Tim Maude Hypnotherapy

Tag: #stress

  • Micro-dosing and Anxiety – the Facts

    Micro-dosing and Anxiety – the Facts

    If you follow one of the many online communities of anxiety sufferers, it won’t take you long to find an advert for micro-dosing. It will probably be hidden in the comments – someone will tell you what a great thing micro-dosing is. So what is micro-dosing and does it really help? Is it a great cure for anxiety or over-hyped nonsense?

    What is micro-dosing?

    Micro-dosing, or more strictly “psychedelic micro-dosing”, is the practice of taking regular small quantities of a psychedelic drug such as psilocybin – the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms (or sometimes Lysergic acid diethylamide – LSD). The quantity taken is small, maybe a tenth of the dose usually taken for recreational purposes, so that any psychedelic effect is so small as not to be noticeable.

    Advocates of micro-dosing say that it has a positive mental effect on anxiety as well as other mental issues. They say, for example, that it will increase your focus and energy, helps you be ‘in the moment’, increases empathy, increases your sense of wellbeing, helps you come off and stay off medications such as anti-depressants, and reduces cravings. As someone who has never tried micro-dosing, I cannot tell you whether or not these benefits are real, but there are many advocates who report positive mental effects anecdotally.

    What is the evidence for micro-dosing having a positive impact on anxiety?

    The studies that have been carried out have mixed results. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that micro-dosing has a positive effect on mental well-being (that is, people tell you it has had a positive effect, without being part of a controlled experiment). There are many advocates who are convinced that it has a positive impact. The scientific studies do, however, come up with mixed results.

    The gold standard for clinical trials of any drug is known as RCD – a Randomised Control Trial – in which a group of people are randomly split into two groups. One group takes the drug and the other takes a placebo, and no-one know which group they are in. In an RCD it is possible to compare the effects of taking the drug with that of not taking it without any inherent bias to the experiment. I find it difficult to find any reported RCD trials of micro-dosing.

    There have been studies that look at people who have decided to take up micro-dosing that have shown a positive mental impact. But be wary of this result, as it could be that the positive mental impact was simply down to expectation – the subjects believed they were going to feel better, and that belief made them feel better.

    Is micro-dosing for anxiety safe?

    Micro-dosing is an unregulated market in the UK. This means that if you order any online, there are no standards to which suppliers have to conform, and no external checks as to what you will receive. You will get different strengths of psilocybin from different suppliers, and there will be no external checks as to their safety. (Which is a concern as psilocybin comes from a fungus, and some other fungii are poisonous.)

    There are no studies on the long-term impact of micro-dosing, so there is no scientific evidence that tells us whether it is safe in the long-term, or that it causes long-term difficulties. It is known that some people take it long-term and appear to be fine doing so, but there is no evidence to help us understand if this is always the case with everyone.

    What is the legal status of micro-dosing?

    In the UK psilocybin – magic mushroom – is classified as a class A drug, and it is illegal to possess, grow or sell it. So, if you do try micro-dosing psilocybin to help your anxiety, you will be breaking the law. Wikipedia provides a handy chart that explains the legal status of magic mushrooms in many countries.

    Conclusion

    The jury is still out. There is no scientific evidence that micro-dosing can help with anxiety. However, there is no scientific evidence to show that is does not help, indeed, there are many advocates who say they have experience of it working well.

    In the UK and many other countries, micro-dosing is illegal and unregulated, so I do not recommend you try it (unless, of course, the local laws where you live permit and regulate it).

    If you are only just coping with anxiety and you want some help, you might consider hypnotherapy. I help people with anxiety and stress to get their lives back on track using hypnotherapy in my clinic here in Fleet in Hampshire.

    A few articles and sources of information

    https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-popularity-of-microdosing-of-psychedelics-what-does-the-science-say-202209192819

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-01811-4

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-022-02039-0

    https://mushies.co.uk/blogs/news/how-to-microdose-magic-mushrooms-in-the-uk-2022-guide

    https://www.microdosing.com/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_psilocybin_mushrooms

    Photo by Tania Malréchauffé on Unsplash

  • Sleep and Anxiety – the Ongoing Conflict

    Sleep and Anxiety – the Ongoing Conflict

    Increasing anxiety can mean you sleep badly – sleeping badly can increase anxiety. On the other hand lowering your anxiety can improve your sleep – and improving your sleep can help reduce anxiety.

    Many people who have anxiety and stress issues will recognise the experience of waking up in the night and then finding it difficult to get back to sleep – with all those anxious feeling and worries going through their head. And this compounds the real problem, because regular nights of good sleep helps sort out anxiety.

    Sleep Phases

    When we sleep, we go through phases – some of the time we have deep sleep and at other times we are sleeping very lightly. These are important in order to keep your body and mind healthy. One of the stages of sleep is known as REM (rapid eye movement) – the stage when we dream. REM sleep accounts for around a fifth of our sleep patterns, although most people rarely remember much of it.

    During REM sleep, our brain consolidates our memories. It looks at things that have happened recently and processes them, getting rid of unwanted stuff and reconfiguring the rest. You may have heard the expression, “Sleep on it.” If there is something that is worrying you – put it aside and look at it again in the morning and you will view it differently. Why? Because during the night, while you are in your REM sleep, you process that bit of memory and so a lot of the emotion is taken out of it.

    How Sleep Helps with Anxiety

    So a good nights sleep will give you around an hour and a half of REM sleep in which to process all your worries and regrets so that they don’t look so bad the next day. This means that the fight-flight-or-freeze centre of the brain is less likely to be triggered and less likely to generate as much anxiety.

