One of the most common issues that people come to see me about is anxiety and stress and so with November 2nd being National Stress Awareness Day it gives us the opportunity to consider what elements of our life might be causing us unhealthy levels of stress and what steps we can take to help reduce them.
Autumn is usually a busy time in the year and in the weeks leading up to Christmas many people often begin to feel anxious as they juggle the demands of work, family life and the build up to the festive season. For some people Christmas is a daunting prospect – perhaps family tensions to deal with or feeling obliged to buy Christmas presents that you can’t afford. For others, the demands of work lead to a build up of stress and an inability to relax and switch off.
How can we stay calm and focused when it often seems as though there are just not enough hours in the day and the list of things to do seems to get longer by the minute? How can we switch off, unwind and not constantly succumb to either other people’s agendas or the notion that unless we are thinking and worrying about something, it might suddenly creep up and devour us like a monster from the shadows.
When we become stressed or anxious our brains will often focus on what we don’t want instead of what we do want but doing this creates more of what we don’t want. Most anxiety is future focused. We worry about what might happen and envisage all kinds of nasty scenarios. Just the process of imagining something we perceive as stressful puts us in a state of high alert even though nothing has actually happened! Seems a bit crazy doesn’t it that humans do this but it’s all linked to ensuring our survival.
Human beings are always looking to make sense of their environment, behaviour and any events that happen and language is a tool that we use to describe our world and give shape to the meaning that we imbue from situations. One of the ways that we attach meaning to events is through our brain’s ability to hunt for patterns. From man’s first appearance on the planet they had to learn to recognise patterns that related to survival such as food, shelter and sex. However, one of the main ways that we try to predict the future is to use our knowledge based on past experiences. The problem with this is that a tendency to anxiety, as well as many fears and phobias, is usually created in childhood when our brains didn’t have the ability to process information properly in the way that an adult would.
Cognitive Hypnotherapy and NLP can help the brain make sense of issues and emotions that are rooted in the past but which are causing us problems in the present. Whenever an event happens it gets registered by our mind/body system and we may not even be aware that we are looking for particular patterns or that our brain is responding to an emotion linked to an event early in life.
I use a variety of techniques, hypnosis being just one of them, which can help you resolve and release issues from the past that may causing you anxiety and stress in the present. I can also teach you techniques to help you learn to feel calm and in control at will. If you would like to find out more about how Cognitive Hypnotherapy could help you then give me a call on 07703 211449.
Adele Richmond
Cognitive Hypnotherapy & NLP
Tel: 07703 211449
Email: arichmond@talktalk.net