One out of three people deal with anxiety or depression at any time in their life. From dealing with everyday concerns to trauma to loss, anxiety and then depression can negatively affect your quality of life.
And medication is not always the answer.
The first thing to do when faced with an anxious moment is to breathe. Take a breath. A deep breath. Hold it. And then let it go. Take another deep breath, deeepppp in, hold it, and let it go.
This technique is simple but one of the most effective ways of getting oxygen to your cells when you are in a stressful situation. It is also a signal for your body to relax.
After that, hypnotherapy can help you find out why that event that is occurring is triggering you, causing such an emotional response.
Hypnotherapy is not counselling or typical therapy. It is a scientific approach that allows the client to support themselves in removing the emotions that are built up from the past. How we do that is the science.
Think about a traumatic event that has occurred in your life. Would it not be nice to simply look at it as something that occurred then as the most horrifying thing you have ever experienced?
In hypnosis, the subconscious is given the support to reframe or solve the event, giving the power back to the client, thus eliminating the need to respond automatically to situations. When one is stuck with anger at 4 years old, whether we remember the event or not, the power is diminished.
So how does hypnotherapy work?
The International Medical and Dental Hypnotherapy Association defines hypnosis as follows;
“Hypnosis may be defined as an education communication process to a person’s mind that allows his/her conscious and subconscious mind to receive the same message. The process produces an altered state of consciousness through physical and mental relaxation.”
Hypnotherapy is not the same as stage hypnotism. Under no circumstances will you in hypnosis do anything you do not want to do or is against your moral fibre.
Anxiety is the fight response to situations that we cannot control. We see or feel something that is difficult to navigate and we react. These responses are automatic responses coming from the subconscious mind, like a reflex, they just happen without thought. If one does not solve the anxiety, depression is soon to follow which is your flight response.
Hypnotherapy can support the anxious and depressed person first with relaxation, allowing the mind and body a reprieve from the stressors. After that the hypnotherapist will work on why the event caused the emotion in the first place, removing the emotions from the event, thus solving it in the subconscious mind, not the conscious mind.
Many people ask me that as they think that they are too strong-willed to go “under”. Actually, that is a myth. If one can focus, one can be hypnotized. In fact, you all ready are hypnotized many times a day.
Hypnotherapy will always support the client feel better, more relaxed, than when they first came in. As always, a good hypnotherapist is always working for the best interest of the client.
At New Leaf Wellness Clinic we offer several hypnotherapy packages. The Anxiety and/or Pain Management is 45-minute Hypnotherapy Treatment that supports you in understanding hypnotherapy and how it can help and allows you to experience hypnosis a few times before we start the Advanced therapy itself.
Corinne Ropp, hypnotherapist, and hypnotherapy instructor has been studying hypnosis since 1992. She has her own hypnotherapy training center in Coquitlam where she teaches the most advanced hypnotherapy techniques.
Blog Written by Corinna Ropp Cht