Hypnosis for Anxiety, Stress, Phobias & Fears

Anxiety kept us safe

When the world was a dangerous place, without anxiety and panic attacks we would not have carefully scanned the environment for danger and may not have survived as a species. We survived by learning how to be quiet, timid and very, very careful and our bodies and minds remembered those dangerous places and experiences.

Unconscious memory

For survival purposes, once we have ‘learned’ that a certain situation is dangerous by panicking, the mind ‘remembers’ this fact to ensure that the next time it sees a similar situation, it can give you the necessary anxiety or panic to enable you to run or fight.

This is not the normal type of ‘remembering’ like remembering a name or telephone number, it is the sort that makes you feel good when you hear a particular piece of music, or feel happy when you look at holiday photos, or maybe feel a bit like a kid again when you walk into school as an adult.

Pattern matching

We call this type of remembering ‘unconscious pattern matching’ because it is the ‘back part’ of your mind, the unconscious mind, that causes you to react in a certain way when it spots a particular situation or other ‘trigger’.

Better safe than sorry

If you have a panic attack in a car, you might feel anxious next time you are on a bus or train, because the situation is roughly similar. As far as survival goes, it is much better for us to ‘err on the side of caution’.

Making anxiety work for us

Anxiety, panic attacks and stress-related conditions can be said to be part of modern life. And indeed, in small doses and appropriate situations, they are useful, adaptive responses . But when anxiety gets out of hand and starts to disrupt sleep, or panic attacks start to happen more than once in a blue moon, they can be very worrying indeed.

Drugs are a short-term, ‘quick fix’. What we need is the ability to use our anxiety well. We need to become a little bit anxious when we are going to do a presentation. We need to be able to become a little bit anxious in unfamiliar surroundings. We need to be able to panic if attacked and we need to be able to relax when anxiety is unnecessary.

Hypnotherapy and subconscious learning

This is where hypnotherapy is so effective, working on the level of the subconscious mind, it will re-educate your unconscious to respond more appropriately and banish panic and high anxiety for good.

The Rewind Technique

Another very effective approach for some types of anxiety, fears and phobias is the Rewind Technique. For many years, severe anxiety-based conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or phobias were considered treatable only through long, painful exposure therapy, and in some cases, not at all.

Now, thankfully, we have access to a comfortable, effective treatment that can greatly reduce, and even remove, traumatic or phobic symptoms quickly.

Find out more about the Rewind Technique

There is often a general feeling of not being able to cope with the expectations and responses of others, you might have thoughts about wanting to withdraw from situations that increase your anxiety and may find yourself procrastinating on tasks.

You find yourself worrying about the kinds of interactions you will have with others. These are some of the anxiety provoking thoughts that can play over and over in your mind leaving you feeling anxious and ill equipped to deal with every day life. “Will I be able to meet the requirements of my job?” “Are they going to accept me?” “I’m afraid he/she is going to leave me?” “What if they discover how little I know?”

When anxiety becomes a chronic problem it can feel as though there is no relief. Trying to talk your self out of that uncomfortable feeling is generally of little help because it is difficult to override messages from an activated nervous system with the conscious mind. And if the anxious responses are based on memories of past experiences or beliefs and attitudes about a situation that have nothing to do with what is happening in the here and now, it is very difficult for your conscious mind to believe that you have no need for concern.

Constant worrying and persistent negative thinking not only make you feel anxious, they trigger the release of a cocktail of stress hormones into the bloodstream that can have a damaging effect on your physical health if maintained over the long term.

When your brain is in a constant state of worry and anxiety, your nervous system interprets this as a signal that you are under threat. Our autonomic nervous system, the fight-flight response centre in the brain doesn’t discriminate between a perceived threat and a real threat and so it assumes you are in danger, and prepares the body to respond by releasing stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenalin and norepinephrine.

These hormones are designed for short-term release to enable us to deal with a challenging or threatening situation and then the body and mind are meant to return to a state of balance and calm. When our minds are chronically focused on negative thoughts, stress hormones continue to be released into the bloodstream.

These stress hormones affect major systems in the body such as the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, respiratory, genitourinary, musculoskeletal and central nervous systems. This is why stress and anxiety can effect our physical as well as emotional health and well being.

These are some of the ways that anxiety can manifest as physical symptoms and conditions:

1. Cardiovascular System

• Anxiety increases blood pressure
• Elevated blood pressure leads to tachycardia (rapid heartbeat)
• Constriction of the blood vessels in the arms and legs, dilation of the vessels surrounding the skeletal muscles
• These changes produce symptoms of palpitations (an uncomfortable awareness of the heart rate), headaches, and cold fingers

2. Gastrointestinal System

• Anxiety leads to reduced salivary secretions – dry mouth
• Spasms within the oesophagus
• Alterations in the stomach, intestines, and anal sphincter
• These systemic changes result in symptoms of dry mouth, difficulty swallowing, “butterflies” in the stomach, the gurgling sounds of gas in the intestines, and mucous colitis (an inflammation of the colon), causing spasms, diarrhoea and/or constipation, and cramp-like pains in the upper stomach

