It is normal to feel anxious or stressed in response to certain situations – it’s what helps us rise to challenges and achieve. But chronic anxiety and stress – when the feelings hang around and you feel anxious or stressed most of the time – can impact your life, causing far-reaching mental and physical symptoms.
Most of us will experience a feeling of anxiety at some point, whether it’s sweaty palms, a racing heart or tight chest, butterflies or even an upset stomach. These are natural physiological responses to surging adrenaline and cortisol. Our ‘fight or flight’ mechanism has activated in response to a ‘threat’. Think of sitting in a waiting room before a job interview, or even riding on a looping roller coaster. But there’s a big difference between occasional anxiety and anxiety disorders, where the fear and worry does not subside and can escalate, even in response to everyday life. Anxiety disorders involve persistent, excessive worry and negative rumination and can lead to distress, even panic.
Chronic anxiety and stress can have a negative impact on your health and well-being, affecting how you think, feel and behave, how your immune system works and your ability to sleep well. Every area of life can be impacted, from work, and relationships, to confidence and self-esteem. It can leave you feeling overwhelmed, isolated, depressed and out of control.
Anxiety and stress hypnotherapy can help you resolve the negative thoughts and reactions that create anxiety and stress, so that you regain a sense of perspective, better able to feel calm and in control once again. Understanding anxiety is the first step in regaining this control. Hypnotherapy for anxiety and stress not only gives you the knowledge and tools to feel better in the present, but also empowers you to continue to do so in the future. This is because hypnotherapy impacts on a deeper subconscious level and positively impacts brain structure and neural pathways, Neuroplasticity is our brain’s remarkable ability to change and rewire, forming new connections and pathways. Hypnotherapy sessions help clients to move from over-reactive anxiety and stress back towards feeling calm and level headed, and this process means that clients continue to feel the benefits, even after completing treatment.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy is effective at helping to break the negative cycle of anxiety and stress, so that you can regain control and feel calmer and happier once again, better able to regulate your emotional responses. Additionally, as anxiety and stress levels reduce, disrupted sleep patterns and many other troublesome symptoms are also alleviated.
Anxiety Hypnotherapy can help with:
- General Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
- Panic attacks
- OCD
- Specific phobias
- Social Anxiety
- PTSD
- Agoraphobia
- Emetophobia
- Work/Life Stress
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Understanding Anxiety
Located deep within the brain are a group of structures, collectively called the Limbic System. The most influential part of the brain’s Limbic System is the Amygdala, an almond-size group of neurons which act a bit like a security guard, constantly scanning the environment and the data received from all your senses to protect you from any potential threat or danger.
Other key parts of the Limbic System include the Hippocampus and the Hypothalamus. The Hippocampus is a bit like a library within your brain and stores a record of all your habits and behaviours. The Hypothalamus is like a chemist, manufacturing all the chemicals, transmitters and hormones in the mind and body that keep everything running.
If you were walking down a street and suddenly, out of nowhere an escaped bear was charging toward you the Amygdala would instantaneously sound the alarm, co-ordinate with the Hippocampus and Hypothalamus and activate the fight or flight response: Your heart would pump faster, your blood pressure would go up, you would probably be sweating or shaking, your stomach churning and you would be running very, very fast to safety.
Faced with a charging bear this is a great response, but with increased anxiety and stress the Amygdala can stay in a heightened state of red alert and we can find ourselves reacting to everyday life circumstances and events (an argument, an unexpected bill, work stress) as if we were in a similar life-threatening situation. The drip, drip, drip effect of chronic stress and anxiety has primed our nervous system to react and to be less able to regulate itself.
Hypnotherapy for anxiety and stress can help to calm and and regulate the nervous system. Hypnotherapy helps to reshape the structure and neural pathways of the brain in a beneficial way which means that anxiety and stress are reduced,