Is it Possible to Live a Modern Life Free from Anxiety?
In earlier blog posts having to do with anxiety, I've written a lot about perception. If we perceive a situation to be stressful, then it will be. If it meets our expectations, there is far less stress. Our ancestors led completely different lives, and so, their expectations were also different. They expected a good dose of pain and suffering. For example, they expected to work, mostly with their hands, and often outside in nature. A cracked tooth 150 years ago could lead to death unless it was yanked out, using alcohol as the anesthetic. Today, we largely expect a pain-free existence. We sit inside with central air conditioning and heat. Dentistry might still be a little scary, but it's a comparable breeze. Yet, despite the relative safety and comfort, modern life is still full of stress, and when we experience it, many of us turn to drugs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 10 million Americans over 18 take some form of anti-anxiety drug. 13 million take some form of SSRI. 24% of women over 60 take some kind of psychiatric medication. Of course, each case is unique, and it would be reckless to make a blanket statement about all of those people, their doctors, and their choices. However, many of these users would benefit from a more natural approach. Diet and exercise can do a lot — and, of course, so can alternative practices like hypnotherapy.
Hypnotherapy teaches clients simple and effective ways to relax the body and still the mind. Self-hypnosis is a fun, easy discipline that a client can use to create new pathways in the brain — pathways of positive thoughts and beliefs, which neutralize negative, limiting beliefs and limiting self-perceptions. Hypnotherapy done well is a tool clients can use for the rest of their lives. If they understand how it works, they may learn to use it on their own for free. Of course, deep work requires the help of a hypnotherapist, but for everyday use, hypnotherapy is cheaper, faster, healthier and more fun than a lot of the alternatives.
Anxiety is a form of fear or worry. It’s a natural human response to feeling threatened and is characterized by feelings of dread and uneasiness. It can be a normal reaction to stress, such as when faced with a difficult problem at work, before taking a test, or before making an important decision. Anxiety can be mild or severe, and it can be experienced through thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. Generalized anxiety disorder is a persistent feeling of anxiety or dread, which interferes with daily life. It can last for months or years, and can seem out of proportion as a response to reality.
Hypnotherapy can help turn fear or worry into action or acceptance. It can help clients recognize emotions are merely thoughts traveling through the body. They are sensation with a message, often that something needs to change. Whether a client needs to improve skills, alter a negative attitude, or confront a difficult situation, once the client accepts what’s happening and has a plan of action, the anxiety usually diminishes. As for generalized anxiety, which can be thought of almost as habitual anxiety, whether or not the anxiety stems from the body or the mind, hypnotherapy can help the client create new pathways in the brain and over time even stimulate the brain to create chemical balance.
The most challenging aspect of hypnotherapy is how truly easy it is. Chronic anxiety can feel like an emotional hell, day after day after day of fear and worry, and often over things which the mind knows the body can easily handle. Yet the mind also wants to believe that it would never hurt itself on purpose and, therefore, the solution to all the suffering must be complicated and elaborate or else the mind would've thought of it already. But as we can see from the model of the mind (as represented in my video on “How Hypnotherapy Works”), the subconscious mind dominates the mind’s activities, and therefore acts on interpretation, not fact. A collection of limiting self-beliefs could easily persuade the mind that the solution must be complicated, when in facts it’s easy. All the mind needs to do is let go of these limiting patterns and embrace a new positive self-perception.
This solution is easy because all a client has to do is fully commit to the solution, which will build new pathways in the brain. To do this, the client must emotionally invest in affirmations, or whatever process the therapist is guiding the client to do. Since the subconscious is the seat of the emotions, all the client needs to do is to recognize the limiting belief when it appears, and then to “imagine, sense and feel” new positive emotions around unlimited beliefs. It's the heightened powerful emotions that create new memories that create new beliefs, new emotions, new behavior, and new results.
“But aren't you just making that up?” you might say. Yes…and no. Yes, because we are drawing upon the mind to create new sensations. For a person living in misery, living in peace and harmony is a powerful new experience, which is worth experiencing for its own sake. No, because a hypnotherapist can't make you be something that you're not. If you weren't capable of experiencing peace and harmony, or if you really, truly didn't want to experience it, then no therapist could make you do it. Those sensations are drawn from memories stored in the subconscious. Therefore, they are not made up. They are useful emotional resources that the mind can use to find equilibrium again. Experiencing positive emotions in trance will lead to experiencing them outside of trance. The more you do, the more you recognize those positive emotions as a part of your personality.
Of course, every client is unique, and so is the source of each client’s anxiety, as well as the path to improvement. Whether anxiety is recent or chronic, whether it stems from some sort of chemical imbalance, hypnotherapy can give a client tools to sooth the mind and function more effectively.
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