Tim Maude Hypnotherapy

Tag: #stress

  • Poor Self-Esteem: Getting Out of the Negative Spiral

    Poor Self-Esteem: Getting Out of the Negative Spiral

    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.

    Photo by Cottonbro Studio on Pexels

  • Breaking the “What If” Worry Cycle

    Breaking the “What If” Worry Cycle

    The “What If” worry cycle is an anxiety-related problem that most people will have experienced at sometime in their lives. It starts with worrying about something going wrong, and the consequences of what happens next. It is a constant cycle of asking ourselves, “… and then what if …”. This is known as “catastrophising”.

    Alison’s Story

    Alison arrived home from work one day, sat down, and tried to calm down the stream of thoughts going through her head. As she had left work, her boss had looked towards her in a strange way, and he had not said, “See you tomorrow” as he usually did …

    Maybe she had done something wrong … She’d soon know if he asked her to see him tomorrow … Or maybe he was just noting it down to confront her with it at a later date … She tried to think of what she had done that day that might have been wrong … What if she was sacked? … What if she couldn’t find another job? … The rent would go overdue and she’d be kicked out … Maybe Joan would let her sleep on her sofa … But she couldn’t stay there forever …

    After a sleepless night, Alison arrived at work the next day, only to find that her boss had been so preoccupied with something else, he had not even see her leave work.

    Other Examples of the Worry Cycle

    • If I fail my exams, I won’t get the job I want, then my life will be ruined.
    • This spot on my arm could turn out to be cancer – I might die and what would my kids do then?
    • My teenager is not back from the party she went to. What if she has had her drink spiked? Maybe she is lying unconscious on the street somewhere.
    • My partner’s not answering his phone. What if he’s with another woman? Maybe it’s my sister.
    • Why have a got an ache in my chest? Is there something wrong with my heart? Could this be the build up to a heart attack?

    Catastrophising

    The pattern of thinking where we anticipate something bad happening to us, and then anticipate something worse that could happen as a consequence, and then something worse that that, and so on – this is called “catastrophising”. Some people seem to learn how to think catastrophically and catastrophise about something almost every day.

    Catastrophising is a threat to our mental health. Every time we go through the process of catastrophic thinking, we add more stress to our lives, which in turn increases the activity of the amygdala – the fight or flight centre of our brain. This is like pouring fuel on the fire of other problems we might have:

    • People who already have poor mental health – such as anxiety, OCD or depression – may find their symptoms becoming worse when they catastrophise.
    • Some people live with chronic pain, caused by arthritis, fibromyalgia and the like. If they catastrophise they will often find that their pain become worse.

    When is Worrying a Problem?

    Most people have worries about the future, at least on occasions. Worrying about the future is not an issue, provided that it is kept under control. If we anticipate what might go wrong, we might be able to do something about it, or prepare for it.

    • If you worry about failing your exams – you can study for them.
    • If you worry about the spot on your arm or the pain in your chest – you can get a doctor to check you out.
    • If you worry about your daughter not coming home on time – you can phone up and check what’s going on.
    • If you are worried that your partner is not answering the phone, you can ask them why they didn’t answer when you see them next.

    Of course, there are some things that people worry about that they can’t do anything about. They might worry about the dreadful things reported on the news. They might worry about the results of a medical test that they are not going to hear about until next week. These are wasted worries. If you cannot do anything about it, then worrying about it will not change the outcome.

    Worrying only becomes a problem when it becomes our default way of thinking. If we are constantly worrying or catastrophising, then it impacts our mental and physical health. This is when we need to do something about it.

    What Can We Do About It?

    The last step is to turn it around. Ask yourself what will happen if everything goes right – what if you do pass the exam? What if that spot just turns out to be a benign mole? What if your partner simply forgot to turn their phone on?

    The first step is to recognise that we are catastrophising. Ask yourself if these sort of “what if … what if” worry-cycle thoughts go through your head quite often.

    Next, see how good you are at catching yourself doing it. You might start by just noting that you have had some catastrophising thoughts – but only after you have had them. Eventually, you will find that you can spot them mid-flow; you will realise that the same cycle of thinking of worse and worse scenarios is actually happening while you are doing it.

    Once you can spot the cycle, while it is happening, don’t beat yourself up about it, just tell yourself, “That’s interesting, I am doing it again.”

    Gradually, over a period of time, the cycle of catastrophising will lessen. Don’t be disappointed if it takes a while. You need patience. You are retraining your brain to think in a different way. If you are the worrying kind, your brain will be very experienced and very quick to worry. So practice, practice practice. Eventually, it will calm down and you will be able to get on with life as normal without the constant cycle of worry in your mind.

    Getting Therapy

    If you find you cannot manage to calm down the worry cycle on your own, you may want to seek help from a therapist. There are a lot of types of therapy available to help, among which are CBT and hypnotherapy.

