Your chest feels tight or painful, there are pains in your stomach, you feel your heart palpitating, your head and face hurt, and maybe your neck and shoulders too. These are all too common signs of anxiety kicking in. Anxiety is not just in the head, it is not just about the way we think, it has a physical impact on the body too.
People experience anxiety in a number of different ways, including real physical symptoms. During moments of high anxiety, there can be painful or uncomfortable feelings in the body as well as things like:
Dizziness
Hot flashes
The shakes
Sinus problems
Skin problems
Loss of appetite
Excessive sweating
Dry mouth
Repetitive body movements (stimming)
Blurry vision
Nausea
Shortness of breath
Light headedness
Swollen glands
In fact, this list can be never-ending, as everyone experiences anxiety in a different way. There is no one-size-fits-all set of symptoms for anxiety. Everyone responds in their own unique way.
And that is why support for people with anxiety should be tuned to their own special needs. Everyone is unique in how the anxiety got there in the first place, and how manifests itself. So, although we use this generic term “anxiety”, support for people to help them get over their anxiety should be as unique as they are.
Hypnotherapy helps each individual find their own unique solution to their problem. A hypnotherapist will not help everyone in exactly the same way. They will help their client’s subconscious find its unique way of getting the anxiety under control, so that they can return to leading a normal life again.
Of course, a “normal life” is also unique to each individual person. A hypnotherapist will seek to allow their clients to get back to a life that is normal for them.
Hypnotherapy is not the only way to overcome anxiety, and of course, just as everyone is unique, so the help they seek should be best suited to them.
If you want help with your anxiety, and you would like a hypnotherapist to help you, then you may want to consider me. I work out of my clinic in Fleet Hampshire, as well as online. Contact Me if you want to chat about it.
Not everyone has the self-esteem of politicians. In fact, there are some (or maybe many) politicians whose self-confidence comes over as arrogance. But it is the people at the other end of the scale that I want to talk about today – those people who lack self-esteem.
For those people who don’t really believe in themselves, life can be miserable – always holding back, always thinking everyone else is better than them. They don’t believe that they can achieve anything in their lives and don’t believe they are worth anything.
What are the Signs of Someone Who Lacks Self-Esteem?
People who have poor self-esteem will often have some or all of the following characteristics:
An almost constant feeling of anxiety.
They have little confidence in taking decisions.
Their lives seem to be controlled by other people’s decisions.
They believe that everyone else is somehow better than themselves.
When there is a problem, they tend not to ask others for help.
When someone compliments them, they tend to believe that person is lying.
They don’t do new things because they are afraid they won’t do them well enough.
They don’t say “No” when asked to do something which isn’t their responsibility.
They spend a lot of time doing things just to please other people.
They are never proud of their achievements.
Can You Do Something About Low Self-Esteem?
Why is it difficult to do something about poor self-esteem? The answer is simple. If you have poor self-esteem, if you don’t believe in yourself, then you don’t believe you are capable of change. But, of course, you are quite capable of changing, even though you don’t believe it.
It is hard to change a belief about yourself. It feels like you are attempting to pull yourself up into the air by holding onto your ankles and lifting. If you don’t believe you can do it – why start?
I am writing this today to let you know, in no uncertain terms, that you can do something about it. You don’t have to have the arrogance of some politicians (you know the ones I am talking about), but to have an honest understanding of what you are capable of achieving leads to a happier life. And a better understanding of your own self-worth leads to a more balanced view of yourself.
What Can You Do To Tackle Low Self-Esteem?
There is a lot of advice that people will give you about tackling low self-esteem – such as being kind to yourself and challenging negative thoughts. If you can manage to do these on your own then go for it! There is no better therapy than doing it yourself.
However, it is often difficult to be your own therapist, so you may want to see a counsellor or CBT therapist for example. As always, I would recommend hypnotherapy.
Hypnotherapy is an Excellent Aid to Low Self-Esteem
Hypnotherapy is good for people with low self-esteem because it address the sub-conscious and those limiting beliefs that cause the problem in the first place.
