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Learn about anxiety

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No learn about anxiety resources would be complete without looking at emotional resilience. The word comes from ‘resili’ – the Latin word for ‘spring back’ – it’s the process of adapting in the face of adversity.

Think of anxiety a bit like a see-saw with ‘perceived’ ability to cope on one end and demands on the other. When demands are lower that ability to cope, we are OK, when the demands are bigger than our perceived ability to cope, we have a problem, we can learn to be less anxious.

Ego strengthening and emotional resilience are about improving ability to cope. We all use scales of 1 to 10, if our ability is say a grade 4 and a grade 6 problem comes up, we can struggle, if the ability is a 9, then the grade 6 problem is easily handled.

This resilience can be cultivated. The more we learn about anxiety, the more tools we have to cope.

The first step is Realism, being realistic about a situation, for example one of the difficulties with depression is that people often attach inappropriate meaning to events. If a depressed person telephones a friend and they don’t ring back, they might think ’my friend doesn’t like me’ when the actual reason may be that they didn’t even get the message.

Next we look at establishing a goal that we can work towards, a favourable outcome. Now here hypnosis can really help with what we call ‘future pacing’. We all know that hypnosis can help us look back at past problems by regressing. The other side of that coin is looking forward which is equally (if not more) powerful.

Self-discipline is important, abandoning those ‘crutch activities’ that feel safe and familiar. It might be drink or drugs or avoidance. Ego strengthening techniques can really help with this process.

Cultivating wider interests helps because it gives us different versions of ourselves. Think of all the energy an anxious person uses just being anxious, once they are less anxious they have a surplus or energy and time to spend, space to ‘grow into’.

Re-framing is seeing something through a different frame and really important if you want to learn about anxiety. Say you suffer an ankle injury; you may well be focusing on how it stops you doing what you want to do. If you’re a soldier on the front line of a war zone, a simple ankle injury might mean rest and relaxation away from stress and danger.

Here’s a great re-frame that goes directly to the next in our list – Identity. It’s easy to concentrate on all our difficulties and things that have gone wrong. Look though at the old saying ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. That’s re-framing from victim to survivor, think of all the strengths you’ve built up in those hard times!

Flexibility is also key, changing change, making change into opportunity rather than threat.  Flexibility is vital for surviving life’s storms, if you bend with the storm winds, you don’t break.

Hypnosis, mindfulness and meditation can all help to moderate outbursts and reinforce neural pathways. Think of your mind like a cornfield for this one. The old outdated negative patterns of thought are like well-trodden paths in the corn, easy to tread again and again. By treading down new paths of positive neural pathways in the corn, like the old ones, they get flatter and flatter, and easier to tread.

A strong social network is good for emotional resilience; reach out in times of difficulty. Today, we live more and more isolated lives, often secure in the belief that Facebook friends mean we’re well supported. Look for support in times of difficulty; seek out therapy if you need to.

For control, look to Victor Frankl, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Moving your locus of control internally rather than externally can make a big difference.

Finally, test the changes, keep a journal and monitor your progress, learn about anxiety with free resources posted on this blog,  after all this isn’t work, it’s your life’s work!

 

Anxiety resources

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Anxiety resources are one of the keys to feeling better. So what’s the first to understand?

It has to be relaxation.

Think of your anxiety a little like a light switch, on is anxious and off is relaxed. It’s simple but profound.

It’s physically impossible to be relaxed and anxious at the same time.  Relaxation is the first practical tool I teach my clients to use in the fight against their anxiety. Why?

Because it puts the power back in the anxious clients’ hands, and an empowered client has made a first step towards recovery. That is one of the benefits of relaxation, we CAN all do it, sometimes we forget how, but it is an ability we all share.

A little like Carl Jung’s idea of the common subconscious, relaxation is a natural healing resource that we can all access to fight anxiety, with the right help.

