Living with anxiety is having feelings of dread, nervousness, apprehension, fearfulness and unease, sometimes many times throughout a day. This can often be about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome causing you a surge of anxiety, but anxiety can also be for no apparent reason at all and can often be at a time when you least expect it and cannot explain it.

It can affect your sleep, coming in a wave of heat or nervous shaking in the night. It can come over you in groups, at work, at school. It is different to stress, which may occur due to an external source, like an argument with your spouse, anger, sadness, or even happiness and excitement, whereas anxiety tends to be a more internal response and it can persist for months, even when there’s no clear reason to be anxious.

Anxiety can range from acute nervousness and increased heart rate to full-on panic attacks, bouts of insomnia and thoughts of existential ruin.

“There is a distinction that fear is an appraisal of danger, whereas anxiety is a feeling state that’s evoked when fear is stimulated

“This suggests that fear and anxiety are both linked, that they both have to do with thought, both fear and anxiety occur because you’ve thought, ‘Oh, there’s something that’s causing me risk, that I’m at risk, causing me to be at risk.”

“And yet anxiety is so expansive, it affects the entire system. It affects you physiologically, it affects you cognitively, it affects you emotionally” says Daniel Smith Monkey Mind

Some Brain Science

Several parts of the brain are key actors in the production of fear and anxiety. Scientists have discovered that the amygdala and the hippocampus play significant roles in most anxiety disorders.

The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain that is believed to be a communications hub between the parts of the brain that process incoming sensory signals and the parts that interpret these signals. It can alert the rest of the brain that a threat is present and trigger a fear or anxiety response.

The emotional memories stored in the central part of the amygdala may play a role in anxiety disorders involving very distinct fears, such as fear of dogs, spiders, or flying. The hippocampus is the part of the brain that encodes threatening events into memories. These memories will replay over and over reinforcing habitual negative thought patterns

It’s important though to remember that anxiety can be a response to more than the fear of fear. There are other core feelings that may be contributing to anxiety, perhaps anger or sadness, even excitement. When we are inhibited in our core emotional responses, it is easy for the body and the brain to become anxious. These inhibitions are learned through life to avoid the core feelings – even excitement – when a core feeling is suppressed the act of keeping a lid on it creates anxiety and over time, extreme anxiety. Imagine a saucepan full of feelings and emotions, bubbling up with the heat of a situation, the lid rattles creating the anxiety what we can do with help and support is take that lid off, lower the temperature and let the feelings up and out.

Physical Reactions

Depending on the roots of your anxiety and your personal make up, you will have one or some of these physical reactions: feelings of panic, fear, and uneasiness, problems sleeping, cold or sweaty hands or feet, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, not being able to be still and calm, dry mouth, numbness or tingling in the hands or feet, nausea, muscle tension and dizziness.

Other external factors may contribute to or cause anxiety. Such as overactive thyroid, abnormal heart rhythms, and other heart abnormalities (if you are experiencing the above physical reactions it is wise to check with your medical practitioner for any of the possible health related causes).

Likewise anxiety can be brought on by over use of caffeine and amphetamines or side effect of medication, producing similar symptoms. (Again it is important to be aware and identify possible external causes for anxiety)

Anxiety attacks are truly terrifying and can happen without warning or reason, causing sudden fear and extreme nervousness sometimes for ten minutes or more. Physical symptoms intensify the attack: sweating, racing heart, rapid pulse, feeling faint or as if one is choking, and – perhaps worst of all – the sense of ‘going crazy.’

Fears Distort Your Reality

You can become anxious about becoming anxious. It is so distressing and painful that you can become so fearful of it that it becomes a circle and you have to find an exit ramp off that circle. You can become paralysed by it. The chronic worrying that can become your focus is a neurotic disturbance that can put you in a state of perpetual disaster preparedness.

Anxiety replaces the unknown with the awful, it is self realising, it fills you with a flood of destructive emotions.

Carving Out New Pathways

“My anxiety came from years, probably simply from who I am, from my own temperament, of talking to myself in a fearful and anxiety-producing manner,  that I have a certain habit of mind, and that if I wanted to be less anxious, I had to foster better habits of mind.

