How effective is hypnotherapy for treating anxiety?

Anxiety can be an overwhelming and exhausting experience, and when it’s more extreme, it can affect many aspects of your daily life. If you're struggling with persistent anxiety, you may be wondering: how effective is hypnotherapy for treating anxiety? The answer is, it is a highly effective natural approach for reducing and overcoming anxiety.

With hypnotherapy, we can address the various different aspects of anxiety, including the underlying issues driving your anxiety, as well as the physical, mental and emotional manifestations of it.

But how exactly does it help? In this article, I expand a bit on the nature of anxiety and how hypnotherapy can empower you to regain control of your thoughts, emotions and general well-being.

Understanding anxiety

Anxiety is a natural fear response that can be triggered when we feel stressed, uncertain, or overly worried.

You might feel anxious about a particular upcoming event such as an interview or a wedding speech, or maybe you frequently feel anxious in certain situations, such as in social situations or giving presentations at work. Or maybe anxiety has become more of a constant presence for you, even when seems to be no clear cause as with Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), where excessive worry becomes more constant and spreads across multiple areas of your life.

Persistent anxiety can take a toll on your mental, emotional, and even physical well-being. You might have symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, difficulty breathing, and digestive issues.

Fortunately, anxiety doesn’t have to control your life—there are effective ways to manage and overcome it, with hypnotherapy being one of the most effective ways.

What causes anxiety?

What leads to us feel anxiety isn't the event itself, but the meaning we attach to it and our perception of how we can cope. If we lack confidence, have a fear of failure, worry about others' opinions, or have concerns about our physical safety, or financial security, then we can start to become more and more anxious.

The roots of our fears and anxieties usually stem from early experiences, such as traumatic experiences and events that led us to form fears, limiting beliefs and patterns of thinking that limit us in some way.

What is hypnotherapy and how does it help?

Hypnotherapy is a natural therapy that uses the state of hypnosis, which is the natural state that we all go into several times a day, like when we daydream or get deeply engrossed in a book or film.  

Hypnotherapy is a collaborative process, and you will always remain in control and will be able to open your eyes at any point during a session. Hypnotherapy can help with so many issues, enabling us to work through problems, access positive resourceful states, and help you to create new positive behaviours.

The hypnotherapy approach to anxiety

Unlike approaches that focus primarily on managing symptoms, hypnotherapy addresses the underlying causes so that you can have lasting changes in how you think, feel and respond in situations. This can allow you to feel so much calmer and more confident in situations where you have previously felt anxious.

Hypnotherapy is a collaborative process, and we work together in a way that works for you.

With hypnotherapy we can:

• Access subconscious patterns driving your anxiety: Your analytical mind can relax, allowing to us change negative emotional responses and anxious thought patterns.
• Process emotions: You can be helped to process and integrate unresolved emotional experiences that fuel your anxiety. We do this in a gentle, supportive way.
• Calm your nervous system: By helping you to calm your mind, body, and ultimately your nervous system, this helps you to be much calmer, more centred, and feel more resourceful.
• Interrupt ingrained patterns: We can use certain process and techniques to help you to interrupt anxiety loops and update them with new, more helpful responses.
• Build helpful resources: We can help you build helpful resources that you can use when you need to. Your natural abilities for calm, confidence, and perspective—which anxiety often obscures—can be strengthened and made more accessible.

Addressing different forms of anxiety with hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy can be used with all types of anxiety and anxiety disorders. Sessions with clients are tailored to address the client's particular type of anxiety, and their unique issues:

Types of anxiety issues hypnotherapy can help with include:

• social anxiety
• performance anxiety
• generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)
• panic attacks
• obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
• heath anxiety
• fears or phobias
• agoraphobia
• post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related anxiety

Combining hypnotherapy with other effective therapies and techniques 

Hypnotherapy can be combined with other therapies, tools and techniques, and tailored to each individual client. All my sessions are bespoke. I aim to combine therapies and techniques for the best results for clients.

Take the first step towards a calmer life

If you are struggling with anxiety, know that it is possible to overcome it. Hypnotherapy is a safe, effective, and empowering way to reclaim your peace of mind and start living with greater confidence.