Anxiety Hypnotherapy

1. Initial Consultation and Assessment:
   A qualified hypnotherapist will begin with a thorough consultation to understand your history with your condition, its triggers, and its impact on your life. This includes exploring past experiences, current stressors, and your overall emotional well-being.
   This assessment helps the therapist tailor a personalized treatment plan specifically designed to address your individual needs and challenges.
2. Relaxation and Induction:
   Hypnotherapy sessions typically begin with relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing exercises or guided imagery, to help you enter a state of deep relaxation and focus.
   The therapist then guides you into a hypnotic trance, which is not a state of sleep but rather a heightened state of suggestibility and focus. You remain fully aware and in control throughout the process.
3. Suggestive Techniques:
   Once in a hypnotic state, the therapist uses various suggestive techniques to address the root causes of your condition. This might involve:
   Identifying and reframing negative thought patterns: The therapist helps you identify the automatic negative thoughts and beliefs that contribute to your condition and replace them with more positive and rational ones.
   Developing coping mechanisms: Hypnotherapy can help you develop effective coping mechanisms to manage triggers and reduce impulsive reactions. This could involve visualization techniques, self-soothing strategies, or affirmations.
   Accessing and processing past trauma: If past trauma or negative experiences contribute to your condition, hypnotherapy can help you access and process these memories in a safe and supportive environment.
   Strengthening self-esteem and self-compassion: Hypnotherapy can help improve self-esteem and self-compassion, which are crucial for managing your condition effectively. This involves positive affirmations and visualizations to enhance self-worth.
4. Post-Hypnotic Suggestions:
   The therapist may provide post-hypnotic suggestions, which are positive suggestions designed to reinforce the changes made during the session and support your ongoing condition management efforts. These suggestions are embedded in your subconscious mind to help you manage your condition effectively in everyday situations.
5. Integration and Follow-up:
   After the session, you'll gradually return to your normal waking state. The therapist will guide you through this process and discuss any insights or experiences you had during the session.
   Follow-up sessions are crucial to reinforce the changes made and address any challenges that may arise. The therapist will monitor your progress and make adjustments to the treatment plan as needed.

Example 1- Anxiety Hypnotherapy: 

The gap between the now and the later, that dreadful “what if ” that continually creates this miserable debilitating condition and the way memory slavishly brings back feeling is exposed for what it is with a combination of Dr Claire Weekes techniques, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, NLP and hypnotherapy. and with proper clinical analysis, a programme for recovery, anxiety does not stand a chance.

Solving Anxiety

For too long, GP’s and Therapists alike have dismissed psychological difficulties as “all in the mind”, whilst failing to comprehend how the sympathetic and para sympathetic parts of the nervous systems work!

Due to prolonged stress the sympathetic branch goes slightly out of balance therefore producing heightened feelings of stress.  When the sufferer begins to become worried about those heightened symptoms of churning stomach (stomach is breaking up stored food substances to send extra energy to arms and legs to wield of a perceived attack-fight or flight). Tingling in extremities, dry mouth headache, balance problems, difficulty sleeping, irritability, tight chest etc the person then puts the sympathetic branch even more out of balance.  Resulting in sensitization of the nervous system which equals anxiety.  The person has become fearful of the state he is now in.  Fear-bewilderment-fear.  Over prolonged time the person can experience emotional fatigue, mental fatigue, which is depletion, which can be the forerunner of depression.  Subsequent tired and distressing thoughts can trick the person into thinking that his condition is very serious!

When the person thinks badly, they feel bad and when they feel bad, they think bad.  Interactional.

Afterwards they then analyze the feelings and apply logic where none exists.

Extract from my book: Breaking The Vicious Circle of Psychological Misery.

Many hours can then be spent by the inexperienced practitioner looking for the original cause, which potentially makes the symptoms worse.

Memories (which are intertwined with feelings) are in fact most vulnerable to change at the time that we most dislike them.

February 2003 New Scientist magazine “Not So Total Recall”.

To quote the great Australian doctor, Claire Weekes MBE “the best tranquilizer of them all is acceptance based on knowledge and understanding”.