“It doesn’t matter how you do it, but that’s the goal. We all have these pathways that we’ve set for ourselves, and mine happens to be an anxious pathway.  And my thoughts will always slip back into those ruts unless every day I try to carve out new pathways. …

“It is doable that you can carve out a new way of thinking for yourself, and that you could foster better habits of mind.” Daniel Smith Monkey Mind

Fear of the anxiety lulls you into inaction enticing you to passively watch its prophecies fulfil themselves. It takes a new way of thinking so you can foster those better thoughts and habits.

Not all the thoughts that go through your head are true. Many of our thoughts are either ideas and beliefs from when we are very young, or hearing responses from our peers and adults around us when we were growing up, and into adulthood.

Your internal stressors are the result of old programming, old events, habitual negative thought patterns. See beyond fear, what is the perceived danger? Do a reality check, recognise your assumptions, recognise your strength and silence you internal critic.

Correct your misconceptions about luck and success, accept your strengths and your weakness, the fictions you perceive as reality, and choose to let them go

A Call To Action

There is no doubt that anxiety is tiring, but it is time to ‘lay down your armour and get to the crux of this anxiety’, begin getting to the root, is there anger, are there resentments and foremost is there fear?

When you feel anxious, what are you thinking, what are the thoughts that make you feel uncomfortable. What is your self talk like? Is it reinforcing the programming inside your head?

Anxiety can be so overwhelming that you can be misled into believing that it is the feeling that is making you anxious, which then leads you to think badly of yourself,  but first comes the thought, then comes the feeling.

Pay close attention, don’t let a thought get past your notice, were you thinking something beforehand, was it something anxious? Do you trigger yourself?

Pay attention to the mechanics of your anxiety and begin to notice the aspect of your mind that is self talk, a sort of subconscious chatter. How much of this chatter is negative, pessimistic? Enjoy the self-exploration, once you become aware of this you can start to make changes, challenge those thoughts, challenge that self-talk. How accurate are the things you are saying to yourself?

Acknowledge your habitual negative and fearful thoughts, replace them with positive, more realistic thoughts. This can help to stem the energy that you have given to negative thoughts in the past. The energy that gives rise to the physical anxiety. The more positive thoughts begin to feel nice the more you repeat them and reprograming will begin.

You could keep a journal of habitual negative thoughts, this could help you avoid repetitive negative situations – write down the patterns in these situations, your thoughts and feelings. Is there something you can do differently to prepare for this situation? What would be a satisfying response to this situation.

There are powerful ways to enhance or speed up the reprograming of your subconscious mind. Hypnosis with a certified hypnotherapist can work with you and your subconscious to remove the barriers to success, changing the patterns of negative thinking helping you build your new pattern of positive thought.

The  Organic Conversational hypnosis works with you to uncover those messages from way back, that have given rise to the negative self talk that triggers your anxiety. Another process that can be very effective is  Life Renewal Self-Hypnosis. This process allows you to release or neutralise old emotions and thought patterns, combining hypnosis, meditation and profound personal learning.

You are the creator of your reality, you have complete responsibility for what reality you are choosing for yourself, remember your anxiety is a call to action.

Contact me for more information on my Hypnosis services, and how they can help your anxiety. I am happy to chat any time.

Organic conversational hypnosis: http://www.liferenewalhypnosis.com/our-services/

Life Renewal Self-Hypnosis: http://www.liferenewalhypnosis.com/Life Renewal-self-hypnosis/

Self Hypnosis and relaxation audio to help you begin your journey to a more calm and less anxious lifestyle:

“Put aside anxious thoughts and be at peace. Smile, breathe and go slowly. One day at a time, one moment at a time.” Cat Thomas https://soundcloud.com/cat-h-thomas/hypnosis-relaxation-for-fear-and-anxiety

And thank you to Daniel Smith for his wonderful book Monkey Mind which tells the story of his own experience with anxiety

*Thích Nhất Hạnh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist.

Research over the last 50 years has argued many different lengths of time to make or break a habit. In the 60s it was thought to be 21 days, but a recent study has found that it can take between 18 days to 254! Now they came up with an average of 66 days but that is not particularly helpful for those of us who may take 254 days to really change our ways …….that’s just over 8 months!

Now think about it, our eating routines and habits, and food preferences, are well established by the time we head for young adulthood. No wonder it is hard to stay on a diet and, of course, by the time we reach middle age, well we are stuck in a rut. Added to that is the problem that our metabolism does change and usually slows up as we grow older, therefore our weight is often compounded by this as well as our bad eating habits.

