Although it is perfectly normal to experience stress and feelings of anxiety from time to time, for some people it can become overwhelming and make the normal daily tasks of day to day life difficult to deal with.

Some people have an identifiable cause for their anxiety such as a traumatic experience, or major life changes such as moving house, getting divorced or illness.

However some people do not know why they have anxiety, which in itself can cause distress. Small stressors can build up over a period of time, without you even realising and before you know it, you feel anxious much of the time.

There is the famous metaphor about a frog:

You can put a frog in a pan of boiling water and he/she will jump straight out.  However if you put the frog in cool water and gradually heat it up to boiling the frog will stay there and be boiled to death.

When you are anxious, it very often goes global – meaning you see the negative in everything.  It’s like you are wearing grey tinted glasses when you look upon the world.

Our minds are like sponges, we soak up little bits of stress as we go along and if we don’t have stress relief mechanisms in place, then eventually the sponge becomes saturated.  This is when anxiety can over spill into panic attacks.

Panic attacks are very frightening. The overload of stress and anxiety sends your body into ‘fight or flight’ mode, increasing heart rate, breathing, pulse – all signs that your body preparing to exercise (fight or flight).

This response would come in handy if you were in real physical danger and needed to move quickly, however panic attacks tend to occur at inappropriate times.  They can be likened to a faulty car alarm, the alarm is very useful but when it goes off unnecessarily it can be very disturbing.

Hypnotherapy is widely used to help people become less anxious. We can work together to give your mind an emotional detox and to update your unconscious (automatic) responses to act more appropriately in a more relaxed and calm manner.

As a client you will also learn tools and techniques to use yourself at home – giving you back control so you can begin to feel better and remain that way.

If stress and anxiety are robbing you of happiness and living life to the full, know that you do not have to live this way.  Take the first step to getting your life back.