What I want you to know about anxiety
To be anxious is to be human but what’s really going on behind it?
Feeling anxious? You’re not alone, loves. Anxiety, stress, panic attacks… doesn’t it feel like everyone is suffering?
Well, in some ways we are. But why? And what can we do about it?
Anxiety is the most hardwired and ancient human response we have, but where it was once needed for immediate life-or-death situations, these days it’s more usually powered by the threat or idea of danger.
How anxiety works
Pretend you’re an ancient human. You come face to face with something that might eat or kill you and what happens? Your heart will race, your palms will sweat, your stomach will churn ready to puke or poop out anything that will slow you down and you’ll be off like a shot. That’s a completely appropriate reaction and you’d be pleased to escape.
This is fight or flight and we still do it. When faced with danger, we move from our nice, positive, problem-solving intellectual part of the brain into our more negative, primitive emotional brain. Our amygdala kicks in and we can only react in certain ways, such as anger to strengthen ourselves for a fight and anxiety to run away. These are our primitive get-out clauses.
Without this reaction to extreme dangers, we would not have survived as a species. We can’t see the bear and think, “Oh, it’s probably already eaten!” Nooooooo. We need to believe we are lunch. We need anxiety and negative thinking to keep us safe. Our primitive emotional brain is all about keeping us safe and it’s really good at it. What it’s not so good at is tempering a response to the severity of the threat. An activated amygdala will react almost the same to ‘a bear is about to eat me’ situations as it would to a modern ‘I’m in my overdraft again’ moment. And that’s where we can come unstuck.
Sure, modern life is stressful and there’s a lot to be anxious about: constant distractions from emails, texts and social media, genocide, war, a global pandemic, austerity, child poverty, the cost of living crisis reality, unhinged politicians, environmental doom…. I won’t go on. I bet your heart rate has risen and your mood has dipped just reading that list. And that’s the thing about anxiety. It’s often a problem of our thoughts more than of our reality.
Every negative thought we have is converted and stored as anxiety. Hypnotherapists like to use the metaphor of the stress bucket. That’s where our anxiety sits. Every worry about whether you will ever get a job or a new job, or a better job, or make friends, buy a house, find a partner is a drop into the bucket. When you ruminate about the past, it’s filling up the bucket. Watch the news, hate follow someone on socials, compare yourself unfavourably to others, doom scroll, moan to your mates… yep, you’ve probably guessed it, all drops in the bucket.
But did you also know that your brain can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality? That means every time you play out a scenario in your head, it’s like you have lived it. Every time you think about that upcoming presentation going wrong, that’s more anxiety in the bucket and more stress hormones for your body. What do you think is happening when you are constantly worrying about things in the past or the future? Things you can’t change or might never happen?
Perhaps you’re starting to see just how influential our thoughts are… which can feel deflating when you realise your thoughts are creating or exacerbating your problems. However, it’s actually good news because it means we can flip those thoughts and make the cycle go the other way. The impact of taking control of our thoughts and helping them to become more positive can be huge. But how to manage negative thinking and advice on emptying the stress bucket are worthy of their own posts, so I’ll write more on those later.
For now, this is what I want you to remember about experiencing anxious thoughts and feelings…
You are not fundamentally broken. You are fundamentally human.
Anxiety is just a bunch of negative thoughts. You are so much more than your anxiety and you are not your thoughts.
Changing your language can help you create some distance: instead of saying “I am anxious” (whereby you are are creating an identity for yourself with anxiety at the core) try “I’m experiencing anxiety” or, “I’m having anxious thoughts.”
You have the power (with practice and some patience) to change your thoughts. Although anxiety is a hardwired response that will always be part of the human experience, it doesn’t mean that feeling anxious is destined to be your default setting.
If you are prone to anxiety, you probably have a really great imagination. You can imagine so vividly all the things that might go wrong. What if you started to imagine how it could all go right?
When the stress bucket is really full and you can’t break that anxious pattern of overthinking and sleeping badly, you are probably going to need help to get back on top of things.
