Benefits of hypnotherapy for your anxiety

Hypnotherapy and other non-pharmaceutical treatments can significantly improve the well-being of individuals suffering from conditions such as anxiety. Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state presenting physical, emotional, cognitive and behavioural complexities. While we all can experience anxious feelings from time to time, individuals diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) find themselves wound up with persistent debilitating thoughts and feelings in everyday life. In worst cases, some accept this condition to be “part of them”. It becomes a label or self-fulling prophecy; “The doctor said I have GAD, therefore I must be an anxious person”.

Unfortunately the underlying emotions and feelings which cause the anxiety to manifest in everyday life cannot always be traced in a doctor’s office, merely the symptoms which he/she describes. There is no drug or pill which can be prescribed to reveal the cause of neurotic conditions such as anxiety, of course. It is not something which we can remember consciously either. Interestingly, an observation by Freud showed that all amnesias lie at the basis of the formation of all neurotic symptoms; it is a deliberate mechanism not to recall emotionally charged memories.  

How can hypnotherapy help?

Hypnotherapy on the other hand strives to treat not only the effect, but also the cause. Regression can be used to uncover what hypnotherapists term the ‘initial sensitising event’ whereby focusing on a particular feeling, the client has when he/she feels an overwhelming sense of anxiety. Ultimately, this reveals to the client what happened or took place to precipitate the anxiety, for example, an experience which was frightening or hurtful, or the death of loved one. To put it simply, there is no effect without a cause. Anxiety, then, is the effect; sometimes acting as a defence mechanism sub-consciously beyond the individual’s awareness, for that is the way the part of the brain responsible is physiologically wired. As a result the person is constantly on red alert and the autonomic nervous system is in overdrive.

Hypnotherapy helps the individual review how, when and where their anxiety is most debilitating, what the triggers are and challenge their belief systems. Overwhelming feelings can be desensitised and then reframed positive as part of a re-education process. The use of powerful imagery and visualisation techniques help the individual dissociate from emotionally charged feelings and remain in control in the process. All of this and more in hypnotherapy can be tremendously effective for an individual suffering from anxiety. Hypnotherapy can significantly improve your well-being. How nice would it feel to focus on the how and now? You do not have to suffer in silence.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author. All articles published on Hypnotherapy Directory are reviewed by our editorial team.

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