    And I know that it’s all very well telling someone with anxiety, “just get enough sleep,” but that doesn’t help when you wake up in the middle of the night worrying and cannot get back to sleep again.

    Sleep Tips

    There is no one answer that can guarantee a good night’s sleep. What works for one person may not work for another. So the trick is to have a go at different things – just see what works for you. Remember – if what you are doing at the moment doesn’t work, then try something else.

    Let’s start with some “don’t”s

    • Don’t try to go short on sleep and catch up on the weekend
    • Don’t drink alcohol just I order to help you get a good night’s sleep
    • Don’t drink caffeinated drinks before bedtime

    And some “do”s

    • Do have a wind-down routine before bedtime
    • Consciously relax every part of your body as you lie in bed
    • If you have anything that’s worrying you – write it down so that your brain doesn’t have to keep reminding you to deal with it

    Sleep is so important to our lives, and these few tips do not do do it justice. I will come back to fully exploring sleep tips another time.

    If you have problems coping with your anxiety and stress on your own and are looking for some help, then you may wish to consider hypnotherapy. I work out of my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire helping people get their lives under control and reducing the symptoms of stress and anxiety.

    Photo by Kate Stone Matheson on Unsplash

  • The Perfectionist’s Dilemma

    The Perfectionist’s Dilemma

    Being a perfectionist is a noble ideal, but be warned … it can feed your anxiety. Anxiety comes from too much stress, and too much stress can come from always seeking an unobtainable life.

    A perfectionist wants everything to be perfect; their home has to be perfect; their job has to be done perfectly; their life has to be exactly as they want it to be. And of course, in one way, it’s good to strive for the best. You will never get the best results if you don’t strive for them.

    The problem comes when we don’t get the perfect life we want … and, by the way … we rarely do. We may strive for everything to be just right, but there is always someone who spoils it (not out of malice, it’s just that they don’t have the same longing for perfection). Or maybe you run out of time or money to get it to the perfect state you want it to be in.

    Imagine the couple preparing to get married. They want a perfect wedding. They spend months saving and planning, booking rooms, planning guest lists and all the other things that go to make a great wedding. It is already stressful, trying to get everything ready by a fixed deadline. And when the great day arrives, something goes wrong – maybe it rains during the formal photography session outside in the rose garden, or Uncle Jack turns up late and interrupts the wedding vows. The frustration just adds to the ever increasing stress levels. And the stress can lead to anxiety.

    And so we have the perfectionist’s dilemma: Ever striving to achieve unobtainable perfection leads to stress, disappointment and anxiety, whereas making do with a lesser goal does not achieve what you really want.

    The solution to the perfectionist’s dilemma is to accept the simple fact that:

    Good enough is good enough.

    You can still strive for perfection, but you need to accept that it will not always be achieved. And if you don’t achieve it, is what you have achieved good enough … good enough to work … good enough for you to be satisfied? When you can accept that it is good enough, life becomes calmer and you are less likely to become anxious.

    If you struggle to control you anxiety and want help, you might want to see what hypnotherapy can do. I work from my clinic here in Fleet (or over Zoom if you live further away). Contact me when you need help getting you life back together.

    Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash

  • FOMO Induced Anxiety

    FOMO Induced Anxiety

    In 2004, in an article for the Harvard Business School, Patrick J McGinnis coined a new word – FOMO – the Fear of Missing Out. Simply put, FOMO is the fear that other people are getting something that you are not – so you are missing out. Since McGinnis first coined the term, there has been a growing realisation of how important FOMO is – and in particular, its impact on anxiety, depression and other mental disorders.

    FOMO has become far more prevalent in the age of social media, and it works like this …

    Jo has lots of friends on social media. When her friends do something interesting or exciting, they post about it. Jo also follows several good looking social media influencers. These influencers get lots of photos taken of themselves (and, believe me, they have trained themselves to pose so that they look really good). They choose the best photos to publish. Jo also follows other people who have really interesting hobbies and publish photos of the highlights.

    So Jo is bombarded with pictures, videos and other posts which are all exciting – the people sho follows at their best. She spends several hours every day keeping up with all her friends and those she follows.

    Now Jo compares her life with the lives she sees on her phone. Her own life is filled with a lot of drab, boring times and just a few exciting or interesting times. Her own appearance looks dull and boring when compared with the beautiful pictures that the influencers post.

    So by making this comparison, Jo’s life and looks are way down the scale when compared with all the highlights – the very best of the lives and the best of the pictures – that she sees on her phone. And this comparison, even though it may be entirely unconscious, creates stress – it creates a fear of missing out. Maybe she is not doing enough. Maybe she should look more like the influencers. More stress … more anxiety.

    There is a skill to becoming content with who you are and what you are doing with your life. When you compare yourself and your life to what you see on social media, you are always going to be disappointed. FOMO has become the mental disorder of the Internet Age.

    So ask yourself a few questions:

    How much time do I spend on social media each day? (You phone may have a “screen time” monitor that will tell you this.)
    Is that time well spent?
    Would you be better off or worse off spending less time on your phone?
    On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy does being on social media make you?
    How content are you just to be happy with who you really are?

    If you are still struggling making the changes that you need to, and you want some help, then you can always contact me. Here in my clinic in Fleet, I help people who are only just coping with anxiety and stress. I use hypnotherapy to help them regain control in their lives.

    Photo by ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash

  • Police trailing hypnotherapy for anxiety

    Police trailing hypnotherapy for anxiety

    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.

    https://www.peterboroughmatters.co.uk/news/23145061.police-plan-mental-health-hypnotherapy-scheme-roll/

    Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

  • A glass of wine to take the edge of it?

    A glass of wine to take the edge of it?

    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.

    Photo by Terry Vlisidis on Unsplash