Stress Busting with Hypnotherapy

Stress, in the true sense of the word, refers to tension. Tension in itself is a neutral condition and not always negative. However, when a hypnotist meets a patient who wants to work on their stress, it is always referred to by the patient as a problem involving an overload or an unbearable tension causing fear, worry, and possibly other health problems such as headaches, or some type of emotional and / or physical problem.

You can think of stress simply as the opposite of relaxation. Because hyp-notherapy is a marvellous way to induce relaxation, you won’t be surprised to read that hypnotherapy is a marvellous stress antidote!

Because hypnosis helps you relax, it is an excellent tool in identifying new strategies for stress reductions that feel natural to you.

Cooling yourself off and hypnotherapy

Anger management has become such a buzzword recently that there is even a Hollywood movie about with that title. We haven’t actually seen it, as we’re too busy helping people to not be angry!

Let’s say that you are coming to a hypnotherapist for anger management treatment. Most hypnotherapists begin anger management work by collecting information about how long you’ve had a problem with anger and how you react. They may also ask you what helps make you less angry and what winds you up the most. These questions help you to start thinking about your own patterns of anger and how you deal (or don’t) with it. You may not even be hypnotized in your first session because there will be so much to uncover about you and your way of expressing anger.

Most people with anger issues feel out of control. This lack of control feeds their inner critic and makes them feel awful about themselves. So, early on, your hypnotherapist helps you to build up your confidence. You come to believe that it is possible for you to have greater self-control. At this point, the hypnotherapist can introduce any number of new coping strategies, based on your recently enhanced sense of confidence and control.

Responding with stress

If the source of an alarm hangs around for a sustained period, whether in your mind or in real life, you translate this state of constant alert into what is called a stress response. In short, sustaining a fight-or-flight response leads to stress.

However, most people don’t experience stress by living for long periods in immediate physical danger (unfortunately, you’d probably get the sack if you physically fought your boss for survival!). More commonly, you produce stress as a product of the way that you think about the external forces affecting you.

The physical consequences of living under stress for prolonged periods can be serious. Stress can lead to stomach ulcers, a heart attack, a stroke, or other physical ailments. Your ancestors would rest after the threat was over (after either fighting and killing a saber-toothed tiger or fleeing to safety), giving their body biochemistry time to return to normal. Unfortunately, in today’s society, many people don’t experience this respite from stress; they’re under constant stress – a situation that can, and often does, have adverse health effects.

Reframing your stressed-out world

Hypnotherapy can help you find strategies for changing your response to the things that stress you out. Changing your attitude toward your stressors lowers your stress and helps you avoid any detrimental health consequences.

Reframe is a therapy term that simply means viewing something in a new and more positive light. Once you can reframe a situation you view as negative, you improve your ability to cope with that situation.

You’re stressed: Your life appears to be on fast forward, and you can’t seem to slow down. Work and home life are no longer fun, and you just want to crawl into a hole and sleep. Worry not, because help is on its way in the person of your friendly neighborhood hypnotherapist. With his expertise, your hypnotherapist can help you stand back and re-evaluate your stressors.

How he does that depends on what your particular issues are.

In general, a hypnotherapist can help you to:

Take off your blinkers and see that you do, in fact, have options.
Look at and change your current reactions to stress.
Reframe your feelings towards your stressors and perhaps look upon them as motivational and exciting.
Prioritize what is important and what are unnecessary pressures.
Ensure that you are putting appropriate effort into the necessities.
Access your inner resources and potentials.
Relax!

Making a molehill out of that mountain

Facing up to stress can seem overwhelming. You can think of stress as a mountain you’re standing very close to and need to get by, on your journey through life. Standing so close makes the mountain seem very daunting; you can’t see a way around it or through it. The only option appears to be the long, hard slog up its sheer face; a journey that is very tiring and fraught with danger. However, take some time to walk away from that mountain and you start to see it differently.

For a start, it doesn’t appear so challenging. You notice paths that go around it; tunnels that take you safely through. In fact, you notice that there are many easier options than taking that dangerous route up its side.

Hypnotherapy finds the molehill in your mountains. In trance you can access your unconscious mind and open up new perspectives, which allows you to find easier and safer ways to get by that stress mountain and improve your effectiveness, and your health too.