Hypnotherapy aims to break negative thought patterns and responses to stress, and provides the client with healthier reactions.
Stress is a physical, emotional or mental pressure that is experienced when a person believes that they can’t cope effectively with a threatening situation.
Stress is an everyday fact of life – it can’t be avoided. It results from any change a person must adapt to, ranging from the negative extreme of actual physical danger to the exhilaration of achieving a long desired success. In between these two extremes, day-to-day living confronts even the most well managed life with a continuous stream of potentially stressful experiences.
However, not all stress is bad. Whether the stress a person experiences is the result of major life changes or the cumulative effect of minor everyday hassles, it’s how the person responds to these events that determines the impact that stress will have on their life.
It’s not just chronic long-term stress that sends us over the edge – excessive stress will do this too. Excessive stress can be caused by external circumstances (for example, sitting a lot of exams in a relatively short space of time, or if a lot depends on the outcome of the exam), or, by internal triggers (such as health fears exaggerating our worries about illnesses). So, the student that is exhausted and nervous sitting an exam might become so worried that his or her mind goes blank, or the nervous musician might be so worried about his or her performance that their hands shake and they can’t play their instrument. In these instances the stress response is no longer working for the person, but it has started to work against them.
Stress can manifest in a number of ways:
- There will be a trigger to the person’s reaction that is easily identifiable. This may be speaking in public, going to the doctor or the dentist, socialising or dealing with people in authority, This is probably the easiest form of stress to deal with.
- There will be no trigger as the symptoms are evident all of the time. This will manifest in low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy and/or failure. These individuals will need assistance with self-esteem, as well as dealing with the underlying stress.
- The last set of symptoms will be related to deeper issues and include phobic responses, psychosexual difficulties, `IBS, panic disorder, depression and insomnia amongst others.
Much of the treatment for stress that incorporates hypnosis will revolve around helping the client to learn to relax and also to learn some techniques that will assist them to deal with the physical symptoms of the condition.