Anxiety?

Stress or anxiety?

We are designed to have a stress response. It’s physical, and you’ll be familiar with the symptoms – racing heart, faster breathing, shaking arms, legs, feet, churning tummy, dilated pupils. At a healthy level and for a healthy period of time, stress helps us to live full and rewarding lives. It evolved in the time of our ancient ancestors, to get us primed and pumped and ready to escape from danger, race after prey, or boost our strength when we needed to fight off predators. It works just the same now, as it did then, and that’s where the problems start. It is triggered when the primitive part of our minds, the limbic system, thinks we are in danger, even today.

Back in the ancient times, the stress response was needed for only a short time – you fought the predator and won, or you were dinner. You ran away from the predator and escaped, or you were dinner. And as soon as the threat was over, you would shake yourself, tell the story to others, maybe even have a laugh, and your body would fill up with calm hormones once more.

But now, the primitive mind sees threat everywhere, always, because of the way the modern world operates. We are constantly bombarded with images of death and destruction, famine and war and the poor primitive mind isn’t all that smart. It doesn’t know the difference between what’s far away and what’s right here. Between imagination and reality. And so our stress response is tuned to fire all the time – at work, in relationships, in traffic, in Lidl, everywhere. It gets so that it feels normal to be primed and pumped, even though its not. Chronic stress can develop into anxiety – a long term activation of the stress response that changes how our brains work so that we become obsessed with risk, danger and worries.

Over time anxiety causes insomnia, IBS, phobias, avoidance behaviours,  panic attacks, OCD and all the rest.

Social Anxiety :

Social Anxiety Disorder is an overwhelming fear of social situations. It can arise suddenly but usually develops and gets stronger over time. It is caused by the primitive mind, already carrying a heavy load of anxiety and looking for a reason to explain this, deciding that other people may be a threat and deciding that it’s safer to avoid them. At first the sufferer may avoid large crowds, but as they continue to accept the idea that social interaction is dangerous, they will find the social anxiety symptoms occurring even in places and among people they know well. Life can become very limited and difficult, and other mental health issues such as depression may develop as a result. We strengthen feelings of discomfort in social situations the more we avoid them, and the feelings of isolation and fear and social anxiety increase. Because the initial fear originates in the primitive unconscious brain, trying to change the way we think by directly working with the conscious brain isn’t very effective.

Treatment for social anxiety : Hypnotherapy works with the unconscious mind instead, soothing and reassuring through positive imagery, post-hypnotic suggestion and positive goal-setting which serve to re-wire the stress and anxiety response pathways, gradually easing the feeling of social anxiety and promoting confidence and a more positive outlook overall.

Health anxiety

Health anxiety symptoms can make life a misery for many people. Once again, when daily stress isn’t effectively dealt with through quality sleep and sufficient downtime, the primitive brain takes control, throwing us out of our intelligent, conscious and intellectual mind. It looks around day and night for the predators which are causing all this stress, and becomes increasingly fixated on negative possibilities, trying to explain why the body as a whole is so constantly flooded with stress chemicals, trying to find something to pin it on. It’s primitive, old-fashioned, and doesn’t understand the pressures of the modern world. It can’t deal with the constant flood of bad news and negative thinking which pour in from social media, TV and news, film, even close relationships and friend groups. It keeps us on guard all the time, as if we were guarding our cave from a polar bear or tiger nearby, even when there’s no such danger there.

Energy is diverted from systems that aren’t needed to fight off a predator – so our digestive and immune systems receive less energy than they need, and become less efficient. As a result we can experience painful stomach problems, develop stomach ulcers, have regular constipation or diarrohoea. A weakened immune system allows virus and germs to affect the body more than normal so we can catch lots of bugs and infections when we are constantly stressed and anxious. Even our brains get less energy when we are anxious in this way so our thinking becomes foggy, we can’t concentrate, learn or remember well.

Of course, the primitive brain is looking for a reason for all this stress that never ends and decides that these physical symptoms are a cause. It decides that ill- health is in fact the predator in this case and that we need to be constantly on our guard against it, looking for symptoms the way primitive man would have looked for tiger tracks in the mud. As a result, we develop a deep-seated unconscious worry about our health, and become obsessed with checking for things that might be going wrong in our bodies. The more we do this, the stronger the pattern becomes in our minds, so that the drive  to check , to look for danger, starts to overtake our basic instincts and intelligence,  so that we begin to wake up at night quite often just to check our health. This sleep disturbance adds to our high stress and anxiety levels and to our feelings of being poorly, and so a vicious cycle begins which can be difficult to address. Once again, working directly with our conscious, thinking intelligent mind isn’t very effective, because we already know intellectually, that we are well, and that this is a mental issue.

