the “Tool-to-Tether Shift.” When the feeling of control becomes the main focus, anxiety often follows. Recognizing this shift is the first step toward a healthier relationship with your devices.
What the Research Says About Wearables and Anxiety
Understanding the science can help you see your own patterns more clearly. Several studies reveal a consistent theme: the devices designed to calm us down can sometimes wind us up.
The Monitoring Paradox and When Health Tracking Hurts
Checking your data can calm you for a moment, yet it can also train your brain to need the next check. Researchers describe this as a cycle that maintains anxiety rather than relieving it.
A 2024 study in the Journal of the American Heart Association, led by Dr. Lindsey Rosman, followed 172 people with atrial fibrillation. The team found that wearable users had more symptom monitoring, more cardiac preoccupation, and more treatment concerns than non-users. About 20 percent of wearable users experienced anxiety or fear from automated irregular rhythm notifications. Some participants were recording very high numbers of ECGs on their watches, not out of medical necessity, but as a compulsive checking pattern.
Clinical psychology research supports this finding. In 2017, Halldorsson and Salkovskis published work in Cognitive Therapy and Research showing that excessive reassurance-seeking functions as a safety behavior. People seek certainty to reduce a perceived threat, but the relief is short-lived. Doubts return quickly, and the cycle prevents the nervous system from learning to handle uncertainty.
Stanley Rachman’s foundational 2002 paper in Behaviour Research and Therapy described a similar pattern in compulsive checking. He argued that checking is often driven by an inflated sense of responsibility and an attempt to create certainty. When the brain believes certainty is necessary for safety, it will keep asking you to check one more time.
A 2019 study by Rector and colleagues in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, involving 738 treatment-seeking participants, found that reassurance-seeking plays a significant role in maintaining anxiety across multiple anxiety disorders. Importantly, reducing reassurance-seeking during therapy predicted clinical improvement.
When Health Tracking Hurts Sleep: Orthosomnia
Sleep tracking has become a common source of tracker-related stress. In 2017, sleep researcher Kelly Glazer Baron and her team published a paper in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine where they coined the term “orthosomnia.” They described patients who had become so focused on achieving perfect sleep data that the tracker itself was contributing to their sleep difficulties. These patients spent more time in bed trying to push their metrics higher, and their rigid focus on the numbers made them resistant to treatment recommendations that might have actually helped.
This is not just a handful of unusual cases. In late 2024, a study published in Brain Sciences by Jahrami and colleagues surveyed 523 people and estimated that orthosomnia may affect anywhere from 3 to 14 percent of sleep tracker users, depending on the criteria used.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has also weighed in. In 2023, AASM spokesperson Dr. Seema Khosla stated that if your tracker is causing you to lose sleep, it is okay to put it away. That is a notable message from a leading sleep medicine organization.
In 2025, researchers published the Bergen Orthosomnia Scale in the journal Frontiers in Sleep. This twelve-item validated measurement tool means orthosomnia has graduated from a catchy term to something clinicians and researchers can now systematically assess.
Cyberchondria and Wearable Anxiety
A 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, led by Schenkel and colleagues, reviewed 25 studies on cyberchondria and found a strong relationship between online health-related searching and health anxiety. They described cyberchondria as a safety behavior that gets reinforced in unpredictable ways. Sometimes searching brings relief, and other times it causes fear. This same unpredictable pattern applies to wearable data as well.
The Stanford Study: How Numbers Shape Reality
One of the most fascinating pieces of this puzzle comes from Stanford University. In 2023, a research team published a five-week randomized trial in the Journal of Medical Internet Research with 162 Apple Watch users. Participants were assigned to four conditions: some received accurate step count feedback, some saw counts inflated by about 40 percent, some saw counts deflated by about 40 percent, and a fourth group received accurate feedback plus a mindset intervention.
The results were striking. People with accurate feedback saw improvements in anxiety, depression, sleep, and fatigue. However, people who saw deflated feedback experienced declining mental health, reduced self-esteem, more negative emotions, and even higher blood pressure and resting heart rate. Their actual activity had not changed at all. Their bodies did the same work, but the numbers on the screen changed, and their minds and bodies reacted as though they had failed.
This study shows that sometimes the number does not just reflect your reality. It shapes it. Understanding this is essential to recognizing when health tracking hurts more than it helps.
What Happens When People Stop Tracking
A 2020 study in Computers in Human Behavior by Attig and Franke found that former fitness tracker users often stopped because of demotivation, frustration with inaccurate data, or a growing sense of dependence. Interestingly, many people cycled in and out of tracking rather than quitting permanently.
Another study in BMC Psychology (2019) found that when people were prevented from wearing their tracker because of a dead battery or leaving it at home, they experienced more negative feelings including guilt, self-consciousness, and anxiety. Sometimes the tracker does more than track. It starts to regulate your emotions.