I’m not talking about the bottle of wine and a film type of relaxation with Facebook pinging all the way through; I’m talking about deep relaxation of the autonomic nervous system. It’s kryptonite for anxiety.

And that is something most of us very rarely do.

And it’s the ultimate ‘me time’. If you don’t know that, do yourself a huge favour and try it out even if you aren’t struggling.

Hypnosis is a fantastic tool to kick start the relaxation process if it’s been long neglected, so is mindfulness or meditation. Whichever way it happens, once it happens, clients have a tool they can access anywhere to turn the intensity right down, like you would a radio.

Think of that from the anxious person’s perspective. They are often confused, frightened, lonely, and sometimes desperate but mostly they want tools. They want to help themselves.

In the toolbox, relaxation is the soft, soothing, comforting, velvety hammer of anxiety. You can use it and enjoy using it too. It’s not the medicine that made us screw our faces up as kids. It feels good and it helps, what’s not to love about relaxation?

You can feel it working too, slower heart rate, lower blood pressure, steady, easy breathing, benefit after benefit after benefit.

Every time you flick on or off a light switch, think of it… anxiety on, relaxed off.

 

Anxiety on.

Relaxed off.

Anxiety and you

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ANXIETY AND YOU

So why did I decide to specialise in anxiety?

Well, anxiety chose me, not the other way around. As a busy Lawyer, I didn’t see the warning signs on the road to anxiety until all of a sudden… BAM!

Huge panic attack on the first day of a holiday, fear, confusion, feeling isolated and vulnerable, I felt like I was the only person in the world that this was happening to. I had no tools to help me help myself.

Fast forward ten years and I moved from anxiety’s latest victim to hopefully its worst enemy. How did I do this?

I condensed expert personal therapy, countless hours of study, became a therapist, researched and researched into my desire to understand anxiety and how to help others. It led to UKCP accreditation, thousands of hours of dedicated work towards helping people like you, but most importantly it gave me a skill set that really makes a difference.

So what does that mean to you?

It means you’re not alone in this struggle; people have been there before, while your route into anxiety is personal to you, the symptoms of anxiety, generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety and that spiral of panic are very common to us all.

There are many useful ways to combat anxiety and find your peace, relaxation, CBT, hypnotherapy, reframing, behavioural methods and various forms of psychotherapy can all look at the causes and help move you forward.

You are not alone, I have been there and I have moved on.

You can move on with the right answers and methods. Therapy isn’t a magic wand, it’s sometimes hard work but the therapist collaborating with you as the client is the key to making that progress.

Whether anxiety strikes out of the blue or is a familiar part of your life when that feeling of dread, the fear of fear comes over you, you can use some of the resources posted on my last blog to help in the short term.

I find that with clients in my treatment room, learning about anxiety is a major part of the process and so I decided to put some of that knowledge out here to help you.

In the next blog, I will talk in more detail about therapy methods and how they work, but more importantly about how they can help you. Whether face to face or by online therapy, the more you understand, the more tools you have to combat anxiety.

I hope you’ll join me

Stuart

Help for Anxiety and Panic

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HELP FOR ANXIETY AND PANIC

THE TEN TOOLS YOU CAN USE RIGHT NOW

1 – Remember that although your feelings and symptoms are very frightening, they are not dangerous or harmful.

2 – Understand that what you are experiencing is just an exaggeration of your normal bodily reactions to stress.

3 – Do not fight your feelings or try to wish them away. The more you are willing to face those feelings, the less intense they will be.

4 – Do not add to your panic by thinking about what “may” happen. If you find yourself asking “what if?” Tell yourself “so what!”

5 – Stay in the present. Notice what is really happening to you as opposed what you think might happen.

6 – Label your level of fear from 0 to 10 and watch it go up and down. Notice that it does not stay at a very high level for more than a few seconds.

7 – When you find yourself thinking about fear, change your “what if?” thinking. Focus on and carry out a simple and manageable task such as counting backwards from 100 by sets of 3.