    I help worriers as well as those with other forms of anxiety. I use hypnotherapy to help them get back to their normal, calmer selves. I work out of my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire and also online. Do Contact Me if you want to have a chat.

    References

    Other articles that may be of interest include:

    Catastrophising: How toxic thinking leads you down dark paths

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20220725-catastrophising-how-toxic-thinking-can-lead-down-dark-path

    Catastrophizing: What You Need to Know to Stop Worrying

    https://www.healthline.com/health/anxiety/catastrophizing

    How to stop catastrophizing

    https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320844

    Photo by Liza Summer on Pexels

  • Not Knowing What’s Round the Corner: A Source of Anxiety

    Not Knowing What’s Round the Corner: A Source of Anxiety

    It’s a problem I hear again and again in my hypnotherapy clinic. It comes in a variety of forms, but it is always the same basic structure. “My future is uncertain, and that stresses me out.” The future my clients talk about could be a failing relationship, potential redundancy from their job, or simply the world situation – which is far from certain at the moment. They do not know what is coming round the corner.

    It is a natural human reaction – to be stressed by uncertainty. When you don’t know what’s coming, you don’t know how to prepare. When the future is uncertain, you cannot be sure if you will be better off or if something will go drastically wrong. Our brains are often tuned to anticipate the worst case scenario, and so we become stressed and anxious.

    What goes on in our brains is then a bit of a vicious circle. We get anxious about the future, so we think of all the things that could go wrong, and that makes us more stressed, and so on.

    Of course, we could choose to ignore the uncertain future and carry on as if life were normal. But we must be careful not to kid ourselves. If there is a chance that something could go wrong, we need to take reasonable steps to prepare for it. We can think about what could go wrong, but we shouldn’t dwell on it.

    Five Things to Remember

    If the future is uncertain, if you don’t know what is round the next corner:

    1. Anticipate what could go wrong.
    2. If there is something you can do to prepare – do it.
    3. If you find yourself thinking about things you cannot do anything about – put those thoughts aside.
    4. Once you have prepared as best you reasonably can, put all thoughts of disaster aside and enjoy what is going on in your life right now.
    5. Remember that you have already coped with a lot of unexpected things in your life up until now – and you have the capacity to do it again.

    And Finally …

    I help people who are struggling to cope with stress and anxiety. I use hypnotherapy to help them get their lives back in order again and able to cope with the uncertainties of the world. If you would like to Contact Me, I would be happy to have a chat, and if you are interested, book you in for hypnotherapy either at my clinic here in Fleet, Hampshire or online.

    Photo by Adrian “Rosco” Stef on Unsplash

  • The Anatomy of Anxiety

    The Anatomy of Anxiety

    Somewhere near my clinic lives a pair of doves, who occasionally land in the tree outside my window. They sit there without a care in the world. They do not know where their next meal is coming from, or even whether they will survive the rest of the winter, and yet I can see no signs of anxiety or stress. They appear calm and peaceful.

    Now, the thing that human’s have that makes us what we are is a powerful and imaginative brain. Unlike the doves, we can imagine what the future will be like. And we are very good at imagining the future to be a dismal place. We are very good at imagining all the things that could go wrong.

    This is our survival instinct. If we can anticipate the things that might kill us, we might just be able to avoid them. Unfortunately, even though we live in a relatively safe world, our survival instinct can still be put on high alert – and our survival instinct does not care how we feel, it only cares that we survive.

    So our survival instinct makes us worry about what might go wrong. It can create stress and anxiety, but it doesn’t care about that – it only cares that we survive.

    The very organ that makes humans so distinct from the animals also creates worry, stress and tension. The general term for this is anxiety. Anxiety takes on many forms, whether it is worry about things going wrong, fear of certain situations, flashbacks to past situations and so on.

    The part of the brain that is responsible for this survival instinct is the Amygdala. This has two parts – one in each side of the brain and each is about the size of an almond. When the amygdala recognises something as a threat, it reacts. It can react in a number of ways, but the one many people will be familiar with is anxiety.

    Anxiety makes us focus on anything that might go wrong. Our ancestors, who lived in a far more dangerous world than we do today, would need that anxiety when they went out searching for food. Their anxiety would keep them focused on the possibility of being attacked by wild animals or enemy tribes. It is this focus that would have helped them escape before they were noticed.

    In today’s world, those people who suffer from anxiety can find themselves focusing on the negative, anticipating the things that might go wrong, and worrying about the future. This is all a primitive survival instinct coming into play.

    Do the doves on my tree suffer from anxiety? Of course they do when they see a cat stalking them, but the anxiety last a few seconds while they fly on to another tree, whereas in humans the anxiety stays around for a much longer time.

    And finally …

    If you have difficulty coping with anxiety on your own, you might consider seeing your doctor or attending therapy. I help people with anxiety using hypnotherapy in my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire. You are welcome to Contact Me if you would like to discuss the help I might provide.

