Treating Anxiety – Why Clinical Hypnosis?

Clinical hypnosis can be effective for the treatment of anxiety disorders.  The actual state of anxiety is much like a trance state or the state that persons achieve in hypnosis.  It is a very focused and absorbed state of awareness.  Often persons who have intense and uncomfortable anxiety have very active imaginations, and their nervous reacts to the imagined events or scenarios as if they are imminent or true. Its almost like persons prone to uncomfortable anxiety have a very direct and short path from their imagination to their body.  They may be very creative and prone to worry and obsessive thinking, meaning when there is an unknown in the future they imagine worst case scenarios or catastrophes and the fight flight systems in the body react accordingly.

It makes sense that if a person can imagine and amplify in the mind those things that result in anxiety, its possible they can learn to use the imagination to alter the anxiety state to a more calm or in control state.  With clinical hypnosis they can also learn to become more aware of how they’re generating anxiety with thoughts and imagination and consequently how to change them.

A person who develops debilitating anxiety and panic attacks often begin to have anxiety about the prospect or possibility of having more anxiety or panic.  They also have anxious reactions or thoughts about the anxiety, “what is wrong with me, are people going to notice, I won’t be able to handle this if I have another panic attack etc.”  One of the first and most helpful skills a person must learn is how to offset this “snowballing” effect.  Hypnosis and learning self hypnosis is an effective tool to help a person stop this cycle at the start and gain control over their reaction to stop the “anxiety about anxiety” before it escalates.

I’ve had many clients who have not had results with traditional talk therapy express their gratitude for an approach that teaches skills and ways to offset the anxiety that can be used in real world settings to help them feel better and make improvements sometimes very quickly.  One can talk about the “why” a person has Anxiety and rehash the past for many sessions without much result.  However when a person begins to focus on the “how” they are generating anxious states in the present day and how to change that they can often make noticeable changes and feel better.  This can be empowering and help the person gain back a sense of control they feel they have lost.