Hypnotherapy To help with Anxiety

Overcome Anxiety With Hypnosis

Anxiety was once a big problem for me, it stopped me from making friends, forming healthy relationships and enjoying my life. Anxiety caused to suffer all kinds of difficulties.

That’s Why I Am Passionate About Helping People Overcome Anxiety

“My anxiety was so bad I could not sleep for over 2 weeks. I contacted Mark who is a brilliant hypnotherapist. He was very kind, flexible and supportive in helping me overcome my anxiety issues.

He is genuinely committed to seeing his clients succeed. My sleep has improved and my anxiety has reduced with the hypnosis sessions and techniques Mark has taught me.”

Anxiety disorders are said to be one of the most common forms of mental illness in the world and mental illness is said to be the most common form of illness, in the UK it is estimated that 25% of the population suffers with anxiety or depression and 9% suffers with anxiety and depression but anxiety is not a disease, a disorder or a mental illness.

Anxiety symptoms are our bodies natural response to danger and they can serve us in some circumstance, the symptoms of anxiety are part of our natural fight, flight, freeze response; it’s our sympathetic nervous system working to keep us safe and out of harm’s way by releasing hormones such as cortisol and norepinephrine. It’s not possible to completely eliminate anxious feelings from your life.

If you were in a life or death situation you may find the increased heart rate useful as it ensures blood and oxygen are being transported to your muscles so you can run or fight, you may begin to sweat so you can stay cool with the physical exertion your sympathetic nervous system thinks is coming.

Tunnel vision ensures you are giving all your attention and focus to look out for danger so you can stay alive, anxiety and the tunnel vision it causes can all affect memory, concentration, logical thought, reasoning and decision making.

Digesting food consumes energy that could be used to fight or flight so the sympathetic nervous system reduces your appetite, if you have recently eaten you may feel nauseous or even vomit. People who suffer from anxiety are also said to be more susceptible to irritable bowel syndrome.

If presented with an immediate physical threat, real or perceived, the last thing your sympathetic nervous system needs to worry about is viruses and bacteria so energy is diverted away from your immune system making you more susceptible to illness like colds or worse in the long term.

Anxiety As A Learned Response

It is said that children are only born with two fears, the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises all other fears are learned as we grow. It has been scientifically proven that until the age of 7 a child’s brain is mostly in a theta brainwave state, this is known as the imprint period. It is in the imprint period that we are learning the most complex tasks such as how to walk and talk, the imprint period is when neuroplasticity is at its highest.

In prehistoric times it was essential that children learned what was safe and what wasn’t fast so our ancestors watched their parents or other tribe members to know what they should fear and what they shouldn’t fear, it is common for children to pick up fears and phobias by watching or listening to their parents. Regularly seeing a parent or role model in a state of anxiety can cause a child to grow up with the belief that the world is a dangerous place.

Anxiety From Trauma

Anxiety can also be caused by traumatic experiences, people with PTSD often suffer anxiety. I used to suffer with CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) which is commonly suffered by prisoners of war and children with dysfunctional families, persistent physical and emotional abuse with no escape causes CPTSD.

Conditioned Response

Anxiety and emotional flashbacks were a conditioned response for me, the theory of conditioned response was developed by a Russian physiologist called Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov wanted to do some research into dog saliva so he got some dogs and tied them up, at timed intervals he sprayed their faces with powdered meat, to remind him to do this he used an alarm, after a while Pavlov noticed the dogs would salivate on the sound of the alarm and he saved himself a fortune in meat powder.

The Effects Of Anxiety

Living in the fight or flight response surpresses our immune function but suffering anxiety didn’t just cause me to suffer more colds than most people it also caused me to suffer dysfunctional relationships. My anxiety issues had limited my options when it came to relationships, friendships and work. Like so many anxiety sufferers my limited social circle and relationship issues led to depression.

A 2019 study found, “the average participant treated with hypnosis improved more than about 84% of control participants.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31251710/

Why Is Hypnosis Good For Anxiety?

I believe hypnosis is the best way to help anxiety sufferers for many reasons, some reasons that hypnotherapy is so effective at helping anxiety sufferers are; using hypnosis we can detraumatise/remove the emotional charge traumatic memories that maybe be causing anxiety without even reliving the memory. Achieve deep levels of relaxation, the deeper a person can relax and the more time they experience relaxation the deeper their overall level of relaxation will be. The mind cannot tell the difference between a real or imagined event and hypnosis really improves our ability to visualise, by using hypnosis we can visualise ourselves the way we want to be and this has actually been shown to create new pathways in the brain, the pathways become stronger with more visualisation allowing anxiety sufferers to effortless become calmer. more relaxed and confident.

How Many Hypnotherapy Sessions Will I Need?

Everyone is different so it’s difficult to say exactly how many hypnotherapy sessions you will need to stop anxiety having a negative effect on your life but I recommend my clients have at least three hypnotherapy sessions to stop suffering from anxiety. Many of my clients experience positive change after the first session, after three sessions most of my client report life changing results.