  • Accentuate the Positive

    Accentuate the Positive

    In 1944, Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters released a recording of “Accentuate the Positive” – a jazzy number with a nice feel-good factor. As well as being an upbeat tune, its words to exactly what it says on the title – encouraging us to “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative”.

    So what has this to do with anxiety, depression and hypnotherapy?

    So many of my clients come to me with a string of problems that they want help with. If I let them, they will talk endlessly about the problems, because that is what their subconscious is directing them to pay attention to.

    When you have a lot of stress, the primitive part of your brain starts to trigger the survival instinct. It thinks that if you are stressed, there must be danger about, so it gets you to think about all the things that are going wrong or might go wrong so that you can protect yourself against them. (I say it “thinks” – but it is too primitive to “think” in the sense that we understand it – it is simply an automatic reaction.)

    If our ancestors from thousands of years ago went out to look for food, they would be anxious – because it would have been a dangerous world. Anxiety makes you focus on the possibility of things going wrong. In a dangerous world, that focus will get you back to your cave before the predatory animals get you.

    In most parts of the world today, the life-threatening dangers that our ancestors faced are largely gone. The primitive part of our brain does not understand that, so when we are stressed, it gets us to focus on the negative in order to protect us from the wolves and tigers, and that focus on the negative leads to a miserable life.

    Fortunately, we can (with effort) turn our minds to the positive. We can stop and smell the roses. We can notice the smile on someone’s face. We can take a moment to really enjoy our cup of coffee in the morning. We can, as the song says, “Accentuate the positive”.

    And finally …

    If you are struggling to cope with anxiety on your own and you need some help, you might like to consider hypnotherapy. I work from my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire, as well as online, and would be pleased if you want to Contact Me.

    Accentuate the Positive: Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters

    Photo courtesy of Kerry at the Mental Health Foundation

  • Can You Play the Guitar While You Are Overwhelmed?

    Can You Play the Guitar While You Are Overwhelmed?

    “Overwhelmed” is a word that I often hear in my clinic. “My anxiety is overwhelming.” “My mind is overwhelmed with thoughts of what might go wrong.” “I have so many things that need sorting that my brain feels overwhelmed with worry.”

    People who are overwhelmed with anxiety sometimes tell me that they have stopped doing the things they enjoy – like playing the guitar. Anxiety and being overwhelmed seem to go hand in hand.

    Why is Anxiety Overwhelming?

    The primitive part of our brain that is there to help us survive in the wild world of our ancesters will always keep our mind focused on things that might go wrong. It doesn’t care about how we feel or whether we are leading a satisfying life – it only cares about survival. And so … it gets us to think about things that might be a danger.

    In a world where there is hardly any life-threatening danger, this primitive part of the brain latches on to smaller things that might go wrong – being late for work, worry that other people may be thinking bad things about you, concern that you may have missed out on the latest social media posting and so on.

    Why do we Stop Playing the Guitar?

    If someone is particularly stressed, they will be reminded again and again about what could go wrong – so much that it becomes overwhelming. It also works the other way round – if someone has a lot going on in their lives and they are constantly thinking about it, then it can result in anxiety.

    When someone is overwhelmed, they may stop doing the things that they enjoy. Whether it’s to stop playing the guitar, stop reading or stop going for a walk – it all comes about because that primitive part of the brain keeps telling us to get on with the things that need doing, or it makes us anxious about the problems in life.

    How Can Playing a Guitar Help With Being Overwhelmed?

    Ironically, even though that primitive part of the brain is trying to stop us playing the guitar when we are overwhelmed, it is playing the guitar that will help calm the overwhelmed feeling down.

    When we have a pastime that absorbs our minds completely, that primitive part of the brain that is the source of all the problems calms down a bit. When you are so focused on getting the right chords, or have totally absorbed yourself in watching a film, or you are determined to complete the last set of bench presses in the gym – that is the time when you deliberately focus your attention on what is happening in the moment.

    The anxiety that results from being overwhelmed – or indeed, the overwhelm that results from anxiety – is looking at the dangers that might happen in the future, or regretting the problems that have already gone. So finding an activity that focuses on the here-and-now forces your mind away from the overwhelming anxiety.

    I am not saying that it is easy to switch off from your problems and focus on the here-and-now. It takes practice, but so does playing the guitar. So start just for a few minutes – or even a few seconds – and then build it up gradually.

    And Finally …

    Here, I offer advice for people who are overwhelmed with anxiety, but if you cannot manage to get it under control by yourself, you might consider getting some help. Every week, I see clients who have difficulties with their stress and anxiety. Using hypnotherapy I help them get back on their feet again. I work out of my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire and also work online. I would be pleased to have a chat – so Contact Me when you are ready to do so.

    Picture courtesy of the Mental Health Foundation / Steve Somerset