Anxiety Articles

Many people use the words “stress” and “anxiety” interchangeably, but they are in fact two separate conditions. Stress is a reaction to a stimulus, either external or internal. You may experience stress when you are frustrated with something (like waiting in line behind a slow person) or when you are worried that you will not meet expectations (such as missing a deadline).

Anxiety, on the other hand, is a sense of dread, or nervousness and fear. It can be caused by negative thoughts and expectations, or as a response to stress. You may feel anxious virtually all of the time and not understand why, or your feelings may be a response to something you are nervous about, such as an upcoming test.

Abnormal levels of certain neurotransmitters in the brain can cause generalized anxiety. Some studies show that anxiety can be brought on genetically. Anxiety can also be induced environmentally, as when a child whose father or mother is often anxious learns to be an anxious person by observing the parent. But very often the root cause of anxiety is simply the thoughts in a person’s mind!

Anxiety and stress are subjective conditions. Different people may feel stressed about different situations, and different people may react to their anxiousness in extremely different ways. Symptoms of anxiety can range from the mild, such as sweaty hands and tense muscles, to the severe, such as vomiting, anxiety attacks, and irregular heartbeat.

Everyone experiences feelings of anxiety from time to time. All of us have felt the dry mouth and vague sense of dread before an exam or public speaking engagement. But when does it become harmful to your health? Research has revealed that prolonged anxiety can make us vulnerable to sleep disorders, depression, relationship problems, and high blood pressure

For sufferers of long-term untreated anxiety, there may be detrimental health consequences that have yet to be fully examined. Many studies have found a link between chronic anxiety and a variety of serious health conditions including cancer, heart disease, respiratory illness, arthritis, and thyroid disease. Chronically anxious people may even be more likely to suffer a fatal cardiac attack.

If you experience what seems like a disproportionately high amount of anxiety relative to the circumstances, or if you feel anxious nearly every day, you may actually have an anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders are chronic conditions characterized by an inability to function normally because of frequent anxiety. Anxiety disorders are serious conditions that should be treated to reduce the risk of long-term effects.

Anxiety treatment has long been the subject of much debate in the medical field. Some medical professionals believe that medication is the best method to handle chronic anxiety. However, anti-anxiety medications often produce serious side effects that are just as bad or even worse than the initial condition.

There are plenty of natural ways to handle negative emotional reactions. Exercise is an often overlooked option, but it is extremely effective. Exercise causes your body to release endorphins, which are natural pain-killing and mood-boosting chemicals. With regular exercise, you may start to feel a dramatic decrease in negative emotional responses to situations that would previously have made you extremely anxious.

The most effective way to manage worry and tension is to control it from within. Stress management and stress relief techniques are very useful in managing day to day stress. These techniques can teach you to calm yourself and relieve your tension. You make a conscious effort to slow your breathing, release the tension, and remain in a peaceful state of mind. Meditation is an increasingly popular form of tension management in which you focus on mindful relaxation and deep, calm breathing.

However, if you are seeking a proactive way to relieve yourself of anxiety, hypnotherapy is by far the best treatment option. When an individual undergoes hypnotherapy, their reactions and emotional responses to events are changed at the core. This permits them to cope with anxiety-inducing triggers without the typical fear and nervousness.

Hypnosis is often performed by a licensed hypnotherapist in a series of regular sessions. More commonly today, hypnotherapy takes the form of self hypnosis programs which can be purchased in the form of DVDs, CDs, or MP3s for individual home use. No special skills are necessary to practice self hypnosis. All that you need is a device to play the hypnotherapy program and a quiet space where you can relax and listen.

Another very successful type of anxiety treatment is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. NLP is a type of therapy that helps you condition your body and mind to naturally react to situations in a more positive manner. You can consciously decide to be calm rather than anxious, and consequently, you always maintain control over your own emotions.

In summary, you can see that it is important to manage our negative emotional responses in order to remain healthy. Understanding how to cope with fear and nervousness may even extend your life. To treat chronic anxiety, the best course of action is to participate in hypnotherapy to change your attitudes and reactions at the core. Then, practice stress management techniques as needed to stay calm in everyday situations.

Alan B. Densky is an NGH certified hypnotherapist. He offers a complete line of anxiety reduction NLP CDs, and advanced anxiety elimination CDs through his Neuro-VISION self hypnosis website. You can visit his self hypnosis blog, and download a free MP3.

For the last several years, I’ve purchased every new piece of exercise equipment that came down the pike. Now I have enough equipment to furnish about two large gymnasiums. The problem is I just don’t have the motivation to exercise, so I don’t make the time for it. I knew that the benefits would be great, but making it a priority was hard for me, so I just don’t do it. Lack of exercise motivation was the only thing standing between a fit, toned body and me.

Given my poor track record with exercise, I was very excited when my boss recently asked me to review the exercise motivation hypnosis Program called “Urge To Exercise!” and I give a thumbs up to this program published by Neuro-VISION, Inc.. Initially I was quite skeptical, but Alan B. Densky, CH, the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) expert who has many years of experience as a hypnotherapist, authored the program. He uses NLP and hypnosis motivation techniques that are supposed to give you a powerful urge to exercise.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with each session, or what was involved, but I was very pleasantly surprised. When I listened to the CD, I was instructed to either sit down in a comfortable recliner, or to lie on my bed. The sessions really brought a feeling of comfort and peace to my otherwise stressed out personality.

