Hypnotherapy can Help Us Handle Stress in Our Daily Lives
Hypnotherapy is be helpful for a wide range of different problems: smoking cessation and weight loss may be the best known but it is also effective with phobias, anxiety, stress, panic attacks and many more problems we all have to cope with in our daily lives. Levels of stress are increasing in the population and the media don’t help, always reporting bad news, never good and positive happenings.
In this article, I am going to focus on one or two techniques for handling stress in our personal lives or at work, but first I’d like to give you a little more information about hypnotherapy. It is nothing like the stage hypnosis. A competent hypnotherapist will not be able to make you do anything you would not normally be comfortable doing. However, by helping you to relax deeply and calming and busy, interfering conscious mind - the part of our mind that’s always chatting away to us, telling us we can do this and we must do that – we can free up the unconscious and allow it to help us to relax deeply and find solutions to our problems.
A hypnotic trance is rather like the feeling you have just before you drop off to sleep. The body feels heavy, the muscles are relaxed and there may be repaid eye movement behind closed lids. This state of deep relaxation is very beneficial even if you do not have a specific problem to address, as it allows the physical body to come back into balance and the mind to calm down and let go of limiting beliefs or reframe unhelpful behaviours.
Now to stress, which when prolonged, can lead to panic attacks as well as physical symptoms for many people. You may be aware of Joseph Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs
Our needs begin with basic shelter, food, warmth (survival) and move on through feeling valued and able to participate in society towards achievement of goals and self-actualisation. Our basic survival needs have to be met for us to be able to move on to feeling part of a community, have good self-esteem and finally realise our dreams.
It’s worth pausing a while and asking yourself, are these needs being met in your life or are you depriving yourself through overwork, remaining in an unfulfilling relationship, submitting to family stressors, of some or all of these needs? Here are some questions to ask yourself: Do you feel secure in all major areas of your life; do you feel in control of your life most of the time; do you feel connected to some part of a wider community; do you feel an emotional connection to others; are you achieving things and feeling competent in at least one major area of your life?
‘Self-care of yourself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation’, Audre Lorde.
I have noticed that panic attacks will often kick in when stressors are removed. It’s as if the body and mind become so accustomed to being on high alert that they just cannot let go. So, instead of being able to relax, the feelings of stress and panic increase and sometimes become unmanageable.
You will have heard of the “fight or flight” response. When faced with danger, the system floods with adrenalin and prepares itself for fight or flight. Obviously it is not at all healthy to remain in this state of high alert day after day, which is what happens when we’re stressed. A simple session of hypnotherapy can really help the body to stand down, relax and let go of stress.
You can learn the technique for yourself and use it afterwards to keep yourself relaxed and ensure that your life remains in balance. There is a short relaxation on my website which you can use to practice the techniques.
I usually begin a hypnotic relaxation or trance by focusing on the breath. The breath is one thing we always have with us - we can always rely on it to be there. There are many exercises relating to the breath, but it is sufficient simply to stop and observe it. Feel the chest rising and falling, notice that the outbreath is a little longer than the inbreath, notice that the inbreath comes of its own accord – we don’t have to regulate or control it. You may be aware of the warm or cool air brushing your top lip, your rib cage expanding and contracting. I wonder what else you can notice as you begin to focus on your breath. And, when you choose to stop after a few moments, notice how different your feel now that you have given yourself a breathing space in your busy day.
So, if you feel yourself getting tense, anxiety rising or panic setting in in any situation, you can use this technique to calm yourself anywhere without those around you knowing.
In fact, you can do lots of other things mindfully to help bring about change or allow yourself time to calm down. In my weight loss and hypnotic gastric band treatments, I encourage clients to eat mindfully. If we are aware of each mouthful, taking time to savour the taste and texture of our food, then we are less likely to overeat and our feeling of fullness and satisfaction will last longer.
I encourage you to try out these short exercises for yourself over the next few days. Just remember, you need to take care of yourself first and foremost or you won’t be able to take care of others. So just setting aside a few minutes in a day to relax and allow the mind and body to calm down – and this can be done anywhere, on a train, walking to work, sitting at your desk – will show immediate benefits and, ultimately, with practise, become second nature.
©Copyright 2012 by José Penrose, Hypnotherapy in Woking - All Rights Reserved.