I am really pleased to see Northumbria Police trialing Solution Focused Hypnotherapy to assist with officers and staff with anxiety and depression – and getting an 80% success rate. This is a brilliant example of an independent review of the techniques I use in my clinic every week.
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Are you one of the many people who have a glass of wine or a beer after a stressful day, just to “take the edge off it”? Be warned that for those of you with anxiety, alcohol may actually make the situation worse.
Alcohol is a depressant – this doesn’t mean that it makes you depressed; it means that the parts of your brain and body stop working as efficiently as usual. We all know that that part of your brain that puts a brake on stupid behaviour is suppressed – so you start to loose your inhibitions. After a few drinks, your ability to speak clearly and at the right volume becomes effected. And you probably know all the other things that happen to you. It’s all because alcohol winds back the functioning of some parts of the brain.
If you drink regularly, the brain gets used to the effects of the alcohol and starts to change in order to compensate. This means that when you don’t get a drink one evening, the primitive part of your brain recognises that something is different from usual, and starts to enter the fight-or-flight mode. If you are used to having a glass of wine when you get home from work, you might notice increased tension on the day when you don’t get a drink – that’s the primitive part of the brain starting to engage.
Alcohol also has an effect on the chemicals in the brain, in particular it decreases the production of a neurotransmitter called GABA. One of GABA’s roles is to regulate the other neurotransmitter chemical so as to decrease anxiety and other mental health issues. This is one of the reasons why alcohol can lead to emotional and mental health issues.
Surprisingly, alcohol does not help you get a good night’s sleep. Alcohol may make you sleepy, but it acts more like a sedative than natural sleep. This means that the dreaming phase of your sleep does not work properly, particularly during the early parts of the night when the alcohol is still active in the bloodstream. As dreaming is one of the main natural ways the brain has to deal with the stresses of the day, this has a big negative impact on anxiety.
How many drinks you have and how often is up to you. You need to make your own judgement. The take home message from this blog is simple – a glass of wine may take the edge of the stress you are under, but it will not do anything for your overall anxiety levels, and may make them worse.
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I see many clients in my clinic, and the first thing I ask them is, “What can I do to help?” Most clients usually start by telling all their problems – everything that is wrong with them. It could be their anxiety, their worries, their obsessions, their fears, and all their low moments.
The next question I ask is, “So, what do you want instead?” It is this question that stumps some of my clients. They just want to get rid of the anxiety, depression, fear, anger, or whatever it is they don’t like about the way they are. But they don’t always think of how they would like to be instead. For example, if they feel anxious when they wake up, I want to know how they would like to feel when they wake up if they weren’t anxious.
This is the first step in the change process, because it is a very simple fact that when someone thinks a lot about their fear, anxiety, anger or whatever, their brain just gets more stressed and the
fear, anxiety, anger or whatever gets stronger.
The brain is not good at processing negative statements. If I tell you, “Don’t think of a pink pineapple” then the first thing you think of is that pink pineapple. That is because your brain finds it difficult to process the “Don’t” part of the statement.
So if you start to tell yourself, “I don’t want this anxiety/worry/harmful behaviour”, your brain will probably think about it some more, making it more likely to happen. And that is why it is really important to ask yourself, “What do I want instead?”
This is the crux of all solution-focused therapies, and you can do it yourself. If there are circumstances when you have anxiety, ask yourself, “How do I want to feel in these circumstances” and then imagine yourself being like that.
For example, if you feel anxious about answering the phone, ask yourself, “How do I want to feel when I answer the phone?” You might answer, “I want to be confident answering the phone.” You can then focus on being confident answering the phone, instead of focusing on not being anxious.
If you cannot manage your anxiety on your own, you may like to consider getting help. In my clinic in Fleet, I help people with anxiety. I use solution-focused hypnotherapy to help them get back in control of their lives and get rid of the unwanted symptoms.
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Everyone has anxiety sometimes. It’s when the anxiety starts to effect your life that it’s time to do something about it. This is the 10,000 foot-high view of what you can do about it. In broad terms, there are three mainstream ways of dealing with your anxiety:
If you go to your NHS doctor (in the UK) about your anxiety, they will start by asking you questions about your anxiety, such as how often you feel anxious, and may diagnose you with one of several categories of anxiety (such as generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder).
Depending on the severity of the anxiety, your doctor will probably offer you advice on self-help techniques. If you don’t get anywhere with self-help, the next step will probably be to offer you and initial course of six sessions of CBT. Finally, if that fails to help, they may prescribe anti-anxiety medication. (All of these may be prescribed by your local surgery or a consultant psychiatrist.)
The big advantage to UK citizens is that the NHS service is provided free of charge. The disadvantage is that it may take some time to get the service that you need. Another disadvantage is that, unfortunately, hypnotherapy is not yet available on the NHS.