These are not sessions of someone with a shiny swinging object trying to hypnotize you. These sessions employ powerful NLP techniques that will impact your exercise motivation and start you in the right direction. The thought patterns that you learn at the unconscious level of mind will give you the urge to exercise, as well as a strong desire to exercise consistently. Maybe you need a little push to get going on your exercise routine; and this is just the program to help you increase your exercise motivation.

I’ve received incredible benefits from this program; I noticed immediate improvement in my level of motivation to exercise, as well as my urge to exercise consistently. All of the other priorities that I had previously put before exercise just do not seem to matter as much; my exercise motivation is now number one.

I feel better and look better and now I look forward to working out. My exercise motivation is very high, and I want to keep working out because it makes me feel good about myself. Thanks to my new level of physical activity, my metabolic rate has increased. I’ve been able to lose weight, and I feel great. I look forward to shopping for clothes, or going to the beach to show off the results of my work! I truly have an “Urge To Exercise!” and I give a thumbs up to this program.

By Alan B Densky, CH

More than ever before scientific research is attesting the essential responsibility stress can play in causing and aggravating many physical and emotional disorders. There was a headline 1983 in Time Magazine labeled stress “The Epidemic of the Eighties.” It also said that stress is a very serious health problem. One has to acknowledge that our world has become more and more complex and stressful over the past twenty-five years since that article was written.

A lot of surveys indicate that almost everybody perceives themselves as being subject to a lot of stress. Authorities in this domain estimate that 75 to 90 percent of all visits, really high numbers, to primary care physicians somehow have to do with stress.

Most people believe that their job is the major cause of the stress. Stress levels have also grown in children as well as the senior population because of several reasons including: Peer pressures that often push people to everything from cigarette smoking to alcoholism and drug abuse; the dissolution of family and religious values and ties; increased crime rates; fear for personal safety; and last but not least social isolation and loneliness.

It is well known that stress contributes to conditions such as diabetes, ulcers, low back and neck pain. Also to high blood pressure, strokes and heart attacks. This is because of the augmented sympathetic nervous system activity along with a flood of cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones. Chronic stress is co-morbid with weakened immune system resistance. Stress can also cause anxiety, depression, and its different impacts on the body’s organs.

A definition for “stress” can be found in the American Heritage Dictionary: “To subject to physical or mental pressure, tension, or strain”

The following definition is given for “tension”: “Mental, emotional, or nervous strain”

“Anxiety” is defined as: “A state of uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties”

The word “depression” is defined as follows: “The condition of feeling sad or despondent”

The following definition is given for “clinical depression”: “A psychiatric disorder characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, loss of appetite, anhedonia, feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness, and thoughts of death.”

We can now be sure that our mind is the main cause of our feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. In other words, what we think about, and our attitudes and points of view about our experiences strongly influence what we feel. If we can find a way to change our thoughts, attitudes, and points of view, we can eliminate our stress, anxiety, and depression and attain a better state of being.

Since the beginning of time, people have searched for methods for releasing stress. We all know that the pharmaceutical industry seems to have a pill for everything. That industry has produced a wide array of sedatives from Valium to Xanax. If you choose to use these pills for relief, make sure that you are aware of the side-effects by reading the fine print, which commonly include addiction and dependency. Unfortunately, these pills aim at treating the symptoms, rather than the cause. So if one stops ingesting them, the symptoms usually return.

An appropriate way of releasing tension, stress, anxiety, and depression is to work on its actual cause. As I wrote above, this is most often our thought processes. Here are the good news: Hypnosis is all about relaxation. The AMA recognized hypnosis in 1958 as an effective way to cure stress and stress related symptoms. And unlike pills, there are categorically no negative side effects.

When you are in hypnosis, you are in the Alpha level of consciousness. It is the daydream like temporary psychological mindset which we feel as we’re just about to fall asleep in the evening. We feel it also when we wake up in the morning. There are many ways we can guide ourselves into this relaxed mood, from progressive relaxation to visual imagery to listening to hypnosis CD’s.

Once you are in the hypnotic state, you are able to interact with your unconscious mind, which is the seat of our emotions. In this state one can more easily acknowledge new ideas and points of view which can help us to reduce anxiety, and even avoid it in the first place.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which is a recently developed kind of hypnotherapy, offers great methods for dissipating stress. Maybe the most effective technique is called the “swish” pattern – or the “flash” pattern. When you use this method, your unconscious will automatically use negative, stress producing mental images, to generate tranquilizing mental images. In other words, your stressors will now make you feel more relaxed!

To sum things up: Tension, stress, anxiety, and depression can be prompted by our thoughts. By changing our attitude and point of view towards our situation and our experiences, we can reduce these feelings at the root. Hypnosis and NLP are really natural tools that make it possible to change our attitude and point of view to quickly reduce the main cause of these negative feelings.

(c) Copyright 2007 By Alan B. Densky, CH. All rights reserved.

Alan B. Densky is an NGH certified hypnotherapist. He offers a complete line of anxiety elimination NLP CDs, and advanced anxiety management CDs through his Neuro-VISION self hypnosis website.
You can visit his video hypnosis blog, and download a free MP3.