I work out of my hypnotherapy clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as working with clients online. I focus on issues around anxiety, and poor self-esteem often goes hand-in-hand with anxiety. If you want to Contact Me, I will be happy to arrange a few minutes chat about it.
I used to commute into London every weekday, travelling in on a packed 12-carriage train. I would follow the crowds of people flooding off the train, out into the streets or down into the underground. I would watch the people as they scurried on to their places of work, each one an individual, each one with their own personality, their own goals in life, their own problems too.
I think back to those days and now wonder: How many of those people suffer from anxiety?
So I looked up the statistics. A packed 12-carriage train can take about 1750 passengers. Then I checked the rates of anxiety in the UK. And finally, I calculated that on just one of the many trains travelling into London each day:
350 people will have felt anxious most or all of the time in the last two weeks
105 people are suffering from diagnosable generalised anxiety disorder
70 people have had a trauma in their lives sufficient to give them PTSD
And that is just one one train. I then went on to think of all the other trains travelling into London or any other city in the world, or all the people in my town, or in the country. There are so many people who have anxiety that impacts their lives, so many people whose lives could be changed for the better if only they could get it under control.
… And they could get their anxiety under control …
They could work to getting a normal life back again. There are many people who have managed to overcome their anxiety and feel normal again. And yet, so many of them either don’t realise they can do something about it, or they give up at the first hurdle.
Hypnotherapy is just one of the methods they could use to help them on the path back to normality. It is not the only thing they could use – they could try medication, other forms of talking therapy or there are a lot of things they can do for themselves like improving their diet or doing more exercise.
You are welcome to explore any of these means of returning your life to normal. However, if you want to give hypnotherapy a try, you can Contact Me and I would be pleased to talk to you about it.
Some people develop a phobia following a traumatic event – usually a phobia of something around the circumstances of that event. It then becomes a struggle to walk away from it.
Follow this link to read my full article on the topic.
If you have a phobia, or any other form of anxiety, please Contact Me for a chat to explore what hypnotherapy can do to help. I work from my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as online.
Are you visited by periods of anxiety? Or maybe you suffer from anxiety most of the time? Here is a little psychological trick that may just help. It’s a way of fooling those negative emotions into separating themselves from the rest of you.
Winston Churchill’s Story
Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister who led the United Kingdom through most of the second World War, had mental health issues. What those issues were is the subject of debate among historians. Views range from mild depression and anxiety to bi-polar disorder. What we do know is that there were times when it affected him more than others.
Churchill developed ways of coping with these mental health issues. One of these was to tell himself, “We must just keep buggering on.” Another way of dealing with it was to name the dark moods he had. He called them the “Black Dog”. His daughter explained that the Black Dog was usually kenneled – but came out to visit sometimes.
Naming the dark emotions he had was one way that Churchill had of coping with them.
How to Name a Negative Emotion
When anxiety strikes or depression overwhelms you, ask yourself, “If this emotion were to have a name, what would it be?” I am not talking about the clinical name, like “Generalised Anxiety Disorder” or “Emetophobia”. Give it your own personal nickname, like “The Worry Monster” or “The Blue Meanie”.
Having got a name for it, use that name when you talk to others about your mood, or for you own self-talk. Remind yourself that what that you have just named is not you – it is just visiting.
How Does Naming a Negative Emotion Help?
Naming a negative emotion is a psychological trick that you can play on the primitive part of your brain that is generating all those negative emotions. By naming an emotion, it externalises it. That is, it helps you start to think of that emotion, not as part of you, but as a separate entity.
For some people, naming the emotion might not get rid of it, but it makes it easier to cope with. For others, they may find that it visits less and less frequently and with less power each time it visits.
And Finally …
If you are struggling to cope with anxiety or anything related, you might want to give hypnotherapy a try. It is not the only solution, but if you want to give it a go, you are welcome to see me in my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire or online. Contact Me if you would like a chat.
It’s a tough ask, but plunging your face, your head or maybe your whole body into cold water may help relieve anxiety.
Tim’s Story
Tim suffered from severe anxiety, which included panic attacks every week – sometimes even every day. That was until he met Mark Harper, who had been involved in some research into the use of cold water immersion as a potential treatment for depression. As anxiety and depression often go hand-in-hand, Tim decided to have a go.
