Stress Management

Stress is something we experience when we feel under too much pressure and unable to cope. Often it’s a build-up of small, subtle stressors like work-related stress or financial worries that lead to ongoing (or chronic) stress. Feeling stressed for long periods of time takes its toll on both our mental and physical health.

While we can’t always control the stressful events and situations we experience, we can control our reactions to them. Here we’ll look into common stress symptoms and explore how hypnosis for stress can help change your reaction and manage stress better.

Why do we get stressed?

Our brains evolved to help us survive back in the stone age when we were facing daily threats to our life. When a threat revealed itself, our brains would fire off hormones like adrenaline and cortisol which got our hearts to beat faster, our breath to quicken and our muscles to tense. This put us in ‘fight or flight’mode, giving our bodies the physical edge they needed to either run away from the threat or fight it off.

While times have changed and the level of threats to our lives has decreased - our brains have retained this survival feature. Different things are perceived as threats to our brains - for example when your manager emails you with a tight deadline. Your brain still goes through the motions to prepare you to ‘fight or flight’, but instead of fighting your manager or running away from your desk, it’s more likely that you’ll stay sat at your desk.

This leaves stress hormones coursing through your veins, making you feel stressed. Usually, this sensation will pass, but when we’re coming face to face with multiple stressors regularly, we can feel in a constant state of stress and start to develop symptoms.

Signs of stress

Stress can affect us in various different ways, often manifesting in emotional, mental and physical symptoms. One of the best tools for stress management is understanding what your particular symptoms are. Getting to know these will help you become more aware of when you are stressed, so you can take action to reduce it.

Some of the ways you may feel emotionally include:

• anxious

• overwhelmed and as if you can’t cope

• easily irritated and angry

• low in self-esteem and self-worth

These feelings may change the way you behave and interact with those around you.

Some of the ways you may feel mentally include:

• fast-thinking

• difficulty making decisions

• difficulty focusing

• constant worrying

These feelings may well impact your day-to-day life and over time,

stress can lead to mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.

Some of the ways you may feel physically include:

• tense muscles

• headaches

• feeling dizzy

• problems sleeping

• fatigue

• a change in appetite

Hypnotherapy for stress

Hypnotherapy aims to break negative thought patterns and responses to stress and instead provide you with a healthier reaction. This is done via the subconscious - the part of our mind that works automatically and without us realising.

Some people will see results after one session while others may require a number of sessions. This will depend on your individual circumstances and the depth of work needed. Often we will teach you self-hypnosis and relaxation techniques you can use after the sessions are over.

Hypnosis for stress can be especially helpful when you’re experiencing short-term stress. For example, if you have an exam coming up or a public speaking engagement, hypnotherapy can help you respond in a more relaxed way.

Regular self-hypnosis can then help you reduce tension and ease stress on a more long-term basis. The very act of going into a hypnotic state will ease stress as you need to be very relaxed. For this reason alone many find hypnotherapy an effective tool for managing stress.

Hypnotherapy can also be used to help increase your confidence and self-esteem, making you feel more comfortable setting boundaries and saying no to people. These are essential tools for managing stress.

Tips to reduce stress

A key step in learning to manage stress is to become aware of potential triggers; what causes you stress and how does stress affect you? Remember, we’re all different and will respond and react to stress differently.

Try making a list of the different things in your life that makes you feel stressed and then note how stress shows up for you. Understanding your triggers means you can anticipate when you might struggle in the future and come up with ways to cope.

Tools and techniques to help you manage stress better include:

• Increasing your communication skills and being more assertive (learn to say no when your plate is already full).

• Using relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, meditation or having a bath can help to ease tension mentally and physically.

• Exercising frequently helps to decrease stress and promotes relaxation. If you’re not a fan of the gym, try going for a walk, swimming or a yoga class.

• Making time for self-care is a good reminder that you matter and will help you develop emotional resilience.

• Connecting with friends and loved ones. Talking problems out and spending time in other people’s company can help you feel less alone and more able to cope.

• Making space for hobbies and fun can encourage a sense of playfulness and help to alleviate stress.

• Working on your sleep routine to ensure you’re getting enough restful sleep can help you feel more energetic and resilient.