Your Body Knows More Than You Think
Researchers developed the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) scale to measure your ability to sense and interpret internal signals like hunger, fatigue, and tension. One of its eight subscales specifically measures “Trusting,” or how safe and trustworthy your body feels to you. Research using the MAIA suggests that stronger interoceptive skills are associated with better well-being.
There is also an important nuance here. Researchers like Martin Paulus and Murray Stein have explored how anxiety can distort interoception. Their work describes how anxious individuals may have heightened awareness of differences between what the body is doing and what the brain expects. There is a real difference between healthy body awareness and anxious hypervigilance.
A 2025 study in npj Digital Medicine followed 249 participants with moderate-to-severe depression over 13 weeks, comparing self-reported sleep quality to wearable-measured sleep. The correlations were generally weak. The authors concluded that the two methods are not even measuring the same thing. So if you have ever felt fine but your score said otherwise, you were not imagining things.
A Structured Two-Week Plan for Taking a Tracking Break
Knowing the patterns is important, but knowledge alone does not change behavior. Here is a structured, practical plan for stepping away from your wearable without feeling overwhelmed.
Phase 1: Preparation
Before you remove your tracker, lay the groundwork for success. Going cold turkey without a plan often leads to feeling overwhelmed and snapping the device back on.
Talk with your clinician if you need to. If you have medical conditions, active symptoms, or intense anxiety, discuss any changes with your healthcare provider. You might explore topics like healthy boundaries around tracking, physical symptoms to pay attention to without a device, or whether temporarily removing your wearable could affect how you manage specific conditions.
Write down your baseline patterns once. Note your typical sleep window, usual activity range, and what “normal” generally looks like. If you have been tracking for a while, you already know your patterns. You do not need to rehearse them daily for them to be true.
Expect some discomfort. Discomfort does not mean you are failing. It means your nervous system is adjusting. If checking has been your way of coping with health uncertainty, your brain may resist when you stop. This is normal and usually temporary.
Phase 2: Disruption (The Actual Break)
Choose a time frame. Fourteen days works well. If that feels too long, try seven. Having a clear end date helps because “forever” feels overwhelming while “two weeks” feels manageable.
Set a midpoint check-in. On day seven, write a sentence or two about what has been easier and harder than you expected.
Expect the urge to check. When it happens, do not argue with it. Try naming it simply: “the urge to check.” Most urges rise and fall like a wave. The first few days are usually the hardest, and then your nervous system starts to learn that uncertainty is tolerable.
Focus on keystone behaviors instead of metrics. Choose three daily anchors: give yourself a real chance to sleep, move your body in a way that feels supportive, and get outside or get daylight at some point.
The mindset shift during this phase is powerful. Instead of tracking your health, focus on living it. Eat in a way that helps you feel steady, drink water, connect with others, and do things that support your well-being, even without a score.
Phase 3: Return
At the end of your break, pause and ask yourself a few direct questions.
Do I miss the data, or do I miss the sense of control? These are different things. Missing data because it taught you something useful is valid. Missing it because you feel unsafe without numbers suggests the tracker was acting more as anxiety management than health support.
What specific metrics are actually helpful? You do not have to go back to tracking everything. Maybe track steps and ignore sleep scores. Perhaps just do occasional check-ins instead of daily monitoring. An idea might be to also shut off notifications, since alerts can be a major anxiety trigger.
Can I create boundaries that protect my mental health? For example, you might decide not to look at numbers until after breakfast. Or you could check trends once a week instead of every hour.
Sorting Your Tracking With a Green-Yellow-Red System
Try this simple framework to evaluate each type of data you currently track.
Green means data that helps without triggering strong emotions. For many people, step counts fall here because they provide positive reinforcement without much downside.
Yellow means data that can be useful but gets risky if you check it too often or tie it to your self-worth. Sleep scores often land in this category because they are informative in context but easy to obsess over.
Red means anything that consistently causes anxiety, leads to compulsive checking, or ruins your day. Heart rate alerts may belong here, especially if they trigger stress when there is no real medical concern.
If most of your tracking falls in the yellow or red range, that is valuable information. It does not mean you have to stop everything today, but it does suggest your current relationship with tracking might benefit from some boundaries.
And sometimes, the healthiest choice is deciding not to return to tracking at all. If you feel calmer, more present, and more trusting of yourself without it, that is not a failure. That is a result.
When Health Tracking Hurts Versus When It Helps
If you worry about missing a health problem without your tracker, remember this. For most of human history, people managed their health without any wearable devices. They noticed when they felt run down. People paid attention when something felt off. Your grandparents went to the doctor when symptoms persisted.
Your great-grandmother did not need a sleep score to know she had a rough night. That internal knowing has not disappeared. It has just been drowned out.
If you take a two-to-four-week break and you genuinely feel physically worse, that matters, and it is a good reason to check in with a healthcare provider. However, many people find the opposite. They feel better. The constant monitoring had become a steady source of stress they did not recognize until they stopped.
