One giant leap for anxiety sufferers

There is no doubt that we all suffer from a little anxiety. Although anxiety has many different symptoms, it usually has its roots in the same thing. It’s about uncertainty, a fear that things may go horribly wrong. An anxious response can be useful as a warning to take a different course or to tell us that we are in danger. It’s when that anxiety isn’t useful, when it’s trying to help but causing us misery, that it’s harmful.

My children have struggled amidst a year of confusion, no contact with friends and being in and out of school. My daughter is in her GCSE year, never knowing whether there’ll be exams, practical tests or whether she’s impressed the teachers enough to get the grades she needs.

I have friends that are actors and musicians who have spent the last year not knowing whether they will ever work in front of an audience again, singers thinking of retraining as electricians and dancers delivering shopping for Asda. Income aside, we need to feel some security that things will turn out okay. I’m talking about safety, I suppose.

People ask me if I’ve noticed an increase in anxiety sufferers since the pandemic. The quick answer is yes, I have. How do I help? Most anxiety sufferers are struggling to see a bright future for themselves and have lost sight of their goals. I ask all my clients ‘what do you want?’ and I’m used to hearing, ‘I don’t know anymore’. When you’re living in fight or flight mode (or a lesser version of it) then tomorrow is all about getting through the day instead of flourishing.

So often we live by muddling through from one week to the next, crossing our fingers and hoping everything will turn out okay. So many people get trapped in the anxiety loop, feeling like there is no way out. For a lot of my clients, I am their last resort. They’ve tried counselling, exercising, pills from the doctor and nothing has helped.

I don’t have a miracle cure but I do know how to help people that are suffering unnecessarily. By teaching someone how to reconnect with their innate resources we start a process of dumping the baggage we are carrying from the past. After that we start to build a brighter future, creating positive goals and connecting with them.

You don’t have to run a marathon or climb Kilimanjaro to feel like you’re moving forward. I know a young man that started his journey by going to Asda and slowly built up the strength to go for job interviews, going for dates. Small step for mankind, one giant leap for Michael.

Hypnosis isn’t like counselling; we won’t spend all of our session in conversation and I don’t give advice! Hypnotherapy is laser targeted, it works with the unconscious mind, the part of us that stores our memories, emotions and patterns. It doesn’t take long to guide you into a trance - a very pleasurable and relaxing state. When the conscious chatter has quietened down, we can look at the cause of the anxiety and release it.

Hypnotherapy isn’t all about the past either, after deleting old patterns of discomfort we will then rehearse good feelings, hard wiring them into the unconscious mind. I will teach you new strategies to feel better.

Anxiety is a natural phenomenon; it can even be useful sometimes. When you are anxious and don’t know why, when you know that it’s been dragging you down for far too long, when you can’t find a way to deal with it yourself, it isn’t so useful. Hypnotherapy might be the light at the end of the tunnel that you need.