Hypnotherapy is excellent for anxiety! If you want to explore getting some help, book a free consultation by emailing emma@haineshypnotherapy.com where I will also explain more about the workings of the brain so you know exactly how you can best help yourself in partnership with me.
How the brain works (a simple explanation)
Like many therapists, I always start my clients off with an initial consultation. Unlike other therapies though, this is almost more for my clients’ benefit than it is for mine!
While lots of ICs are mainly about information gathering for the therapist, I love the solution focused hypnotherapy (SFH) consultation because it gives my prospective clients something really useful: a tangible explanation of how our brains work, how we create whatever stress, anxiety, depression, fears etc that are holding us back in life and how we can work together to change things.
I thought I would share some snippets here, so you can benefit too. Because, honestly? Knowing this stuff is gold. It forms the basis of your healing. Once you understand the brain’s key processes you have the secret to creating lasting ease, calm and happiness, whether you choose to come for hypno or not.
Obviously the brain is a complex organ so I’m going to keep this explanation to the pertinent parts relevant to my SFH work. (Use the diagram below for reference.)
The human brain
The blue sections at the top are what we refer to as the intellectual mind. This part we don’t share with any other animals. It is the ‘modern’ human brain.
But we also still use the primitive emotional mind – important parts of which include the amygdala (red), the hippocampus (yellow) and the thalamus (green).
When we are in our intellectual mind, we tend to get things right in life. We will come up with answers based on a proper assessment of a situation and can rationalise and problem solve. We also feel upbeat and positive.
We have evolved and grown this modern part of the brain but, unlike technology, which renders old systems obselete, we still use our older, more primitive brains and tend to bounce between the two, depending on what’s going on in life.
You’ve probably heard of the central and influential part of your primitive brain, the amygdala, if not by name then by function. It’s our fight/flight/freeze/fawn part of the brain, capable of reacting only with emotions like anger, anxiety or depression.
The hippocampus is where we store our primitive and sometimes innappropriate behavioural patterns and resources.
The thalamus regulates the chemicals that go round our bodies and brains.
So when we are triggered by something
What happens in a Solution Focused Hypnotherapy Session?
Many people who come to see me have never had hypnotherapy before and lots don’t know what to expect. While I do explain this in the initial consultation, it can also be helpful to understand it even before you reach out for an appointment, especially if anxiety is something you need help with.
Our brains love predictably – it feels safe to them – so having a reliable structure to the session helps to increase its effectiveness. With that in mind, after our hellos, the opening question is always about what’s been good since the last meeting.
Looking for the good things in life helps make a habit out of positive thinking and gratitude, which are scientifically proven to increase our happiness. Positive thought helps to promote a good flow of serotonin, which helps us feel better able to cope with life and reframes our experience.
Then in every session we’ll chat about how the brain works. Some of this is information covered in the initial consultation, but it’s also where you can learn new ways to build a healthy brain and improve your mental health. I’ll share new ideas from psychology and neuroscience to give you greater insight into your grey matter. Knowledge is power and the more knowledge you have about how to change your thoughts and habits, the more power you have to get yourself into a really good place.
The final section before the trance work is about scaling yourself – where are you on that scale of coping, or confidence or happiness? And then the most important part…. What do you need to start (or stop!) doing to improve that score and feel even better? This is your chance to identify those small steps you need to take. And because you are coming up with the solutions, you feel empowered and in control. I’m not here to make you better, I’m here to help you make yourself better!
With these nice positive ideas bubbling away in your mind as you think ahead to how much better you will feel once you have been for a run or booked that deep clean of your house or finally started looking for a new job, it’s time for trance. Trance is very ordinary, you are always in control and it’s a state of focused attention and deep relaxation.
As you lie down and listen to me read to you, you can float away and simply have some time to yourself. Trance work helps empty away the stresses you came in with so that you feel able to make the changes you have identified in the session.
And that’s how the hour pans out. I hope this has given you more of an idea of what a solution-focused hypnotherapy session involves. I’m always here to answer questions or perhaps this has been just what you needed to feel ready to book in with me? Click here to arrange your free initial consultation.