hypnotherapy anxiety

ROBERT MATTHEWS HYPNOTHERAPY

020 8840 9961

Brief comments about treatment of selected problems and conditions

Anxiety

General Anxiety State

Until you have experienced being worked up in a constant state of stress or anxiety you cannot really appreciate how alarming and/or frightening it can be. Hypnotherapy is exellent at bringing RELIEF, at calming the mind and helping to control thoughts or feelings that caused the problem in the first place and that are also perpetuating the state. The sufferer is usually fully aware of the root cause(s) of upset but this is not always the case. Particularly painful thoughts, feelings and memories may have bee pushed under the surface and, if appropriate, hypnosis can be used to investigate, release and resolve such repressed material which otherwise can act like a pressure cooker deep within the mind, causing all kinds of problems of the mind and body.

Usually, however, it is more a case of coming to terms with whatever is causing all the stress, upset, hurt or panic and using hypnosis to enable the person concerned to calm down and relax as their nerves become strong and steady. Hypnotherapy is also an exellent means of helping the mind to automatically cope with future stress much more easily and confidently, whatever the situation. An immediate response to treatment is not at all unusual, often within one or two sessions. You can be assured of my sympathetic, confidential and professional help to bring relief in the shortest possible time.

Anxiety - conditioned response (eg. exam fear)

Imagine being able to control your emotions at will! If only we could programme our brains like computers and maybe have a special keyboard with a lead connecting to the brain, enabling us to type out commands such as 'calm' or 'confidence and then just press 'enter'! In actual fact we are programming our subconscious minds all the time with our repeated thoughts. If you constantly imagine or visualise say, an exam, driving test, presentation or interview going wrong you are constantly pairing negative, anxious thoughts with those events. This has the effect of eventually conditioning the mind to always associate anxiety with those events.The more often we rehearse the idea of being anxious, the more the subconscious mind is trained to make us anxious. When those events actually take place the mind has now been trained so well to produce the anxiety, it does so automatically, regardless of what actually transpires and it cannot usually be overidden

I frequently use hypnotherapy as a soothing way of reversing this situation, by directly and quickly accessing the subconscious mind to substitute the anxiety responses described above with positive feelings such as calm, well-being and confidence.These responses then become automatic themselves.

There are so many different forms of anxiety treated by hypnotherapy, it is impossible to deal with them all under one heading:

Being in a state generally
Panic attacks
Obsessive upsetting thoughts
Fears and nerves
Phobias
Difficulty coping with stress
Performance anxiety
Worry and uncertainty
Anxiety linked to low self esteem or confidence

.....and many more. (Some may appear on the A-Z of problems list).

Let me reassure you that whatever form you suffer from, being anxious or worked up in a state is a totally natural thing, and ironically, the subconscious mind is actually trying to help you not realising that the anxiety is disabling and unecessary and is doing the opposite to helping you. Hypnotherapy is a powerful means of communicating with the automatic, subconscious parts of the mind that are responsible for the problem, it is a way of releasing feelings of calm and confidence in place of anxiety. Other therapy methods usually treat only the conscious mind (which the sufferer already has control over in any case) and as a result of the probings of some therapies, the automatic feelings of anxiety just continue, or even worsen.

How can the mind get it all so wrong in the first place? It's all quite simple really.The human race has existed for many millions of years, and appart from the last few thousand years, we have lived as primitives, yet our brains and minds have remained virtually the same. In the primitive state the mind responds to stress in a way that will protect you from attack or danger, putting you in a state of readiness to run or fight. We still have that primitive response inbuilt even though we no longer live in the wild and have different dangers. Psychologists refer to it as the 'fight or flight syndrome'

Imagine you live in a primitive hilltop village and one, peaceful day you notice an army has silently gathered, possibly to advance on your settlement, you can see the army like a stationery dark swarm, waiting in the distance. Will they attack or move on? - You dont sleep well that night...why?..because your mind has put you in a worked up state in order to protect you, to keep you worked up so that you can run away or fight, as is necessary. You can't concentrate on your work in the vilage, you feel anxious and stressed all the time. As the days of wating go by you notice physical changes in your body and body chemistry, everytime you notice the army below you feel a sense of panic, after a while you only have to think of the army or even look at a sword and your mind will have become conditioned to automatically trigger the feelings of panic. Your heart races, ready for you to run or fight. Your body stays in this state of anxiety, diverting all its energy and goodness in order to keep you in readines. It does this for so long you become physically and mentally drained and run down, prone to illness.The army eventually move on, but for days and weeks, and for some maybe even years, the anxiety state continues.

The important thing is, your 21st Century mind is no different to the primitive mind, it is geared up the same, it cannot tell the difference between the relatively trivial stresses and worries of modern life in the home or workplace, and the threats and stresses in the primitive life, so it reacts in the same way and puts you in the same state of readiness to fight or run, thinking you are actually in danger. If something constantly makes us anxious, we can end up and remain in the same, primitive state of emergency, even if the original anxiety provoking stimulus disappears. The original stressor may have gone but worrying about being in a state just perpetuates it.

Ironically , people who easily get into anxiety states or have panic attacks would probably survive well in the wild, they would be the survivors. They would be first to be up and away to safety while others slept, as the army advanced. Hypnotherapy can help reassure the deep, inner mind that there is no longer any useful purpose for such states. If any anxiety producing, distressing thought (for example, about a person or a situation) is repeated often enough, it can cause the associated feelings of upset to gradually become a conditioned response

To discuss whether hypnotherapy could help you, or to make a booking, call now on 020 8840 9961 e-mail

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