Help for Stress & Anxiety with Hypnotherapy & Counselling
Is anxiety is ruining your life?
WHAT IS ANXIETY?
Anxiety is a normal reaction to fear or change. When we feel a threat to our safety the subconscious triggers our fight or flight response. This releases chemicals in the brain and enables our body to prepare to stay and fight the threat or run away from it.
Where issues can occur with this response is when the subconscious perceives a threat that we don’t need to deal with by fighting or running. The body gets ready to react but it’s unhelpful to us in the situation we’re in.
WHAT ANXIETY FEELS LIKE
Anxiety can take many forms, it can be an underlying feeling you experience over a long period of time and sometimes it can be an overwhelming ‘attack’. Both present physical symptoms such as;
Trembling
Tense muscles
Nausea
Heart palpitations and racing heart
Sweating
Diarrhoea
Headaches
Numbness
Backaches
Anxiety can distort our belief system and make us start to avoid places, people or situations. This can be detrimental to our lives, our self-esteem and lead to negative thoughts. Persistent worries and fears can result in restlessness, fatigue, impaired concentration, irritability, muscle tension and impaired sleep. Because of these effects, anxiety can be a precursor to depression.
Where anxiety comes from
WHY IS ANXIETY SO COMMON?
The world we live in is more complex now that it has ever been and at times this can be overwhelming. We are constantly consuming information, comparing ourselves and our lives to others on social media, pushing ourselves to ‘have it all’ and making sure our online presence is updated. We are under a lot of pressure and a lot of us don’t make time for ourselves to relax and destress.
HOW TO TREAT ANXIETY
If anxiety is affecting your day to day life, it’s time to get help. Counselling can help by starting to challenge the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that are causing your anxiety. It gives you the space to talk through and recognise any self-limiting beliefs and habits that could be negatively affecting you. If relevant, your counsellor can help you explore your past experiences to determine the root of the anxiety. Although it’s helpful to look at the past, the objective of the sessions is to help you identify how to change the present and future by changing the negative self-talk to positive self-talk.
ARE STRESS AND ANXIETY THE SAME?
Although some of the symptoms of stress and anxiety can be similar, they aren’t the same. The main difference is that everyone will feel stressed at some point in their lives, but anxiety is a diagnosed condition. Feelings of stress come from the situation we’re in causing us to feel overwhelmed, whereas anxiety tends to come from a fear of something that is not always recognisable.
WHAT IS STRESS?
Feeling stressed can be a normal part of life; because of factors like our previous experiences, upbringing and genetics, some people have better inbuilt tools to manage stress than others. A really common way to deal with stress is to turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms to temporarily relieve our stress such as smoking, drinking, over or under-eating and denial.
Anxiety with depression
WHAT STRESS FEELS LIKE
Headaches
Teeth grinding
Aching jaw
Increased respiration
Increased heart rate
Heart palpitations
Raised blood pressure
Dry mouth
A rise in blood sugar and cholesterol
High adrenaline
Muscle spasms
Aches in shoulders, neck and back
Pacing and fidgeting
Nervous behaviours
Rushing constantly
Talking fast
Hyperventilation
Ulcers
Crying
Inability to relax
Recklessness
Reliance on smoking or alcohol
Constant fatigue
Indigestion
Loss of ability at work
COMMON CAUSES OF STRESS
There are many factors of modern life that have caused stress levels to rise. The Mental Health Foundation’s 2018 study found that:
49% of 18-24 year olds who have experienced high levels of stress, felt that comparing themselves to others was a source of stress, which was higher than in any of the older age groups.
12% of people who reported high levels of stress said that feeling like they needed to instantly respond to messages was a stressor.
36% of women and 23% of men who felt high levels of stress, related this to issues with their appearance and body image.
Housing worries are a key source of stress for younger people. 32% of 18-24 year olds cited it as a source of stress in the past year.
60% of 18 - 24 year olds and 41% of 25 - 34 year olds cited pressure to succeed as a key source of stress.
Of those who reported feeling stressed in the past year, 22% cited debt as a stressor.
36% of all adults who reported stress in the previous year cited either their own or a friend/relative's long-term health condition as a factor. This rose to 44% of adults over 55.
TYPES OF STRESS
Acute Stress can be shown through physical disturbances and tension. People can be affected both mentally and physically. Physiological changes can include depression or anxiety, sleep disturbances such as insomnia and also sexual dysfunction. Stress can be a precursor to anxiety which in turn can be a precursor to depression.
Hypo Stress can occur when a person is bored and lacking in motivation. The distress, which is a short term stress, gives us the strength we need to finish a task.
HOW TO TREAT STRESS
Counselling can be a great tool to help you manage or limit the stress within your life. Your therapist will support you in reevaluating key stressors and help you understand and move away from any negative programming you’ve learnt over the course of your life. They will help you examine what is helpful stress and what is unhelpful stress and reinforce more positive thoughts, feelings and behaviours. The goal is not to eliminate all of the stressors in your life but teach you methods to handle them without it causing a detrimental effect on your mental and physical health.
