Anxiety

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is your body’s response to anticipated danger. It is typically associated with worry or fear and is often accompanied by cognitive issues such as difficulty concentrating and physical symptoms like nausea, shaking, and muscle tenseness.

 

Anxiety can be a normal response to certain situations, but sometimes anxiety is part of an anxiety disorder. There are multiple types of anxiety disorders, and they involve similar symptoms, with some differences in their symptoms.

 

It might feel like your anxiety symptoms control your life, whether that means fear of a panic attack, avoiding people due to social anxiety, or a constant feeling of worry and agitation.

 

Understanding the symptoms of your specific type of anxiety can help you seek the most appropriate treatment and improve your quality of life.

Hypnosis for Anxiety

Anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness and fear that may cause someone to sweat, feel tense, and experience a rapid heartbeat. Those with anxiety disorders have anxiety that does not go away. It interferes with daily life and leaves people feeling overwhelmed.

 

Hypnosis may help individuals with anxiety because it eases them into a relaxed and calm state.

Hypnosis for fear

Hypnosis can reduce the fear that individuals experience. Measurable qualities of fear include blood pressure and heart rate.

 

The technique may lower blood pressure by easing the mind and body into a relaxed and calm state. Once the hypnosis relaxes their body, they can redirect their mind away from focusing on their fears.

How hypnotherapy treat anxiety?

During a hypnotherapy session, the therapist can give you what’s known as a “posthypnotic suggestion” while you’re in a state of trance.

 

In this dreamlike state, the mind becomes more open to suggestion. This allows the therapist to suggest to you how easily confident you will be the next time you sit on a plane.

 

Because of the relaxed state you’re in, it can be easier to avoid escalating any anxiety symptoms you may feel, such as:

  • a feeling of impending doom
  • shortness of breath
  • increased heart rate
  • muscle tension
  • irritability
  • nervous stomach

Hypnotherapy should be used as a complementary treatment to cognitive behavioral therapy.

However, if you only use hypnosis to treat your anxiety, it could have effects like those of meditation. A hypnotic induction would help put you into this relaxed state, just like meditation. You can then use this state to address anxieties and/ or phobias.

Tips to help control anxiety

There are a number of things you can try to help combat anxiety, including:

  • Behavioral therapy
  • Deep breathing
  • Exercise
  • Journaling
  • Meditation
  • Reading
  • Socializing, following pandemic guidelines of social distancing, masking and hand hygiene)
  • Speaking with your health care provider
  • Spirituality
  • Thought reframing

When to seek advice or treatment from a professional?

It’s recommended you speak to a hypnotherapist about your anxiety should any of these situations occur:

  • Your anxiety becomes an obstacle — In any aspect of everyday living, often causing difficulties for six or more months
  • Your anxiety becomes a negative influence in relationships — Creating barriers in life
  • Your anxiety leads to isolation — Producing thoughts of hopelessness or helplessness
  • Your anxiety controls your life — When your emotional or physical response to excessive worry is controlling your life in some aspect or another

A person with anxiety can seek support from a therapist, medical provider, family member, friend, community support person, crisis line resource or a crisis center. Depending on the severity of your anxiety, a behavioral therapy plan, anti-anxiety medication and/or coping mechanisms may be directed to your personal situation.

 

Recognition of anxiety is a key factor in dealing with excessive worry and moving forward in life. If you have any of the above symptoms or have difficulty controlling worry in your life, ask yourself if it could be anxiety you’re experiencing.

 

It’s important to share any concerns of excessive worry with your health care provider so we can help you identify ways to address your anxiety and move past the debilitation of excessive worry.