• Assessing your diet and reducing the amount of sugar and caffeine you’re consuming can help ease some physical stress symptoms.

As humans, we have evolved a “fight or flight” response to potential dangers. It’s what helped our hominid ancestors decide whether to do battle with predators, or flee quick-sharp up a tree.

However, when under stress or when our safety is compromised, we’ll typically experience one of three physical reactions: act impulsively, escape the situation, or freeze up. Is one of these responses more effective than the others? And why are they triggered when we feel under threat? Let’s find out.

Fight

When facing danger, you’ll know whether you can defeat it or not. A fly in your soup? No problem. An axeman in a dark alley? Maybe not. Similarly, if you’re faced with considerable amounts of stress in your daily life, you’ll feel a rush of adrenaline. If you believe you have the power to fight it, your body will release hormones preparing you for battle. This is the fight response.

While it’s unlikely we’ll come face-to-face with a deadly predator in our daily lives, the fight response can still be triggered by other factors.

So, whether you’re involved in an attack, an accident, or a disaster, or if you’re feeling anxious about a presentation, interview or social occasion, evolution and instinct will still kick in at the precise moment. Your muscles tense, you start to sweat, your heart beats faster – you act on impulse to save and preserve yourself. You fight.

Flight

We developed the flight response as a way of escaping an overwhelming threat. If you’re unable to fight, you need to get to safety, and fast. Your blood pressure rises and your blood sugar increases. The adrenaline you feel pushes you to flee the situation. In the event of a disaster, this means running from danger, or hiding, seeking cover, or finding higher ground.

The flight response can also be triggered in daily life. If you’re confronted by a colleague or in the middle of an argument that you find yourself losing, you may want to walk away, without saying a word. This happens more often than we think. Who hasn’t felt the fear while walking down a street and seeing a large and rowdy group of people coming the other way?

Usually we reach for our phone and pretend to take a call – surely no harm will come to us if someone is on the other end of the line? Even body language can indicate the flight response – like folding your arms to cover your body – to hide your vulnerabilities.

Freeze

Often forgotten, but possibly the most common when facing trauma, is the freeze response. Chances are, you’re picturing yourself dealing with a situation in the best way by either running for safety or readying to face (fight) the problem. In reality, a very common natural human reaction is neither of these. It’s to do nothing. You freeze.

This is your brain reacting to fear in the most primitive way, like being taken by surprise by something you see in the corner of your eye. Freezing is your primal, desperate attempt to stop the predator from spotting you. When facing danger, it’s common for our minds to slow down and assess the situation. Blood is diverted from the brain and thinking becomes incredibly difficult.

Do we have a choice?

People who freeze in trauma do not choose to, and often beat themselves up afterwards for being “passive” when in reality they have no more control than a rabbit caught in the headlights. It’s the same with our fight-or-flight reactions. People very rarely have control and are therefore not to “blame” for their instinctive responses.

The most simple advice is to breath deeply (to trigger your parasympathetic nervous system), to ground yourself in the moment by deliberately noticing things you can see, hear and physically (not emotionally) feel, and to reassure yourself that this will pass and you will shortly be back in control.

No one is immune to the physical reactions we feel when facing danger. Research shows that people don’t know how to react to a crisis until it happens. As for the miraculous survival stories we read about in the media, it’s often despite their actions. It’s mostly down to luck.

Stress symptoms can cause you to behave in different ways. You might find you’re getting angry at people and snapping more often. Learning how to manage your stress in healthy and helpful ways is key, and sometimes this involves getting professional support. There are several options available, including talk therapies such as Cognative Behavioural Therapies and hypnotherapy.

Stress has become part of our everyday vocabulary and at some point, most people will experience the signs and symptoms associated with increased levels of stress. Many people miss the early signs of stress until a breaking point is reached or their body responds to the constant level of stress through a physical reaction

When facing imminent danger, our instincts take over. We can’t control these feelings, but we can learn from them

Here @Oneness we will help you enter a state of deep relaxation (hypnosis). When you’re in this state, your subconscious is more open to suggestion. The idea here is for the hypnotherapist to ‘suggest’ different ways of responding to stress, to your subconscious.

Use the contact form below for a free consultation on on how we can help.