3. Respiratory system

• Anxiety leads to hyperventilation, or over-breathing, which reduces the carbon dioxide in the blood, with symptoms of “air hunger,” deep sighs, and pins-and-needles sensations

4. Genitourinary systems

• Need for frequent urination
• Men may have difficulty maintaining an erection during intercourse
• Women may have difficulty becoming sexually aroused or achieving orgasm

5. Musculoskeletal system

• The muscles become tense
• Involuntary trembling of the body, tension headaches and other aches and pains

6. Central nervous system

• The anxious person is generally more apprehensive, aroused, and vigilant, feeling “on edge,” impatient, or irritable
• Poor concentration, insomnia, fatigue

With hypnosis, your mind and body learn that these anxious responses can be changed. When you access the subconscious mind you change the way you perceive a situation and hence change your response to it. This signals the body that there is no immediate threat or danger and the hormone stress response turns off, bringing relief from the physical symptoms.

We can learn to respond differently and when we do, the behavioural changes stimulate changes in our brains to produce new neural pathways. The more we practice the new behaviour the more we strengthen the connections in the new pathways which in turn reinforces the learning and the new desired behaviour becomes our habit. Our brain’s ability to learn new skills and to respond in different ways is known as neuroplasticity and it is a wonderful resource that’s just waiting for us to tap into.

The mechanism by which behavioural change happens is neuroplasticity and it refers to changes in neural pathways and synapses in response to changes in behavior, environment, neural processes, thinking, and emotions. During most of the 20th century, neuroscientists believed that our brain structure was relatively immutable after early childhood. This belief has been challenged by exciting new findings demonstrating that many aspects of the brain remain plastic and responsive to change even into adulthood.

Hypnotherapy is an effective way of accessing and reinforcing the ability we have, even as adults, to change the way our brains receive and respond to stimulus. We can learn more creative and resourceful ways to deal with every day life situations and become more resilient and resourceful. And once you learn this skill, you’ll find that you can apply it in so many life situations.

We generally think of stress as a negative, but this is not always the case. A certain amount of stress is beneficial because it can stimulate us to a level of optimal behavioral and cognitive performance. Short-term stress primes the brain for improved performance, keeping us alert and responsive.

Chronic stress however, can cause problems for our emotional and physical health. If you feel agitated or ”wired” a lot of the time, find it difficult to switch off and really relax or notice that minor things irritate and annoy you, the chances are you are suffering from chronic stress.

The reality is there will always be situations that cause us some degree of stress and discomfort; hypnosis is a very effective way of relaxing the body and allowing the mind to return to a state of calm. With hypnosis you can learn to pay attention to your body so you experience the difference between feeling “wired” and being calm and centred. You can build relaxation skills and an increased sense of self-regulation. Simply knowing you have the ability to relax deeply and reorganize your thoughts and feelings can have a powerful effect in helping you better manage stress and anxiety.

Most people experience times when they have difficulty sleeping, worried about a particular issue, be jet lagged or just not sleeping as well as you normally do. These periods are transitory and usually little more than an inconvenience.

However, insomnia can become a habit, a faulty sleeping strategy as it were, when you believe that you cannot get to sleep and that every night will be a torture. However, research in sleep centres has shown that even convinced insomniacs do achieve multiple brief periods of sleep during the night but because they focus on their difficulties and have amnesia for the sleep periods, they don’t feel rested but experience anxiety and fatigue.

Hypnotherapy can support you to develop healthy sleeping strategies and to reframe your beliefs about your sleep habits and if the insomnia is linked to past events or anxieties these are dealt with as part of the therapeutic process.

Hypnotherapy can help to calm the mind and enable you to relax so that you can slip into sleep easily and naturally.

Almost everyone experiences anxiety at some time or another. It is an entirely normal physical and emotional phenomenon in response to some worry or perceived threat. Usually when the worrying or threatening situation is resolved, the anxiety dissipates.

However, if the anxiety is out of proportion to the context, or is prolonged and habitual, then the anxious behaviour has become chronic and that can impact on your emotional and physical wellbeing.

As well as the psychological aspects of anxiety, it can also manifest in a range of physical symptoms: such tightness in the chest, a sense of breathing restriction or hyperventilation, skin reactions, IBS and other digestive problems and muscle tension, a cause of headaches and muscle pain.

When anxiety becomes a chronic problem it can feel as though there is no relief. Trying to talk yourself out of that uncomfortable feeling is generally of little help because it is difficult to override messages from an activated nervous system with the conscious mind. And if the anxious responses are based on memories of past experiences or beliefs and attitudes about a situation that have nothing to do with what is happening in the here and now, it is very difficult for your conscious mind to believe that you have no need for concern.

With hypnosis, you learn that these anxious responses can be changed. By accessing the subconscious mind, you change the way you perceive a situation and hence change your response to it. We can’t take away the stresses in your life, but we can help you to experience a more balanced and appropriate response, to feel calmer and more in control.