Stress and anxiety are probably involved to some extent in a great many of the causes for clients coming to a hypnotherapist. At our Dublin clinic we help clients to control and eliminate unwanted stress and anxiety.
Relaxation exercises, and other stress management techniques can be very helpful in overcoming stress and anxiety caused by everyday life.
Stress
Due to a variety of socio-economic conditions, stress has now become more widely recognised by both individuals and employers. Effective stress management takes in various therapeutic models and requires tailoring a programme to include not just dealing with the presenting stress but to also help clients to avoid reaching high stress levels in the first place, and changing your associations with your stressors.
Creating an understanding of stress and the reasons for stress and addressing those stress factors on different levels giving an understanding of the individual nature of stress and creating positive outcomes for the future can be of great help.
How do stress and pain relate?
Stress and pain have a lot in common. They often feed on each other, like a vicious circle. Simplistically put, pain causes stress, the stress causes pain, the pain causes a reaction, which in turn causes stress,which causes more pain, and so cycle continues. Chronic stress becomes chronic pain; chronic pain causes chronic stress.
So, how can hypnosis help?
Hypnosis helps to break the stress/pain cycle. When one experiences pain, there is the tendency to make it worse by tensing up the muscles, which then causes more pain. One of the things hypnosis can do is to help you learn to relax those muscles and redirect the pain in a constructive and less invasive way.
Why has “stress” become such an issue?
Stress, in and of itself, is not a problem. It is a normal response, called “fight or flight”, which happens when faced with some tension-filled situation. The issue comes when the stress is unrelenting. The usual body defenses eventually have no way to “recuperate” in order to assist you when you face challenges, illness or other possible dangers.
Anxiety Disorders.
Anxiety disorders are very common, affecting as many as 13% of the adult population. They can start at any time, either in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood and fall into five main types:
* Panic Disorder
* Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
* General Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
* Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
* Phobias (which includes Social Phobia, or Social Anxiety Disorder)
How Anxiety Feels.
The feeling of anxiety can be crippling and can lead to a big rearrangement of the sufferer’s life, as commitments, responsibilities and general way-of-life have to be altered to fit-in around the anxiety, and/or panic attack problem and its effects.
This, as well as depression, sleep disturbance, or psychosomatic conditions (which may also result), can have a further knock-on effect, which can easily have a detrimental effect on committing to relationships, work, sex life, social life, or schooling.
The anxiety can range from general feelings of anxiousness or nervousness, to a full-blown panic or anxiety attack.
The symptoms of which can involve palpitations, feeling short of breath, tingling, feeling light-headed, sweating, feeling hot or cold all over, nausea, fear of losing control, or even feelings of fainting or impending doom.
Hypnotherapy can really help deal with the anxiety
Panic Attacks
Again everybody gets anxious from time to time and this is perfectly normal.
However, when a panic attack strikes, it feels anything but normal.
A panic attack can happen completely ‘out of the blue’, and often occur for little or no apparent reason.
The onset of a panic attack is usually very sudden, and typically, a panic attack will last usually between 20 and 30 minutes.
A panic attack is usually defined as a period of intense fear, accompanied by a series of psychological or bodily symptoms.
The symptoms of a panic attack.
The symptoms of a panic attack will vary from person to person, but can include any of the following:
* Shaking
* Difficulty in breathing, or shortness of breath (Dyspnoea)
* Abnormally rapid heartbeat (Tachycardia)
* Excessive sweating (Hyperhydrosis)
* Chest tightness
* Chest pain
* Abnormal sensations of the skin (Paraesthesia)
* Raised blood pressure (Hypertension)
* Tension and apprehension
* The feeling that ‘something terrible’ is going to happen.
* A specific fear of death
Treatment using hypnotherapy for panic attacks (or anxiety attacks), can give very rewarding and satisfying results.
If you suffer with panic attacks (anxiety attacks), and especially if it’s causing problems in your life, then don’t suffer in silence.