Anxiety

Anxiety is a natural response to feeling threatened or unsafe. When we feel threatened in some way, then the warning system is activated and we experience fear. Fear is the feeling that tells us to leave a situation or to not go into that situation in the first place. This is fine when the danger is real, but it is crippling when the anxiety or fear mechanism is responding inappropriately to every day situations and stimuli which really don't require evasive action. 

Excessive stress is the primary cause of anxiety. We experience stress when we feel overwhelmed and any number of factors cause us to experience stress. Here are just a few common forms of stress:

• poor sleep
• financial difficulties
• work pressure
• failing relationships
• negative thinking
• losing a loved one
• lack of time or energy to do everything that needs to be done
• a traumatic experience

When we are overwhelmed with excessive stress we lose the ability to relax and enjoy the moment. We move through crisis after crisis, it's exhausting. Your mind can become cluttered, thoughts whizzing around your head all day, worrying about  everything . You wake up in the morning exhausted from a restless sleep, even small tasks can be a huge challenge. It can begin to affect your relationships with friends and family, and work colleagues. Your body feels tense and you can have a feeling of being on edge all the time. You may overreact in situations, shouting at loved ones. Over time stress and anxiety can have a knock on effect on confidence and self esteem.

Hypnotherapy is a safe and gentle process with no side effects. An advantage of hypnosis is that it allows you to relax. The relaxation response alone can reduce anxious feelings and negative thoughts. 

Through hypnotherapy you can learn to calm your thoughts and feelings, let go of worries, increase confidence and your ability to cope and begin to clear your mind and finally enjoy a peaceful and restful sleep and calmer, more focused days. 

I also teach Mindfulness as an adjunct to Hypnotherapy. Mindfulness can help you to recognise and cope with difficult feelings and learn to live more in the present. 

If the anxiety you're feeling in the present is attributed to a traumatic event that happened in the past or more recently then you may want to work with EMDR. Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing has been proven to be highly effective in treating PTSD and can also be effective in treating Panic Disorder, Phobias and General Anxiety. 

Other areas I work with: Social Anxiety, Performance Anxiety, Exam or Interview nerves, IBS, Insomnia, Public Speaking, Driving Test Anxiety and many more.