JMT HYPNOSIS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anxiety 

 

We can all think about a time when our breathing quickened, muscles tensed, our mouth dried up and our heart pounded with a sudden sense of dread. Usually this could have been in pretty hairy situations when the car skidded unexpectedly perhaps on black ice or perhaps when you were told you had to present to a group or maybe you were about to go into a job interview or wait for the dentist to call you. 

 

When we are confronted with what seems to be a serious threat to our well-being, we may react with a state of tension or alarm known as fear. Sometimes, we cannot pinpoint the precise cause for this state, but may we still feel tense and wound-up, as if something dreadful was about to happen. This overwhelming sense of fear, dread and doom is anxiety.  

 

Anxiety is often accompanied with a myriad of physical, emotional and cognitive symptoms. The heart beating faster, perspiring, dry mouth, nauseous, muscular tension, fast shallow breathing and blurred vision. The list is endless. The emotional symptoms maybe feelings of dread, anguish, sadness, fear and you may feel as though you are going to pass out, vomit, the urgency to go to the toilet to wanting to run away. Of course you may experience more extreme symptoms or lesser depending on the circumstances and your anxiety levels. 

 

Fear and anxiety do have a protective function as they prepare us for circumstances when we need to be alert to dangers. Those physical symptoms you feel when anxious are known as the ‘fight of flight’ response that prepares the body’s Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) to respond to threats. So those feelings of the dry mouth, rushing heart beat, perspiration and churning stomach is the body preparing to take battle or run! When the symptoms reduce, it is the parasympathetic nervous system which brings us back to baseline.

 

Now this fight and flight response is necessary to prepare us for dangerous situations. Could be driving in bad weather: We drive more cautiously and become more vigilant, witnessing a crime - do we intervene or do we run? We need a little bit of anxiety and stress to motivate to get us up in the morning to revise and sit exams, to book holidays, ask for a pay rise, care of a loved one etc. However, a problem arises when the continuous and disabling fear and anxiety starts disrupting normal life. The anxiety takes over and begins to lead to physical, emotional and cognitive (thought processes), which are so severe or too frequent or that it is triggered too readily by what sufferers that this leads to coping mechanisms which then lead to addictions. This could be taking one drink to settling your nerves before a presentation which you then generalise to other feelings of anxiety and drinking more. Drug taking, sex addiction, eating, spending, gambling, visiting the doctor on countless occasions and procrastination are all coping mechanisms that we may adopt because of anxiety. 

 

How can hypnosis help?

 

There are number of ways hypnosis can help tackle the physical, emotional and cognitive symptoms of anxiety. However, what hypnosis cannot do is remove anxiety itself. This is neither psychically or ethically possible as, anxiety is an important adaptive alarm response which we need for our survival. What hypnosis can do is turn your response down to the point that the original stressors/fears you have, are returned to ‘baseline’. We can do this through a number of methods. One which is Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR).

 

As far back as the 1920s, Dr Edmund Jacobson realised that his patients reported more pain when their muscles were tensed. He set about to relax them by first asking his patients to tense up and then relax all their muscles. What he found was that when people relaxed their muscles using the PMR they experienced less pain and felt less anxious.

 

As a hypnotherapist I use the PMR method in order to relax clients. Relaxation is important as when you are relaxed you cannot be stressed, fearful or anxious at the same time. This is due to the fact that the fear and anxiety response is triggered by the Autonomic Nervous system which activates the ‘fight or flight’. The parasympathetic Nervous system is the system which brings you back to ‘baseline’ and which is activated when you are relaxing. Hence the importance of the PMR and relaxation as a starting point for assisting with anxiety. 

 

Relaxation should never be underestimated. It is not the case of sitting down for 5 minutes. It is a progressive and sequential relaxation starting usually from the top of your head and working down your body. This can take between 20-40 minutes depending on the level of anxiety. Overtime this reduces as a client is taught self-hypnosis and relaxation to a point when it may take from 10-15 minutes. 

 

We then can move on to more specific methods to help you tackle your specific anxiety. Sometimes we may not know the cause or perhaps we have a detailed account of what happens. For example, when you have to get up for work in the morning you have pounding heart, a dry mouth and feelings of dread. In these instance we can use guided imagery. You may be asked to visualise a particular event and watch it decreasing and falling away in the distance whilst under hypnosis. Or perhaps you may be asked to visualise something you like and ask it to sit along side the anxiety provoking stimulus and eclipsing it i.e. moving in front and taking it over.  

 

Another very useful technique I use on clients is the dial method. This is extremely effective not only for pain management but also to help with anxiety. You are hypnotised and when in a deep relaxed state you are asked to visualise a dial with numbers from 1 to 10 and you will be asked at which point the dial is at when anxious. This is usually 10 or around the 9 mark. You are then asked to turn down the dial. As you do so you are asked to shift your attention to your body and what is happening. Perhaps you are feeling cooler, warmer, or maybe more relaxed. As the dial is turned down a client normally finds the anxiety response after 3 or 4 sessions reduces each time to a more manageable level at say 3 or 4. 

 

The dial method is important to demonstrate to you the control you have over your body and the physical, emotional and cognitive systems and how you can turn them down.

 

Research has shown some fascinating results. For instance when subjects were hypnotised and told to visualise something, CAT scans performed found that the same area of the brain was activated when a person was actually seeing something. This was not the same for subjects who were merely told to imagine seeing something without hypnosis. Their CAT scans revealed that the area of the brain involved in visual stimulus was not activated. 

 

Other techniques that I use with clients are positive suggestions and the stop-switch attention. The later is powerful insofar as when you think something will create an anxious situation it may often will. Take for instance a scenario when you are given a glass a water and told to hold it as still a possible. What you will usually find is that you shake more. The more you focus your attention on something you find the more tense you become and more tense you become the more anxious you will be. Thus, the tension fuels the anxiety and then you are caught in a viscous circle. You are shown how to shift your attention to say your feet or a corner of an imagery room and see what happens to the anxiety. 

 

How many sessions will I need?

 

After the initial consultation which usually lasts 90 minutes, I usually recommend a further three-four sessions. This however depends on a number of factors such as the type of anxiety i.e. generalised anxiety, social phobias - speaking in public to health anxiety etc. We can discuss the number of sessions when we meet.