Anxiety

Let’s get clear on what anxiety is! For some it may be a minor issue, but for you it may cause intense distress and discomfort if you worry excessively and persistently about everyday situations.

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Other symptoms of anxiety may include elevated heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating and feeling tired. So how come anxiety affects so many people, and why might it be affecting you?

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Anxiety is a verb… a doing word. We therefore “do” anxiety we do not “have” it… it’s not a thing. Over the years we’ve seen more and more people come in saying that “I’ve got anxiety” or “I’ve had anxiety for so many years.” Once you understand it’s not a “thing”, the remedy is fairly straightforward. Noticing when you are doing anxiety and when you are not, will be a huge help in identifying that you are in control of your thoughts, feeling and emotions. You are in control of your mind. A major strategy we teach is how to become a critical thinker.

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Becoming a critical thinker is recognising that anxiety can be healthy response, like a warning or an alarm telling us to do something. Sometimes this alarm is telling us to RUN but for many of us this is our bodies way of telling us to slow down, breathe or practice selfcare. We must never allow ourselves to become so "busy" we stop listening to our own bodies alarm system.  

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A useful metaphor is to recognise we are the captains of our own ships. If your crew are telling you there is possible danger ahead, it’s important to listen BUT be a critical thinker. You are more experienced than your crew. Sure, there might be something you need to watch out for but most of the time, the crews concerns do not need urgent attention. They are just doing their job, to alert us. Not everything is as big as they make it out to be! Try thanking your crew for the information and then teach them the difference between little things that don't need our attention and big things that do. Of course, this is something that is a very effective technique in hypnotic intervention.

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More and more people today struggle with anxious thoughts. Globally we’ve had to navigate though an unforeseen pandemic and instability in our world (jobs, floods, war,  food on shelves, inflation etc.) At home we’ve had inconsistently and uncertainty (pressures of judgement, failure, loneliness, boredom etc.) The truth is we are creatures of habit. We like stability and knowing more or less what to expect so when instability and uncertainty sets in we can often find ourselves listening to all the “BUTs” or “WHAT IFs” in our head. These are not useful and need to be silenced. Once silenced, we can listen to thoughts that are helpful. Hypnosis and psychotherapy can help you to learn to listen to action based thoughts and help you move forward.