I remember a time when I when I was anxious, really anxious. My energy was sapped and my mind was preoccupied with all sorts of scenarios of doom. It was a pretty uncomfortable place to be. What was happening? Why couldn’t I talk myself out of it? I certainly tried.

Anxiety is one of the most common feelings people experience. Anxiety is not the same as stress, it’s not just feeling ‘off’ that day.

Anxiety is from an internal source, stress is from an external source.

Anxiety is pervasive and can be debilitating. Your mind tells you that something might be about to happen and you won’t be ready for it. 

 

 

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Anxiety is fear. Fear of what might happen in the future or anxieties about the present.

You are on high alert to protect yourself from danger. You feel you have no control over your life. Any resiliency you had seems to have waned, you might isolate yourself and avoid your once successful life, your foundation seems to have fallen away. What an awful place to be!  

You probably experienced an event or situation that triggered the excessive sense of anxiety about life; perhaps terror, abusive situations, accidents, fight or flight experiences, childhood abuse or neglect, death of a close loved one, loss of your job, being bullied, or similar circumstance.

I remember finding a list of anxiety symptoms and feeling both relieved and distressed that I met so many of the criteria listed. This didn’t describe the person I knew myself to be previously.

Have you ever experienced any of these symptoms (the list is certainly not exhaustive)?

• A feeling of ‘needing’ to meet impending dangers  
• A state of constant arousal
• Avoiding certain situations or places
• Chronic worry
• Difficulty eating (eating less or more than normal)
• Dizziness
• Fears of dying
• Heart Palpitations
• Impending doom
• Lightheadedness
• Negative mood
• Ritualistic activities
• Self-Preoccupation
• Shakiness or jitteriness
• Worry about possible future threat or danger

Your anxiety may be rooted in your childhood. Or perhaps you experienced or witnessed a traumatic event recently.

Do you think “that happened so long ago and I’ve moved on from it”? Your brain recorded that event or situation in a non-discerning way. So when fear presents again, your brain resurrects its recording of anxiety.

What is in your past connects to your present and future. Any amount of denying that is hiding your head in the sand.

Anxiety has a profound effect on your body. With sustained anxiety, you have a higher chance of becoming ill, your immune system doesn’t do its job as well, you may have tightness or tension in parts of your body, your ears may ring, you may have headaches. The list can go on. Anxiety takes a toll on your body. Your brain and your body are so intimately connected. No amount of self talk or logic ameliorates the anxiety.

Anxiety is about emotion. Simply put, emotions are not under your control. Emotions are about feelings. Feelings arise within you whether you admit it or not. Yes, you can cover up your feelings, stifle them, deny them, mask them. But your true feelings are still within. You could very well have a hard time expressing them, choose not to, or even not be able to identify them.

Anxiety is one of the ways emotion asserts itself. (There are other ways, many of them good too!) That is why you cannot talk yourself out of your state of anxiety. Emotions are not a logical process. 

Your conscious mind (10% of the mind) is responsible for:

• Accessing short term memory
• Analysis and logic 
• Thinking and planning

Your subconscious mind (90% of the mind) is responsible for:

• Creativity
• Developmental Stages
• Emotions & feelings
• Habit patterns, relationship patterns, dependencies
• Intuition
• Involuntary Bodily Functions
• Long-term memory
• Spiritual Connection

Did you know that you spend about 80% of your day going in and out of your subconscious mind?

How can hypnotherapy help?

Hypnotherapy allows you to use your subconscious to become aware of your internal dialogue, imagery, triggers, and feelings associated with your anxiety. Expressing the feelings associated with whatever the trigger or trauma that produced the anxiety is very healing.

Your therapist helps you in regressing to an earlier age when you had similar feelings. You begin to identify the influential events in the past that are outside your conscious awareness. These age regressions can be very useful and aid tremendously. The pattern becomes clearer to you.

It is important to note that you are in control of your hypnotherapy sessions. You may stop anytime you feel out of control or so triggered that you cannot proceed. You are not analyzed. No judgments are made.

Do any of these questions resonate with you? Here is a sampling. The list could go on. 

• Are you fearful of leaving your home?
• Are you scheduled for surgery, or just recovering from a procedure?
• Can you identify a fearful or anxiety producing trigger in your life?
• Do loud noises or angry voices frighten you?
• Do you dread visiting (or even talking with) your parent(s) or other immediate family members?
• Do you feel invisible?
• Do you have test anxiety?
• Do you use disordered eating to try to exert control over your life?
• Do you keep reliving an event from your past?
• Do you or have you used substances to cover up your feelings?
• Do you use sarcasm to cope?
• Have you experienced a trauma that has paralyzed you?
• Have you lost your sense of connection to yourself?
• Have you been neglected or abused as a child?

To sum up, anxiety is about emotion, about feeling, not reasoning. Treating anxiety using hypnotherapy is about using sensing, feeling, seeing patterns, an internal locus of control, body-spirit-mind (otherwise known as the psyche), energy flowing unblocked.

For more information about anxiety treatment click here.