The Bottom Line
Wearables are not inherently harmful, but research shows they can become psychological traps for people who struggle with health anxiety, perfectionism, or obsessive habits. The same actions that calm you in the moment, like checking your heart rate or refreshing your sleep score, can keep anxiety going over time.
Taking a break from tracking is not giving up on your health. It is taking your health back from the stress of constant monitoring. It is about trusting your own signals again and learning that progress happens in your body, not just in an app.
If you try a tracking break and want to share your observations, message me on Instagram at @kristenjbeasley or email me. Your story might be just what someone else needs to hear.
Remember: My body speaks louder than numbers. Your body’s wisdom is enough.
Research and Resources Cited in This Episode
Wearables and Cardiac Anxiety: Rosman, L., Lampert, R., Zhuo, S., Li, Q., Varma, N., Burg, M., Gaffey, A.E., Armbruster, T., & Gehi, A. (2024). Wearable Devices, Health Care Use, and Psychological Well-Being in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation. Journal of the American Heart Association, 13(15), e033750.https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.123.033750
Reassurance-Seeking and Anxiety: Halldorsson, B., & Salkovskis, P.M. (2017). Why Do People with OCD and Health Anxiety Seek Reassurance Excessively? An Investigation of Differences and Similarities in Function. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 41, 619-631.
Rachman, S. (2002). A Cognitive Theory of Compulsive Checking. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40(6), 625-639.
Rector, N.A., Kamkar, K., Cassin, S.E., Ayearst, L.E., & Laposa, J.M. (2019). Assessing Excessive Reassurance Seeking in the Anxiety Disorders. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 63, 84-90.
Orthosomnia: Baron, K.G., Abbott, S., Jao, N., Manalo, N., & Mullen, R. (2017). Orthosomnia: Are Some Patients Taking the Quantified Self Too Far? Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 13(2), 351-354.https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.6472
Jahrami, H., Trabelsi, K., Husain, W., Ammar, A., BaHammam, A.S., Pandi-Perumal, S.R., Saif, Z., & Vitiello, M.V. (2024). Prevalence of Orthosomnia in a General Population Sample: A Cross-Sectional Study. Brain Sciences, 14(11), 1123. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/14/11/1123
Guldbrandsen, B.V., Baron, K., Vedaa, O., Bjorvatn, B., & Pallesen, S. (2025). Development of a Scale for Measuring Orthosomnia: The Bergen Orthosomnia Scale (BOS). Frontiers in Sleep, 4, 1640355.https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sleep/articles/10.3389/frsle.2025.1640355/full
AASM Statement on Sleep Trackers: American Academy of Sleep Medicine. (2023). One in Three Americans Have Used Electronic Sleep Trackers. https://aasm.org/one-in-three-americans-have-used-electronic-sleep-trackers-leading-to-changed-behavior-for-many/
Cyberchondria: Schenkel, S.K., Jungmann, S.M., Gropalis, M., & Witthoft, M. (2021). Conceptualizations of Cyberchondria and Relations to the Anxiety Spectrum: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 23(11), e27835. https://www.jmir.org/2021/11/e27835
Stanford Step Count Study: Zahrt, O.H., Evans, K., Murnane, E., Santoro, E., Baiocchi, M., Landay, J., Delp, S., & Crum, A. (2023). Effects of Wearable Fitness Trackers and Activity Adequacy Mindsets on Affect, Behavior, and Health: Longitudinal Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25, e40529.https://www.jmir.org/2023/1/e40529/
Former Tracker Users: Attig, C., & Franke, T. (2020). Abandonment of Personal Quantification: A Review and Empirical Study Investigating Reasons for Wearable Activity Tracker Attrition. Computers in Human Behavior, 102, 223-237.
Emotional Effects of Tracker Removal: Kerner, C., & Goodyear, V.A. (2017). The Motivational and Behavioral Effects of Wearable Activity Trackers. BMC Psychology.
Interoceptive Awareness: Mehling, W.E., et al. (2012). The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA). PLoS ONE, 7(11), e48230.
Anxiety and Interoception: Paulus, M.P., & Stein, M.B. (2010). Interoception in Anxiety and Depression. Brain Structure and Function, 214, 451-463. (Published in Biological Psychiatry and related journals.)
Self-Reported vs. Wearable Sleep Data: Published in npj Digital Medicine (2025). Study following 249 participants with moderate-to-severe depression over 13 weeks comparing self-reported and wearable-measured sleep quality.
Disclaimer
I am not a doctor, therapist, or licensed mental health professional. This episode is educational, not medical advice. If you have medical conditions, specific health concerns, or anxiety that feels unmanageable, please talk to your healthcare provider before making big changes to how you track or manage your health. Seeking that kind of guidance is a sign of self-respect.
Affiliate Disclosure
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Connect with Kristen: Instagram: @kristenjbeasley Website: healthylifeapproach.com
