Hummingbird Therapy - Stress and Anxiety

Stress and Anxiety

Stress and anxiety can affect anyone at some point in their lives either due to work related issues, debt, children, infertility, insomnia, relationship and marital breakdowns. A recent survey showed that 70-90% of us feel stressed at work and outside. Today's fast paced lifestyle is putting a toll on us. Unless we learn to manage stress, we will get sick. Prevention and cure are the two limbs of stress management.

Stress

Stress can cause obsessive compulsion, panic attacks, agoraphobia, lack of self esteem, sleep deprivation or uncontrollable anger. Stress is the reaction of the nervous system to a threat, or perceived threat. In the event of a physical attack, the nervous system recognises the danger and releases adrenaline into the bloodstream, to assist in either fighting off the attacker or running away. This is known as the "fight or flight" response. Once the threat subsides, the system returns to normal because the adrenaline has been used either fighting or running.

The everyday stresses that are now part of modern living are, of course, rarely life threatening, so it can be much more difficult for the body to release the adrenaline. If an appropriate outlet can't be found, the unused adrenaline stays in the nervous system and has a detrimental effect on the body. This can lead to serious health problems.

The key is to identify the source, and then relieve the stress with deep relaxation induced through hypnosis. The client can then be taught new, positive responses to the stress triggers, because it isn't the situations themselves that cause us stress, it's our reaction to them.

Anxiety

Anxieties are often described as irrational fears, but the sheer panic experienced by someone who suffers from anxiety can be so intense that rational thinking becomes impossible. At a conscious level a client may well know that their reaction to certain circumstances is beyond all reason, but we have to look further for an explanation of what is happening at a subconscious level, and divorce ourselves from the application of pure logic to the situation.

The subconscious has an ability to repress memories that are unpleasant, and so spare us from the constant reliving of a particular event. A memory can be buried deep within the subconscious, where it is beyond the reach of conscious recall, but buried with it are the anxieties and emotions attached to that event, and these can simmer within, seeking some way of release.

The subconscious finds a way to help us deal with the anxiety, but first the anxiety must be turned into fear, and to fear it is necessary to have a focus. The actual memory of the event is repressed and buried beyond recall, so now the subconscious will provide a substitute, something to which the anxiety can be attributed. Through avoidance of that chosen focus the fear situation is addressed.

The solution is to use regression techniques to go right back to the causative event, the memory of which exists deep within the subconscious. The actual event is then brought to the conscious attention of the client, so that they can form a new positive perception of that event and therefore overcome their anxiety.