Of the many forms of cold water immersion that are possible, Tim chose wild swimming, and so one autumn day he found himself in the River Wensum in Norfolk, UK. I imagine that lowering himself into a river on a cold autumn day must have taken some nerve.
“After a minute of my first swim, my feet felt as if I’d crushed them with a breeze block. This was not some glorious communion with Gaia. I was an idiot in a very cold river.”
Nevertheless, despite the pain of the cold water, Tim persisted. And the result … the panic attacks stopped completely.
Cold Water and Anxiety
There is something about immersing ourselves in cold water that appears to have a positive impact on our mental health. The shock of the cold water on our skin, our face or our whole body somehow seems to relieve the anxiety.
The science behind this appears sketchy at the moment. Some small trials have taken place that give us positive hope that cold water can be used as a treatment for anxiety and/or depression. Hopefully, larger scale studies will be conducted in the future, studies that will give a clearer scientific understanding of this phenomenon.
Of course, the lack of large scale studies shouldn’t stop us trying it for ourselves. If it works for you – it works for you … and if it doesn’t – it doesn’t. If you are brave enough to give it a try, then you can discover for yourself if it is a valuable tool to combat anxiety that you can keep in your toolkit.
Different Methods You Can Use
We do not all have to be as brave as Tim, plunging ourselves into icy rivers. There are less dramatic means.
Before you read on, remember to be sensible about this. Here are the obvious caveats:
Suddenly finding yourself in cold water will slow down your heart rate, so if you have any concerns over your heart health, you should consult your doctor before trying.
If you want to try jumping into a river, a lake or the sea – gets some information about how clean the water is first. You don’t want to be going into water where sewerage or industrial waste has been dumped.
Don’t stay in the cold water for such a long time that your body starts to loose its core temperature.
So, bearing in mind the above caveats, here are a few ideas:
Fill up a sink with cold water, hold your breath and place your whole face or head in the water for as long as you are safely able to do so.
Either before or after you nice warm shower, turn the temperature right down and stand in the cold shower for a minute or so.
Fill a bath with cold water, and get in as much of your body as you can.
After a sauna, go into the shower and turn it on cold.
Book yourself a session (or series of sessions) in a cryotherapy chamber – this isn’t water immersion, but it may have the same positive impact.
Find a clean river, lake or beach and go for a quick swim.
One-Off or Long Term?
Is cold water immersion a one-off benefit when you are having a particularly anxiety-ridden period or a panic attack, or does it have long-term benefits? It is not possible (yet) to answer this question. There has been insufficient research to determine the optimal methods. So you need to try and see what works for you.
Some people suggest putting your face into cold water when you are particularly anxious, just to help you calm down in the moment. Others suggest you should have a cold shower on a regular basis.
What you need to do is experiment on yourself to find what works best for you. Pick out one or more of the ideas listed and try them. Note what happens if you are in a highly anxious state. Does the anxiety change immediately, or over time – indeed, does it work for you at all? The important thing is to have a go.
Why Does Cold Water Immersion Work?
Again, the jury is out on this one. Different sources suggest different reasons for how cold water immersion impacts anxiety. Those ideas include:
A change in the chemicals in the brain brought on by the shock of the cold water – endorphins in particular;
Slowing of the heart rate, which is usually high when you are anxious, so slowing it down reverses the anxiety;
Your mind will focus on the impact of the cold on your body and so will put aside any worries for a while;
The cold forces the parasympathetic nervous system (associated with calm and rest) to come into play.
Worth a Go if You’re Brave Enough?
It is a tough ask. Plunging your face, your head or your whole body into cold, even icy water is not the sort of thing that you do lightly. What is more, there is only a little scientific evidence that it works. But if you are brave enough to face it, I think it must be worth trying.
And Finally …
If you want help with your anxiety you might want to have a go at hypnotherapy. I help people with all sorts of anxiety-related issues, using hypnotherapy to help them get back in control of their lives. I work from my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire, as well as online, and would be happy to have a chat if you want to Contact Me.