It is understandable that the person, not knowing where those feelings are coming from or what they truly are then is very aware of negative evaluation from other people i.e., caring too much what others think.

A very good example is of a client of mine from years ago who presented the following.

A person came into see me and said that their hand was shaking uncontrollably.  They had been to see a GP, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist to try to stop it. They were now looking for the “magic of hypnotherapy” to stop it shaking.

I suspected that the nervous system had become sensitized due to prolonged stress and subsequent fear.   I also suspected that he was trying too hard to please others (Dysfunctional Core Belief from Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy: REBT.)

The person told me that they were trying hard to please their boss, their spouse and that the hand started to tremble whilst signing a cheque in front of a company accountant.

The three Health professionals had tried to stop it and it had not worked.

I asked if a physiological explanation had been given?  No, they have all been talking about my childhood.

I explained that when the heart rate quickened and glands above the kidneys produced adrenaline (a stress hormone) that this excessive adrenaline was carried through the blood stream and affected little finger muscles which sent a danger signal back to the spinal cord which sent another surge of adrenaline which subsequently affected the finger muscles even more!

The client exclaimed: the harder that I have been trying to stop this, the worse I have been making it?

Yes, I replied.

What advice do you give now?

I said that they must allow the hand to initially shake on your terms now.

But I have tried so hard to stop came the reply.  So has a GP, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist.

You are now trying to please your spouse, your boss, a company accountant a GP, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist.

I continued: if your self-worth was a crystal vase and you kept handing it over to all those other people, you would now become anxious in case they dropped it!

When self-worth becomes conditional on what others say or do we become anxious hoping that they will like us.  This is the essence of psychological disturbance.

“The greatest psychological sickness known to mankind is self-esteem because it is conditional… self-esteem (positive regard) is dependent on what we should do, should say, should come across, should hood equals shithood”.

Dr Albert Ellis, the originator of cognitive therapy and Fellow of 12 Divisions of the American Psychological Society.

Within three weeks the persons hand had stopped shaking!

The essence of good Anxiety Hypnotherapy is utilisation of the three main senses: Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic (feeling).  The other two: olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste) can also be used to therapeutic advantage.

However, for Mindfulness in a Minute we will concentrate on seeing hearing and feeling.

Hypnosis had a reputation associated with stage hypnotists and the magical and improbable powers they “possessed”.

What is overlooked is the fact that the medical profession has used hypnotherapy for hundreds of years.

The stage hypnotist does suggestibility tests i.e., asking the 300 people in the audience to imagine their hands sticking together with super glue.  Since around 20 per cent of the population can enter into a deep trance state rapidly those whose hands “stick together are the ones he wants to work with.

He then gives the magical perception that the person is asleep or unconscious by implanting a suggestion to that effect then clicking his fingers to trigger this, if they were asleep or unconscious, they would not hear anything!

Hypnotherapy is comfortable self-awareness.

Pleasant, relaxing, and dreamy.

Many people project into the future with a “what if”.

My daughter used to have separation anxiety which was at its worst when I dropped her off at school.

One day I asked her to tell me what she was seeing?  “Boys and girls playing”, what do you hear?

“Boys and girls laughing”.

What do you feel?

“The wind in my face”.

I then looked at her and said and nothing bad is happening.

She practised this technique a few times and would then look at me if I was a little stressed and say “Daddy, nothing bad is actually happening”!

Utilising the essence of hypnosis which is engaging the three main senses we will create Mindfulness in a Minute.

Be aware of what you are seeing and report back to yourself what you do see.

Bew aware of what you sense and report back to yourself what you do hear.

Be aware of what you feel and report back to yourself what you do feel.

Now tell yourself nothing bad is happening.

Is the glass half empty or half full?  Just drink it!

Engage fully with life.

Anxiety Hypnotherapy can help you:

• Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy from my Chilvern Cottage practice in Edinburgh

The consultation and first session which is inclusive and combines Hypnotherapy Edinburgh & Cognitive Therapy (see: www.ellisrebt.com) & a generic Hypnotherapy download.

Remember, hypnotherapy is a powerful tool, but it's always best to work with a qualified professional.

Cancellation policy: require 48 hours notice otherwise full fee is payable.