Stress is a feeling, like all feelings and emotions it serves a purpose, all humans and animals experience stress. Stress can alert a person when something is wrong and give them the motivation to deal with a stressor or dangerous situation. There is a difference between stress and stressors, a stressor is an occurrence or our perception of it that stresses us out, anything that causes us to feel threatened or overwhelmed could be a stressor.
Financial worries, relationship issues, traumatic events, unemployment and pressure at work can all be stressors. Any unpredictable and unforeseen occurrences can be stressors.
What Is Stress?
When we perceive a threat we move into the fight or flight response and our body releases hormones to allow us to fight back or run away from the threat. Stress is a hormonal reaction to stressors,stressors are threats they can be perceived or real. When a person experiences stress their body releases stress hormones such as cortisol.
Everyone experiences stress and a little stress can be beneficial but prolonged stress can have all kinds of negative impacts on our lives and health. Prolonged stress can reduce your immune response making you more susceptible to colds, viruses and other illnesses. High cortisol levels can increase blood pressure, cause weight gain and inflammation. Living with stress can cause stomach ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, burnout, depression, heart disease, eating disorders and more
Different Types Of Stress
In psychology studies and research stress is usually divided into three different categories: acute stress, episodic acute stress and chronic stress.
Acute stress is quite normal. It can be caused by new or challenging situations, you may experience acute stress when you avoid an accident, speak in public or ride on a roller coaster. When someone experiences acute stress they are moving into the fight or flight response so symptoms will include increased heart rates, sweating, breathing more rapidly.
Episodic acute stress is when acute stress occurs repeatedly, someone who is constantly exposed to stressful environments such as fighter pilots or people who work to deadlines may experience episodic acute stress. Repeatedly being exposed to stress is when it starts to become a problem, spending extended periods of time in the fight or flight response can cause anxiety, migraines, high blood pressure, muscle tension and anger issues.
Chronic stress occurs when someone is repeatedly exposed to stressors over a long period of time. People with an abusive boss, romantic or family relationship may experience chronic stress. This kind of stress can cause weight gain, insomnia, fatigue and all of the acute stress symptoms.
Stress Can Be Contagious
People who work in high stress environments or live in high stress environments can actually catch stress from others, this phenomenon is known as emotional contagion and lower ranking team or family members are especially susceptible to catching the emotions of higher ranking members. So if you are a CEO, mother or father who doesn’t want to have a negative impact on your family or team members you would do well to reduce your stress levels.
Why Is Hypnosis Such An Effective Way To Reduce Stress?
To reduce stress we need to move our body from the sympathetic response to the parasympathetic, Your parasympathetic nervous system runs your body when you are not in the fight or flight state. Breathing techniques such as box breathing can help to trigger the relaxation response allowing your parasympathetic nervous system to take over. I show breathing techniques and EFT in many of the workshop recordings that can be found on my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@markstubbles/streams
Hypnosis is so effective to help people suffering from emotional issues including stress for many reasons, you can find the three main ones below:
- It can be very relaxing, the more you take time to relax the easier it becomes to relax. Having a regular relaxation practice will decrease the size of your amygdala and increase the size of your hippocampus which means you will be less prone to emotional dysregulation.
- Your mind can’t tell the difference between a real or imagined event. By visualising yourself the way you want to be you will actually create new neural pathways in your brain so you can start to become a person with more calm and relaxation.
- Hypnosis is a focused state of attention, regularly experiencing hypnosis can have the same benefits as a regular mindfulness practice.
If you suffer with stress and would like to experience the power of hypnosis to help you overcome it why not join my stress workshop?
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