8 – Notice that when you stop adding frightening thoughts to you fear, it begins to fade.

9 – When the fear comes, expect and accept it. Wait and give it time to pass without running away from it.

10- Be proud of yourself your progress thus far, and think about how good you will feel when you succeed this time.

15 Motivation Essentials

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15 MOTIVATION ESSENTIALS

Motivation can be overcomplicated very easily, but in therapy we shouldn’t underestimate its importance. Here I’ll try and break down what you need to know and leave out what you don’t to make things easier.

  1. WHAT IS MOTIVATION?

The simplest definition is that motivation explains your behaviour, it’s why you do what you do, why you want what you want and why you need what you need.

  1. WHY DO I NEED IT?

Because it’s part of a cycle of achievement, if you want results then motivation is not optional. The more motivation you have in therapy, the better.

  1. INTERNAL MOTIVATION

As the name suggests, this comes from within you. What do you love doing? Do you remember how you used to play as a child with no reward other than the sheer enjoyment of the process? Think about your ‘Me-time’ and that’s internal (or intrinsic) motivation right there. It’s as unique as you are and tends to be lasting.

  1. EXTERNAL MOTIVATION

This can be the carrot or the stick, for example money or punishment, and it’s the opposite of internal motivation because there is a (desired or undesired) outcome.  In therapy this could be someone who wants to change something because there is a reward for doing that or a drawback for not doing it. In other words they don’t want to do it just for themselves.

  1. DIRECTION IN MOTIVATION

Really important is where you are going; are you moving away from pain, or towards pleasure? If it’s a little of both, that tends to work best in the therapy room. Choice is key here, smokers may think they have no choice but to smoke but can go for a long time without a cigarette on a holiday flight.

  1. PERSISTENCE AND CONTINUING

Can you stick at it? The important thing here is to change the idea that it’s a hardship, of course you may suffer a setback, it’s part of being human. In therapy we don’t see things as linear or so black and white, it isn’t snakes and ladders after all! If you can learn to be gentle with yourself and remember why you were doing it, and what your motivation is you can get back on track.

  1. FAR BEYOND DRIVEN

We’ve all seen intensity and we know what it looks like, but intensity can be daunting and it can also be turned down by turning down the difficulty level. How do you see yourself? Letting go of the labels you may have given yourself makes it easier to move on from that old version of you

  1. I THINK THEREFORE I CAN

Guiding behaviour through goals (literally, in the case of sportsmen) therapy helps you to visualise an outcome and then build the psychological architecture to succeed. This is very powerful at a subconscious level and represents a tool that you can use for your own results.

  1. TAKING SMALL STEPS

By taking small steps and checking off the simplest milestones on your list towards your desired result, you build encouragement and therefore motivation. Do you know you can do it? Have you done something similar before?

  1. FOLLOW THE LEADER

Do you know someone else who has done it? Seeing others succeed before you can build motivation and help you to get where you want to be.

  1. COME ON, YOU CAN DO IT!

Do you have a champion of your cause? Is there someone in your corner that can support your efforts and encourage you along the way to change?

  1. YOUR BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES CAN HELP YOU

Your beliefs, emotions and behaviours can all help here; having a strong belief is a big step in making your change.  Do you have one habit that you can use as proof that you can form a new and more beneficial habit?

  1. SURVIVOR NOT VICTIM

You may have had hardships and it may feel like you are the victim of events that conspired against you, but you’re still here. Seeing those challenges as having strengthened you because you got through them rather than weakened you and made you more vulnerable changes your perspective and can increase motivation.   

  1. OWN YOUR GOAL

When you take ownership of a deeply held goal, you build subconscious motivation and you bring the subconscious into the process. Your subconscious is a powerful tool for change and ally in the process; it’s yours, so use it.

  1. SPREAD THE WORD

We can all increase motivation if we understand it, nobody else’s aim will be exactly the same as yours, it isn’t a contest, so spread the good news about motivation and see the benefits multiply.