Treatment for health anxiety : Solution-focused hypnotherapy works with the unconscious mind instead, enhancing a belief in our own health and well-being, promoting powerful change in the subconscious mind which allows us to remove the obsession with health and to feel more relaxed overall. This has a knock-on effect on our general feelings of health which reverse the effects of health anxiety and restore our energy, vitality and sense of joy.

IBS – Closely linked to health anxiety above, numerous studies have shown that hypnotherapy can lead to significant reduction of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) symptoms, and for that reason, hypnotherapy is recognised by NICE (the National Institute for Health & Care Excellence) as an effective treatment for the condition. NICE advise general practitioners and healthcare professionals on best practice and so this is a strong endorsement of the power of hypnotherapy to provide relief from ibs symptoms. A structured and gentle approach to this and other gastric problems allows the client to feel relief from the pain, fear and inconvenience of IBS.

Treatment for IBS :Hypnotherapy is a powerful treatment for irritable bowel syndrome because it understands that the root cause of this debilitating illness is anxiety, stress and negative thought patterns in the unconscious mind. Gradually re-wiring the mind through gentle relaxation, powerful post hypnotic suggestion and research-based interventions, the hypnotherapist can guide the client into relief and release from ibs symptoms, so that they can begin to enjoy their lives again.

Phobias- A phobia can take over your life and prevent you from doing even the most basic of activities. A deep, overwhelming fear, it comes directly from the subconscious and therefore cannot be dealt with by direct reasoning or treatment.

The roots of phobia, whether it be of enclosed spaces, spiders, darkness or the outdoors, is always in the primitive mind, the unconscious mind and has its roots in that out of control stress response we discussed above. Once the unconscious brain associates a particular thing with fear or anxiety, it tries to deal with this connection through avoidance.

Treatment for phobia : Hypnotherapy is a really effective way to unwind phobia in a gentle, solution focused way that does not require going back into past trauma or negative events. Instead, the unconscious is led easily and effortlessly to rewrite negative thought patterns which underlie the phobia, creating new neural pathways of confidence and safety and so moving the client out of their phobic response and into calm, confident living once more.

Agoraphobia: One of the most limiting phobias, agoraphobia can prevent sufferers from living their best and most fulfilling lives. In extreme cases agoraphobia symptoms can prevent a person from engaging ith the world at all, causing extreme isolation, loneliness and depression.

Treatment for agoraphobia : Hypnotherapy is very effective in treating agoraphobia, or fear of being in places where escape may not be possible, as sessions can be conducted online and are just as powerful on this platform as face to face. Clients can attend the sessions from a place where they feel totally comfortable and at ease, so promoting faster and sustainable recovery.

Other Common phobias treated by hypnotherapy:

    • Arachnophobia: Fear of spiders
    • Claustrophobia: Fear of enclosed spaces
    • Cynophobia: Fear of dogs
    • Dentophobia: Fear of dentists
    • Ophidiophobia: Fear of snakes
    • Aerophobia: Fear of flying
    • Agoraphobia: Fear of open spaces and public places
    • Social phobia: Fear of social situations
    • Carcinophobia: Fear of developing cancer
    • Zoophobia: Fear of animals
    • Acrophobia: Fear of heights
    • Emetophobia: Fear of vomiting
    • Neophobia: Fear of anything new
    • Gerontophobia: Fear of growing old or old people 
    • And hypnotherapy can treat all of these very effectively and in a relatively short period of time.

Hypnotherapy for OCD: 

People with OCD have described it as being in prison, kept contained by their own obsessions, compulsions or thoughts. OCD is in the top 10 of the most disabling illnesses, and can be successfully treated by hypnotherapy. Whether experiencing contamination obsessions, checking complusions, Pure Obsessions or Pure O, Symmetry obsessions or hoarding, hypnotherapy goes to the root of the problem, deep in the subconscious mind, and allows the client to unpick the thought processes that have set the illness in train without conscious awareness, so that they find relief and freedom from their symptoms once more.

