Ways To Beat Anxiety
Anxiety is a very common problem of modern society that often brings people through the doors of a clinic seeking help from hypnotherapy
. While it may be a common problem, finding help for anxiety isn't that hard.
Anxiety probably has already been with us since the beginning of human history. There have always been worriers and anxious people who stress over tiny things. Anxiety and its various manifestations were probably among the ailments of the mind that came to the attention of Freud and other pioneers of psychology back in the Victorian era as they developed their techniques for treating mental and emotional problems, including hypnosis.
But today, stress and anxiety (the two are very closely linked) are extremely common. The pressures of life seem to have increased, as has the speed of living. When the personal computer was invented, some people were claiming that it would boost productivity to a level that office workers (and that meant one worker per family) would only have to go off to work four days a week. Instead, as you've probably found out, telecommunications just bring work home and have created deadline pressures that would have been considered ridiculous fifty years ago. Add the age-old problems of health and family pressures and the fact that most households these days have two adults working. And the news seems to bring us more things to worry and be anxious about. It's no wonder that people are trying hypnosis and just about everything else to deal with problems with anxiety.
A little bit of stress is good for you. Too much is extremely detrimental to your health and probably contributes to physical problems at least as much as poor diet does. But it's important to know the difference between dangerous anxiety and normal pressure. Problematic anxiety goes beyond the normal jitters that you feel with a big job interview or exam looming. That's normal and has the tendency to stimulate you to do your homework. Problem anxiety is more long-term and is characterised by continual worrying and stress.
Full-blown anxiety disorders include phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorders and panic attacks, which can be treated by hypnosis. Serious anxiety disorders can also include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is the long-winded way of referring to what used to be called shell-shock. PTSD is experienced after an intense experience of physical pain, mental pressure and danger, such as going through a serious accident, rape, a natural disaster, severe bullying or being involved in frontline warfare. PTSD is, thankfully, rare but it is very serious and may need more than hypnotherapy to treat fully.
As well as seeking help from hypnotherapy and other professionals who treat the mind via counselling, there are a number of things that we can do to help deal with our anxiety levels and make them manageable. A tendency towards anxiety can have many causes, ranging from environmental and physical through to emotional and spiritual. So it makes sense that treating anxiety in a number of ways can help.
These things can be tried alongside hypnotherapy or counselling, or on their own.
1 Watching caffeine intake. This mood-altering and very common substance, if over-used, can produce anxiety. There's nothing wrong with a couple of nice coffees a day, but if you need four or five double-shot expressos or stronger to get you through the day, you are probably having too much and this is likely to contribute to your anxiety problem. The same goes for those "sports energy drinks" that stimulate the nerves and put you on high alert. Many of these drinks have more caffeine than your average cup of coffee, so finding something else to drink, preferably water or fruit juice, might see to your anxiety problem. Also watch out for diet pills: most of these contain high doses of caffeine and make you fidgety or jumpy (that's how they burn off calories), leading to anxiety problems. If you can't cut out caffeine completely, then cut down and limit your intake to, say, no more than three coffees a day.
2 Watching alcohol intake. Although alcohol is a sedative, a tendency towards dependency on alcohol can also create problems with anxiety. The question here is distinguishing the symptom from the cause. Many people get into a vicious cycle in which they feel anxious or stressed, so they have a few drinks to settle themselves down, which can produce problems with anxiety, which sends people seeking help from the bottle again and so on. And then you've got a drinking problem. A glass of wine or a beer after dinner is probably OK, as long as you have at least two alcohol-free days a week, but if you find you absolutely have to have a drink to relax and unwind, you probably need to find help before a full-blown dependency problem begins. Hypnosis can help, along with 12-step programmes and the like.
3 Watch environmental toxins. A lot of solvents used for glues, etc. can trigger anxiety problems. Watch your exposure to paints, solvents and varnishes, as these are some of the biggest culprits. If your job involves exposure to these substances, make sure that you take your breaks in the open air away from them to cut down on your exposure, and remove your overalls when you're doing so.
4 Take a real break. Have a work-free time where you leave the emails and the text messages alone. Turn your cellphone off after a certain time so you can have some unwinding time in the evening. This is especially difficult for women, who tend to take the main responsibility for children and home as well as holding down a job, which is probably why more women than men seek help from hypnotherapy for anxiety problems. Take some time for yourself every day. This is not being selfish, it's looking after yourself so you can look after others. And make sure you get a decent night's sleep.
by: Rick Rakauskas
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