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.