Treatment for OCD: Intrusive thoughts come from a place that is not conscious and are based on an avoidance of unbearably uncomfortable tension and anxiety, and so relief from these thoughts can’t be found in ocd treatment that tries to train the conscious mind. Instead, hypnotherapy treatment for ocd starts where the problem starts, and involves retraining the unconscious mind to work in a way that is healthful and helpful, re-wiring the brain away from the negative thought patterns which make up the symptoms of ocd, and boosting the production of feel good chemicals like serotonin, allowing the client to move forward into full mental health once more. Solution focused hypnotherapy provides ocd help by first understanding the root causes of the illness, and working with these to bring about change.

Anxiety is at the root of all these conditions…

Anxiety.

We all know what that feels like.

It’s a very useful tool, now and again. It tells us when we’re in danger, and moves us quickly to safety.

But nowadays, it’s hyperactive. Like an inflamed muscle, it is activated and alert all the time, because we are bombarded with images and ideas about danger and war and negativity 24/7, and there is no longer the downtime we need to re-set our nervous systems, and feel safe. When we don’t feel safe we cant connect with others and so we withdraw, feeling disconnected, alone and vulnerable.

As a result our nervous system fills us full of chemicals that keep us on edge, vigilant and tense. We brace against new ideas, new experiences, new chances, and hunker down inside our comfort zone, and lose our energy and vitality, and feel we can’t do it all.  Or else we scramble to keep on the move all the time, afraid to switch off, afraid of missing out, with a to-do list that gets longer and more impossible by the hour, and yet we keep on going, into exhaustion and out the other side.

Anxiety and fear  grow inside us like wild animals and get way out of control. They make us very unhappy. Our bodies tell us something is wrong through sleep disturbances, chronic pain, digestive issues and IBS, allergies and autoimmune diseases. And exhaustion.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

Just imagine…

Imagine how different life would be, if you felt you had all the time in the world to do the things you needed to do.

  • If you woke each morning with a feeling of hope and promise about the day ahead.
  • If you had confidence in your own ability to solve the daily  challenges you face without fear, panic or overwhelm.
  • If you had energy to spare for the fun things in life again, just the way you had when you were younger.
  • If you found natural and powerful reserves and resources to deal with the little challenges – and the big ones.
  • If your day was full of Good Stuff and not Bad Stuff.
  • If your kids copied your behaviour and this made you proud and glad, instead of ashamed and guilty.
  • If your belly felt cool and open, instead of sick and tight.
  • If people remarked on how well you looked, how fresh and rested, and asked your secret.

This is what happens when you have a regulated nervous system. 

When positivity, energy and motivation replace anxiety and overwhelm. 

Rosie’s Space 6 Week anxiety Re-Set programme

What do I get with the 6 Week Re-Set programme?

  • Free Discovery Call to answer all your questions and tell you the basics, to see if it’s a good fit for you.
  • Initial Consultation (60 minutes) to set your baseline and explain the process.
  • Personalised Recording to play at home and support the work we are doing in session
  • 6  weekly sessions (60 minutes) either face to face in Rosie’s Space, Downpatrick or online (Zoom)
  • Weekly tools and techniques to practice throughout the programme, building week-on-week towards a powerful Positivity Toolkit, effective against anxiety and overwhelm.
  • Online in-person mentoring from Rosie throughout the programme via WhatsApp to answer any queries and concerns or just to check in with your progress as you put the tools and techniques into practice.

What’s the investment? 

  • Commitment – if you can commit to one hour per week in session with Rosie, 30 minutes each night listening to the Personalised Recording as you fall asleep, and to trying out the tools and techniques you learn in session, the programme will be most effective for you.
  • The investment in the programme is £285 in total, and covers everything listed above.

When does the 6 Week Re-Set programme run? 

The 6 Week Re-Set programme runs throughout the year – just check on our Bookings Page ( https://rosies-space.co.uk/sessions-appointments/ ) for available slots and book your Discovery Call to find out more!

What do people think?

Check out our testimonials page to find out what people have been saying:

https://rosies-space.co.uk/testimonials-2/

 

 

 

 

  • Because everyone’s nervous system, capacity for change  and life circumstances are different, results will vary. Often, participants will decide to continue working with Rosie once the programme ends, to continue their progress towards the goals they set, as there is no end point to the journey towards happiness and contentment. The 6 Week Re-Set programme is designed to introduce and establish the basic process of solution-focused hypnotherapy towards personal goals and no guarantee of specific results can be given.