 

Stuart Cale is the founder of Talking-Cure, a bespoke Psychotherapy and Hypnotherapy practice specialising in anxiety, stress management and self-esteem.

 

 

Stress and anxiety

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Man suffering from stress and anxiety

Man suffering from stress and anxiety

Stress and anxiety, we all know the effects, we recognise the all too familiar signs… be it sleepless nights, waking up in the dead of night, drinking or smoking to excess, headaches, bad-tempers, repetitive thinking or habits, or even full blown panic attacks with the associated frightening physical symptoms. If panic strikes, the result can be physically and mentally very scary. The thing that we don’t all know, is that something can be done to help and crucially, before we get to that stage.

We all need some stress, but it helps if we can recognise the type of stress. ‘Eustress’ as it is called is the type of stress that benefits us, the type of stress that pushes us to go that little bit further, to achieve, the type of stress that readies us for exams or business presentations, or for any occasion where we need to perform at our best.

Then there is bad stress. The problems with the bad type of stress ‘Distress’, come when demands on us exceed our perceived abilities and then when stress builds, anxiety can often accompany it. We pop a painkiller, or we lose ourselves in the T.V. or a glass of wine, temporary fixes, but there is another way.

If we can’t change the pressures on us, then we can certainly change how we react to them, and more importantly our perception of them. This has many benefits; firstly, the unpleasant and worrying effects of stress are lessened so that we can enjoy life more. Secondly, we can improve our physical health, lower blood pressure, heart rate etc. and thirdly, we are building a set of skills that will allow us to deal better with stress in the future, because we understand it. This in turn allows us to be the best version of ourselves that we can be… for us and for our loved ones.

At Talking-Cure I teach these coping skills, how to turn down the intensity from red to amber to green, how to relax, how to increase energy levels and cope with the pressures that modern life throws at us. By giving ourselves the ability to deal with stress and anxiety before they become crisis issues, we are taking a preventative path rather than looking for a cure. As we have touched on before, this is a fresh and positive approach to well-being, and the benefits in quality of life and saving in lost productivity can literally be enjoyed by anyone with the desire to take the necessary steps, we see it as an investment in your future.

Social Media problems

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Addiction to social media, internet addiction and self-esteem are sometimes closely linked

Addiction to social media, internet addiction and self-esteem are sometimes closely linked

Social media problems examined. Social media has changed our world in many ways; it has brought pleasure, connection, re-united people and re-ignited old friendships. Recent research commissioned by Unilever however (in which a thousand women were surveyed and compared to a similar sample from 2004)  found some less than savoury effects of Facebook, Twitter and the like. In the findings, more than half of the participants reported that seeing photos of friends made them feel worse about their own bodies.

Another very surprising result was that ten years ago, 75% of the women surveyed reported that the media set ‘unrealistic’ standards of beauty, but that figure has now dropped to only 66%. So what’s going on, and why is it a concern? Is there resigned acceptance of the unrealistic standards, or is the pressure that society and the media places on us to look a certain way having a potentially damaging effect over time?

Low self-esteem is a very real problem for many of us, and the sometimes debilitating effects of low self-esteem are at the forefront of those issues that many people tolerate unnecessarily, and which reduce their quality of life on a daily basis.

It’s a changing and ever more competitive world in which we live and one where it seems that our friends have the highest influence over our idea of beauty. That pressure can cause anxiety, jealousy or any of a number of emotional or thought issues. This is why here at Talking-Cure we take the influence of social media in our lives very seriously, and we see ever-increasing levels of the effects that internet exposure can have on our clients. In our view, although the end results of these pressures are often the same, the causes are changing with each generation and as therapists we need to rise to meet these challenges.

So, if you find yourself struggling with any of the issues above, or any other problem which may be related to exposure to social media or the use of the internet generally, then please do not hesitate to pick up the phone and speak to us here at Talking-Cure.