Hypnotherapy for Stress
...recognizing it and conquering it
What is stress?
Stress is the body and mind’s reaction to continued excessive pressure or responsibility, especially in situations when you may feel inadequate or unable to cope. It is the body’s way of rising to a challenge and preparing to meet a tough situation with focus, strength, stamina and heightened alertness.
Ever since prehistoric times, the ‘stress response’ has been a mechanism that your body has used to help it cope with danger. As soon as you are aware that something is a threat to you, your brain sends messages to your nervous system to either get ready to stand or fight or run away. In other words the ‘fight or flight response’.
When this stress response is working properly, it enhances a person’s ability to perform well under pressure, but the stress response can also cause problems when it overreacts or fails to turn off and reset itself properly.
A little of this stress can help keep you alert, ready to rise to a challenge and your nervous system quickly returns to its normal state, ready to respond again if needed.
But stress doesn’t always happen in response to things that are over quickly or that are immediate. Ongoing or long term events like coping with a divorce or moving to a new home or job can cause stress too.
These long term stressful situations can produce a lasting low-level stress that is hard on people. The nervous system senses the continual pressure and remains slightly activated and continues to pump out extra stress hormones over an extended period. This can lead to stress overload – which can affect your body, your thoughts and feelings and behaviour.
There is a whole range of situations which can result in an excess of stress – everything from outright physical danger to making a class presentation, taking a driving test, financial pressures, fear of redundancy, overwork or deadline pressures. Too much stress is not good for anyone but often people do not realise that stress is affecting their health.
Some signs of stress overload:
- Short tempered irritability and moodiness
- Unusual clumsiness and impaired concentration
- Excessive agitation – for no apparent reason
- Anxiety or panic attacks and raised blood pressure
- Allergic reactions – such as asthma or eczema
- Chest pains, stomach problems, headaches and other physical
symptoms - Sleep problems e.g. insomnia or disturbed sleep patterns
- Drinking and smoking too much, overeating, or drug taking
- Continual sadness or depression – tearful for no apparent reason
- Unable to cope with even a minimum amount of pressure
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Everyone reacts to stress differently. Some people project this stress outwards and they become angry, hostile, aggressive and often take it out on others. Some people internalize it; they keep it ‘bottled-up’ and may develop eating disorders or substance abuse problems, depression and anxiety, loss of confidence and enthusiasm or it may even emerge in the form of an illness.
So you can see that stress can appear in many guises and can affect people in a variety of ways regardless of their age, sex or profession.
However, it has been show time and time again that Hypnotherapy can help to reduce and eliminate the effects of stress on the body by deeply relaxing the client, lowering heart rate and blood pressure and relaxing muscle tension.
When the stress is caused by suppressed emotion, Hypnotherapy will reveal the cause of these ‘bottled-up’ emotions and, when these emotions are released, it will lower your stress levels and enable you to regain control of your life.
Hypnotherapy is the perfect antidote to stress overload as it can enable you to make the positive and long-term changes that you desire in your life.
Call New Horizons Hypnotherapy on 01555 893413 or send us an email.