Anxiety is on the Rise - Why Hypnotherapy is an Effective Treatment

Anxiety is on the rise, even more so since Covid hit the world. For those looking to gain control of their anxiety, hypnotherapy is a highly effective treatment worth considering.

Understanding Anxiety

If you are reading this post, there’s a good chance anxiety is something you have experienced. Anxiety creates a whole lot of nasty symptoms. Tightness in the chest, racing heart, feeling like you are losing control, just to name just a few. If you can relate to these symptoms, you may very well understand anxiety from personal experience.

A certain amount of anxiety is part of normal life. For example, it is reasonable to feel anxious about an upcoming medical procedure. That is part of our survival mechanism, and shows we care about our life and health. Once the medical procedure has finished, our anxiety should also subside. It is when anxiety is persistent, excessive and causing ongoing suffering that it best to seek support.

Anxiety can cause us to feel as though we have no control and this is the subtle deception that lies within it. Anxiety feels very much as though it is happening to us. The feeling that anxiety can hit us at any moment, rendering us powerless, can be incredibly scary.

Anxiety and the Brain

Let’s begin to understand how anxiety operates from a neurological perspective. In other words, what is happening in our brain when we experience anxiety.

There are two types of anxiety. The first is cortex anxiety. This anxiety is created by the part of the brain where our thinking occur. This type of anxiety appears when we think the same thought again and again, imagining all the things that could go wrong. This anxiety is a future based emotion. Have you ever noticed that you don’t actually feel anxious about the past?

We feel anxiety when we begin to worry about something that is approaching. Imagining a particular outcome, we get caught in a movie of the mind watching scenes of anticipated worst-case scenarios. This ‘mind movie’ often has a soundtrack, an internal dialogue, there may be smells or tastes and it all feels very real! And the thing about the brain is – it doesn’t discriminate between what is real or imagined. It tells the body to react as though what we are imagining is real, so our body does react. Our chest feels tight, it can become hard to breath, our heart races and we feel light headed. I once heard this called this the ‘imagination of doom’. Most of the time we aren’t consciously aware that we can change our experience and reduce anxiety through focusing the mind differently. With cortex anxiety it is important to learn how to slow down and stop all those unhelpful, catastrophic thoughts that cause anxiety to arise.

Secondly, we can experience amygdala-based anxiety. The amygdala scans the world around us for any perceived threats. If it finds a real threat OR if it finds something that was previously considered dangerous, it triggers a strong response of flight or fight within us. This kind of anxiety comes out of nowhere and happens immediately - think panic attack. We may not be sure what has caused it, but know that something has triggered a strong response within us.

In an emergency situation, this work of the amygdala can save our life, however the amygdala can also be programmed to respond to situations that aren’t actually dangerous. Cognitive, talk based therapies are largely ineffective for this kind of anxiety because the amygdala has done its job long before the thinking mind can catch up. With hypnotherapy we can re-program what the amygdala perceives as threatening and create new associations for it. Breathing techniques and imagery work can also help to change the bodies physiology when amygdala-based anxiety takes hold.

Hypnotherapy Can Help with Anxiety

Hypnotherapy can help both cortex and amygdala-based anxiety. Hypnosis is a state in which our minds function very efficiently. A super-learning state so to speak. It allows us to work with our subconscious mind, which holds all our thoughts, feelings, memories, involuntary bodily functions (digestion, heartbeat, hormonal regulation etc) associations and beliefs. It is that part of us that drives the car home safely, while we get caught in a daydream. Basically, it is where all those parts of us we aren’t consciously aware of at any given moment live. The subconscious mind learns through repetition, emotion and imagination. Good news is, if you experience cortex anxiety, you are very likely to have a great imagination, and imagination is a key strategy used during hypnotherapy to re-wire the brain for calm instead of anxiety.

During hypnotherapy you will learn to become aware of all the situations and thoughts that trigger your cortex anxiety and will become more and more able to catch the very beginnings of your anxiety before it builds. When you can catch anxiety, you can stop those thoughts and imaginings that cause you to feel increasingly anxious and learn to redirect the mind to something that will help you to feel a greater sense of inner peace. The field of neuroscience tells us that the brain can change – even the most entrenched patterns. Each time we stop the pattern of anxiety, we are actually re-wiring our brain to move away from anxious patterns of thought.

You can also learn self-hypnosis to manage your anxiety any time, on your own. With self-hypnosis you can begin to regulate the nervous system by teaching yourself how to relax your mind and body and take control of your thoughts.

Brain scans have taught us, that many sufferers of anxiety have an overactive and enlarged amygdala. Good news is meditation can reduce the activity and size of the amygdala. Combining hypnosis and meditation (hypno-meditation) can help us learn the skill of meditation very quickly.

Finally, anxiety can be a symptom of incorrect associations or certain beliefs we hold about ourselves, others and the world. When this is the case hypnotherapy can help us to discover, reframe and treat the cause of anxiety, which is usually held outside of our awareness in the subconscious mind. Hypnotherapy is an incredibly powerful way to connect you with previously inaccessible resources that can help you to manage and overcome your anxiety.

The biggest game changer with so many experiences of anxiety is realising that it is treatable. Hypnotherapy can help you to regain control over your anxiety and provide you with effective strategies for change.

Quick Anxiety Management Tip

When you catch those initial feelings or bodily sensations of anxiety, take a deep breath in and breath out slowly. This slow exhalation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which tells our body it is safe. Continue to focus on that slow breath out. For example, breathe in for 4 counts and out for 7 counts (or any variation that works for you, just make that breath out the longest).

A life with anxiety is not your destiny. To find out more, or to discuss how hypnotherapy can support you to overcome your anxiety book a complimentary zoom call with Anneliis today.