So there needs to be a strategy to losing weight that involves longterm change to our thinking and habits. Mostly though, when we try to loose weight we do it for a particular reason, like a wedding to go to, or a vacation, particularly if it involves a swim suit.  Or maybe we see the doctor and we are told that our BMI is high and need to lose some weight, so we work hard on that for a few weeks and then let things slip again because we go back to our regular and preferred eating habits. And likewise, after the wedding or the holiday, we return to our regular lives and go back to the usual routine daily habits. Boom – the weight is back before we know it!

This leads to a sense of failure, and then a cycle of failure can be created, with the seesaw of weight loss and weight gain, that can end up making you feel really down on yourself and less likely in the future to attempt a healthy slimming way of eating.

For healthy and successful weight loss you need to take a strategic approach. You need to eat less, sure, and you also need to eat healthy food. You need to have less of the food that has become an unhealthy habit for you, food that is high in calories that provides little in the way of the vitamins, minerals, proteins or healthy carbs that we need to have for a healthy body, and more of the fruits and vegetables that you are probably not in the habit of eating except as a side.

Find yourself a healthy-eating book, app, or website and find recipes and foods that you can enjoy day to day. Healthy calories and calorie control is the name of the game, smaller portions, and then some regular exercise that is within your scope of daily life and physical ability. It is pointless trying to keep up an exercise routine that is excessive, just as it is pointless to try and eat so few calories that you are perpetually hungry. Remember healthy calories are the name of the game.

Where we are going here is to design a new routine of eating and exercise that you can really hope to keep to……because here is the crux of the matter: we have developed our eating habits over many, many years and it is extremely likely therefore that breaking those eating habits is going to be nearer that one year mark, not a quick fix diet. One year! Not one month! So yes….indeed….. what is needed, is a change in lifestyle, a complete rework of your way of thinking about and living with food.

It is highly likely that the majority of people you think of as slim are already eating healthily. It is rare that someone is slim while still eating fast food, chips and chocolate and large portions on a regular daily basis. Possibly under the age of thirty, a person may get away with it, but those bad habits will be very ingrained by their thirties and forties when the weight will pile on and boom – changing those bad eating habits is what we are talking about, that is how it works.

So now you will be asking how on earth can I keep it up for a year! Well changing your eating habits, changing your life style is a feat of the mind. Changing your mind is crucial and this is where hypnosis comes in. Your subconscious has all the habitual eating preferences written in from way back.  Some of it will be family favorites, some will be secret foods that make you feel good, some will be foods that manufacturers have designed especially for you to want more and more of.

These three elements are where we can begin. The foods that make you ‘feel good’ are a great place to start with hypnosis. Hypnosis can help root out the feeling that leads to this habitual eating, what is the need that is not being fulfilled that is highlighted by this feeling. Instead of distracting yourself from the feeling with a food and eating too much of it, like chips or chocolate, hypnosis can work on the feelings that are leading to the distracting behavior. Change can be made through the subconscious mind to understand where the feeling came from and rewrite our response to it. Beginning to understand your feelings and emotions is a major part of hypnosis work.

Habitual preferences to foods, often created within the family, in childhood can also be changed through the subconscious in hypnosis. A hypnotherapist can help you change your thoughts about a food through suggestion while in a hypnotic state, reinforced by self-hypnosis at home. That broccoli spear can look mighty inviting when you open the fridge if you want it too! Likewise hypnosis can change your thinking about those foods that are designed commercially to make you want more and more, in the same way, by changing your thinking toward nice yummy healthy food instead of the food that helps you stay overweight and unhealthy.

So hypnosis can change your mind, change your pattern of behavior, but what it can also do is continue to support your mission to be slim and healthy by using self hypnosis and guided suggestions on hypnotic audios to keep you on the path. Then you can go those 8 months and further to change those habits, and have a healthy lean body forever not just for that vacation or wedding.

Life Renewal Self-Hypnosis 

Through teaching you self hypnosis, I can help you learn to program yourself for success, live in the moment and become more confident about the future.

Organic Conversational Hypnosis

In state of deep physical and mental relaxation, and a state of focused attention, you can then begin ‘change work’ with me to help you towards your goals.

Call me now to book a free 30 minute consultation
to find out more and see how hypnosis can help you
619 569 6131

Videos and Audios:

Hypnosis for a healthier, leaner you

Audio:

Anxiety and fear

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/cat-h-thomas/hypnosis-relaxation-for-fear-and-anxiety-1/s-VBgyn