Stress, Anxiety, and Depression

As much as stress can help motivate us to make changes, when it gets unbalanced, it can also become a terrible burden.

Sometimes, stress just leaves us feeling frazzled and drained. At other times, it can turn into crippling anxiety and depression.

When we get caught in this place, the worst part can be how unhelpful, even nasty, we can be to ourselves. This makes it worse, as we spiral down the drain of self-criticism and low self-esteem.

Hypnotherapy can help to break this cycle and make time to find your centre.

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What is Stress?

Stress is the body and mind’s natural response to threat. It is perfectly natural, indeed, essential to survival. If we didn’t have a threat detector, we might see a tiger in a bloody rage and not think to run.

There is a lot more we can say about this, but we will leave it there until we see each other in session.

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is what happens when stress sets in and becomes more chronic. Stress is short term and reactive. Anxiety is long term and fairly continuous.

Whereas stress is what we feel happening to us when we detect a threat, something scary that makes us feel vulnerable, anxiety is a state that we live in when our stress response gets unbalanced, and starts triggering all the time.

What is the Problem?

The problem is that most situations in which we feel stressed, there are no bloodthirsty tigers. There may be some loud cats in the alleyway – plenty of noise in our own heads - but we don’t need to run from or attack a loud cat that lives around the corner. Instead, it’s enough to just be aware that they are there, take a deep breath, and move away from the window a little.

How can Hypnotherapy help?

Hypnotherapy is an effective tool to help manage stress and anxiety. Over time, it can even help create new habits. These new habits will manage our reaction to what triggers stress. At the same time, it can help find and address some of the original causes of it.

Hypnotherapy is a skill that helps us learn to control our minds and become more relaxed in our bodies. It teaches us that we are at the centre of our world, that we have choice, and that we can move our focus and awareness much more intentioanlly that we think, especially when caught in the grip of old anxieties and self-talk.

What are the effects of Stress and Anxiety?

Though everyone knows what the terms means, each individual experiences stress and anxiety differently. For some, anxiety is unpleasant but manageable. For others, it can be debilitating and deeply distressing.

From IBS to pain to panic attacks, stress is at the root of many of our illnesses. Chronic stress and anxiety stop the body from resting, which makes it both harder to get better, and intensifies the bad stuff.

Stress is, in terms of mental health, the modern epidemic. It is the most common and generalised problem in society. This is closely followed by sleep issues, which stress and anxiety will also, usually, worsen.

These are simply the physical responses to stress. The psychological ones are often more noxious. Substance abuse, isolation, low self-trust, low self- esteem, low initiative, depression. All of these have some roots in stress responses, and are often worsened by how it makes us feel.

Getting help for Stress and Anxiety

It is important, when we realise that there is a problem, not to ignore it, hoping it'll get better, or instead to isolate ourselves, thinking that no one can help or that we don't deserve support.

If you are willing to take a step towards getting better, I can offer you a warm and welcoming place to talk about what is going on for you, how you got here and where you want to move to. Then, together, we can find ways to make this happen, improving your life and wellbeing, hopefully, for good.

Depression is a cycle, which hypnotherapy can effectively challenge and help manage.

How will we work with depression?

Depression is often the result of predisposing factors coming into contact with a trigger. This creates the possibility for a vicious cycle, which hynotherapy can effectively challenge and help manage.

Though severe depression will likely need a multi-specialist approach to treat, mild and moderate depression may be effectively treated using only hypnotherapy.

Together, we will take the time to understand the sources of the depression, what maintains it, and how to get out of it.