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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.

Hypnosis not for TV

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hypnotherapy is a natural and healthy state of deep relaxation

Hypnosis not for TV but for clinical settings

Hypnosis is not for TV. “You’re back in the room”; ITV’s latest game show which features contestants being hypnotised by “master hypnotist” Keith Barry and longtime presenter Philip Schofield begins this weekend.

For decades, the hypnotherapy profession has worked hard to legitimise itself and leave the parlour trick stage hypnosis image in the past. With so much research into the efficacy of hypnosis in medical and psychological worlds, the public is now to be treated to ridiculous tricks performed by people most likely role playing and making hypnosis appear to be more magical than empirical.

Now, some in the public (and sadly some in the profession) will see a programme like this as a bit of fun and nothing to become agitated over. Some might even see this programme as positive press for hypnosis. I, however, see this programme as something very different.

In my practice, as with many other professionals, all the people I work with have genuine issues that they want to change. The decision to see a hypnotherapist is not always an easy one due to the portrayal of hypnosis as being some odd occult practice. When a person seeks out a mental health professional they are not looking for a sideshow act.

As professionals it is our duty to put the welfare of our clients and potential clients at the forefront of everything we do. This programme is potentially detrimental to them and so we must speak out. Programmes like this give a false idea of what hypnosis is, and I call upon all my fellow professionals and those with an interest in mental health to take to social media to voice your disquiet about this extremely tasteless and damaging form of entertainment. Let the public know what hypnosis is used for therapeutically and how programmes like this set the profession back in recognition terms, by years.

Remember there are no stage surgeons and there is a good reason for that, they are health care professionals who are take client care seriously. Should hypnotherapists see their profession in any less of a light?