With the growing concerns of the economy, and more people being laid off, more people are feeling stress and anxiety in their lives. While it might be easy to take anti-anxiety medications, sleeping pills, or antidepressants to help deal, there is also a pill-free way to cope - and it won’t lead to addiction. We’re talking about clinical hypnosis.Clinical hypnosis has been shown to significantly lower stress and anxiety in as few as 1-4 sessions-even in people who suffer from traumatic stress. So, what is it and how does it help with stress and anxiety?
The American Medical Association approves hypnosis when used by a professional. Clinical hypnosis is either conducted live or can be found in prerecorded sessions on CD. (The best CDs are those recorded by experts in their field who use hypnosis, not by one person who uses hypnosis and records dozens of CDs.) Whether you visit a therapist or use a CD, either way, you’ll be asked to get comfortable, close your eyes, and simply focusing on the suggestions that follow. These directives promote positive change through visualizations, metaphors, and direct and indirect suggestions.
No one knows the exactly how hypnosis works so effectively, just that it often does. Nevertheless, we do know that when recipients are relaxed and focused during a hypnotic trance, their self-protective walls come down. In other words, their usual conscious resistance to change is lowered and they become more accepting and embracing of suggestions to change and improve. The changes that follow these suggestions are often quick and powerful.
From what we know, here are some specific reasons why hypnosis is powerful and effective for reducing stress and anxiety:
1) The Experience of Hypnosis Naturally Generates a Distinct State of Calm and Relaxation:
The experience of hypnosis often comes in a form of strong relaxation that naturally allows a person to move away from stresses and worries. This state is referred to as a “trance,” or “dissociation.”
All of these hypnotic reactions combine to help the subject “dissociate,” or disconnect from being oriented to their current physical, emotional, and psychological states and surroundings. This dissociation naturally distances subjects away from usual stresses and anxieties, serving as a welcome escape and diversion at the time. At best, dissociation acts to train subjects to let go of and move on from usual pressures and worries after the hypnosis.
2) Direct and Indirect Suggestions Bypass Resistance and Promote Calm, Peace, and Ease:
Modern hypnosis, often referred to as “Ericksonian hypnosis” after the hypnosis pioneer “Milton Erickson,” consists of different types of suggestions to bypass conscious resistance and be more likely to be accepted. In the relaxed, focused state of hypnotic trance, a person is more receptive to accept suggestions to change. Mixing up direct suggestions (i.e., "you will now relax...") versus indirect and more permissive suggestions (i.e., "you may choose to relax... or not... but if you do...") in a relaxed state promotes strong, natural calming and easing. A person in such a state has their usual conscious resistances and defensive walls lowered. Indirect/permissive suggestions to change tend to bypass resistance that much more because they are harder to resist or be threatened by.
Suggestions to ease stress and anxiety are generally a part of most hypnosis sessions, whatever their main focus may be: weight loss, smoking cessation, phobias, etc. However, when the primary focus of a hypnosis session is primarily for the easing of stress and anxiety, it is a natural fit. The entire session becomes interlaced with calming, easing suggestions and often results in a strong, powerful experience of peace and bliss. After such sessions, clients often say things like, "Can I just sit here and relax for a while longer...", or "Wow-where am I..."? Hypnosis sessions entirely focused on suggestions to ease stress and anxiety are a natural fit, making it perhaps the easiest if not most effective use of hypnosis in general.
3) Visualizations and Imagery Take You Away from Your Cares and Concerns:
Many hypnosis sessions include different suggestions to visualize and image different relaxing scenes in the mind. There are many possible purposes for such scenes, including simply deepening the trance state, elevating dissociation from the outside world, or simply increasing relaxation in general by helping the subject to "get away" or "escape" from their usual thoughts, cares, and concerns. This visualization is especially powerful when utilizing imagery a subject is familiar with and can easily imagine in a personal manner with all of the senses-sights, sounds, smells, taste, and touch.
When a person is stressed and under pressure, visualizing a powerful imagery experience shifts the focus, relaxes the body, and eases tension. Furthermore, when a person is anxious and worried, escaping to a relaxing scene is powerful, reassuring, and can serve as a reality check that the concern may be overblown. This shift takes the subject from an anxious "what if" position to a relaxing "what is something more enjoyable I can think about?" Since most anxiety overestimates risk and underestimates one’s resources to battle a threat, a reassuring visual escape may work to even out the discrepancy.
4) Memories and Age Progression Helps You Rewrite the Story of Your Life for a Calmer, More Reassuring Reality:
When relaxed and focused, bringing back memories or imagining the future becomes easier to do in a powerful, effective manner. Outside distractions, focuses, and interruptions are lowered in such a state, making such mental exercises easier to execute. Current research supports what psychotherapists have known for many years: that rewriting the “reality” of one’s past or future projections in a more positivistic, useful manner can effectively calm, reassure, and ease cares and concerns.
For purposes of easing stress, hypnosis can help change the meaning of these memories or future projections by changing the meaning these difficulties actually pose. For example, a hypnotic memory of a highly relaxing scene is often remembered as even more relaxing that when the memory actually happened for the subject, such as a beach trip. Furthermore, visualizing a more positive version of a future possibility during hypnosis can ease the anxiety of assuming the worst. Instead of assuming a negative "what if" (i.e., failing at a business venture), a scene of "what’s possible" in a positive way (i.e., succeeding at the venture) both eases current anxiety and increases the probability of the positive result actually occurring. This is known as a “positive self-fulfilling prophesy."
5) Post-Hypnotic Suggestions Help You Relax and Ease Worries Afterward:
Throughout hypnosis and especially at the end, it is common for hypnosis sessions to include a number of "post-hypnotic suggestions." Post-hypnotic suggestions, as their name infers, serve to promote positive changes in thinking, feeling, and/or behaviors after the hypnosis session in an oftentimes powerful, effective manner.
Post hypnotic suggestions during hypnosis are usually accepted in a receptive manner when done in a clear, connective manner. A stress relief suggestion may state something like, "Later, when you encounter economic challenges, you’ll be able to calm and relax yourself, just like you’ve done throughout this exercise, and you can know this is a skill and ability you possess to use as needed." An example for anxiety relief would be, "Later, when you are thinking of the financial possibilities for your future, you will see and generate the best you that you are capable of and more." After the hypnosis, the subject may or may not recall these suggestions, but they will often notice the changes in perception, sensation, and behavior over time. Although hypnosis is not "magic", the results of post-hypnotic suggestions may often seem like it.
For those who would like to lessen their stress and anxiety, hypnosis is a viable natural option combining effectiveness, efficiency, and convenience. Simply relax, focus, and enjoy your way towards a more peaceful, relaxing lifestyle.
Learn more: http://www.hypnosisnetwork.com/hypnosis/stress_anxiety.php
Guest article contributed by Randy A. Gilchrist, Psy.D.
http://www.hypnosisnetwork.com
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