In my hypnotherapy clinic in Fleet in Hampshire, I regularly see clients with anxiety and anxiety-related issues. I typically find that they can achieve a significant reduction in their anxiety levels with between 5 and 10 hypnotherapy sessions.
Remember that the questions to ask yourself first are, “Is my anxiety adversely affecting my life? And if so, is it bad enough for me to want to actively do something about it?”
The next step is to choose which route you are going to take:
Or you could try multiple routes at the same time.
And, of course, I have to include a little promotion for my own hypnotherapy clinic … so if you want a qualified hypnotherapist who specialises in anxiety, just get in touch.
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Do others see you as a high-achiever, calm, well-organised, and getting loads of stuff done? And while you achieve all this, are you secretly worried, with your mind going like the clappers – thinking of all the stuff you have to do, and scared that you might make a mistake somewhere along the line?
That is high-functioning anxiety – confidently achieving a lot on the outside, but stressed out and worried on the inside – like the swan looking magnificent on the surface, but whose legs are frantically paddling down below the surface.
High-functioning anxiety is not a medical term. There is no agreed definition. If you go to a doctor, they will probably describe you as having “Generalised Anxiety Disorder” – or GAD for short. GAD is a catch-all term for all sorts of anxiety issues.
The problem with high-functioning anxiety is that you are running with your stress bucket on full – that is, there is so much stress in your life that just a little more will push you over the edge. We all have stresses in our lives and store them in our (metaphorical) stress bucket. Usually, the stuff in your stress bucket is dealt with naturally during your sleep, but sometimes, there’s just too much there.
Some people find it a little embarrassing to admit that their external appearance (high achiever, well-organised, involved in everything) is different from their internal feelings (anxiety, worry, tension). And so it can carry on for a long time without getting properly addressed.
A person with high-functioning anxiety may think that if they do something about their anxiety, they won’t achieve as much – and so they may be scared to actually do something about it. This may stop them seeking help. They may be so busy, that they don’t think they have time to look for help.
So what is the answer? What can you do if you do think you have high-functioning anxiety?
It is not simply a case of doing less – there is not a one-to-one correspondence between how much you do and how much anxiety you have. And there is no one-size-fits-all solution … what will work for you will not work for someone else.
The starting point is to work out what is important to you in your life – where your priorities lie. You also have to make a decision – is my mental health important enough for me to take time out to do something about it. Maybe you can do something for yourself, or maybe it’s a good idea to seek professional advice from someone who can help you.
A properly qualified hypnotherapist can certainly help, and other therapies may better suit some people. Whatever you decide to do – the first thing is to start.
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Right now, you are aware of the words that you are reading … you are conscious of them … you are paying (at least some) attention to them. This is the conscious part of your brain in operation – the bit that is aware of what is going on and makes all the main decisions in your life. It is the part of you mind that chose to read this article in the first place.
We also have a part of the brain that we are not aware of … that part of the brain that just gets on with things. You are probably not aware of the pressure of your back on the back of chair you are sitting on – or, if you are standing, of the pressure of your feet on the floor. That is, you weren’t aware of it until I mentioned it.
The unconscious part of your brain is busily monitoring the pressure of your back on the back of the chair, and – because there is nothing going wrong – it doesn’t bother to alert the conscious part of the brain, so you don’t think about it.
The unconscious part of your brain does so much for you without you thinking about. It just gets on and does it. Many years ago, you learned to walk. Now that you are an expert at walking, you don’t need to think, “now move your left leg … next your right.” You just do it. The unconscious part of your mind handles all the details without making you aware of them.
Now, this is all very well, until we programme some behaviour into the unconscious part of our brain that we don’t actually like. We can accidentally programme our brain into all sorts of unwanted behaviours – like being afraid of spiders, being anxious about social occasions, binge eating, having a craving to smoke, and so on. When the unconscious part of our mind has learned a pattern, it is very difficult to change it. We cannot say to ourselves, “I’m going to stop being anxious now.” And just stop … it doesn’t work like that.
Hypnotherapy is the art of helping someone get into the right state to allow the unconscious part of their brain to be able to sort itself out on its own. The brain needs the space to sort itself out, and when the right ideas are planted there, and they have space to grow, the brain will, over a period of time, heal itself and get rid of those unwanted thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
A very important part of hypnotherapy is to reduce the amount of stress you are experiencing. Whenever you are stressed, the unconscious part of your brain is looking out for problems, and so doesn’t have the space to sort itself out – it is too busy getting ready to deal with the problems that may be coming your way.
So one of the things that a good hypnotherapist will do is to lead you into a nice relaxed state, because when your body and mind are both relaxed, you are able to make the changes you need to make.
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