As we slowly begin to see the distant light of some kind of normality returning to us, it is good to remind ourselves that everyone has had to deal and cope with things that would have put a strain on them. Some people have had greater battles than others to face over the past few months and each person will be feeling their own degree of anxiety and nervousness at returning outside.
Our daily anxiety and doses of micro-stress (and even macro-stress) will all go into our stress bucket, the metaphorical reservoir that collects and accumulates all the things we think of as problems, issues and any negative emotions. This stress bucket gets emptied every night through our regular sleep pattern. When we enter REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, the things that have been stored get taken out and examined and moved from an emotional thing (in your amygdala) to the intellectual part of your mind. When you wake up you feel much better about the things that had happened the day before.
However, if the stress bucket gets too full, you can't necessarily move it all in the night and so you start the next day with some still left in there. That means that the next night, there is even more to move! This usually impacts your sleep pattern as well so not only are there more things in your bucket, but you are not getting enough sleep to clear much of it. And so the vicious cycle starts!
So what can be done? Well, solution focused hypnotherapy is a clear way of resolving these anxieties by intercepting, removing and changing the negative impacts of events. It does this by activating a part of your brain called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, an area that is used to get you to focus on things that are important. We can get it to focus on the positive things that are happening which not only reduces the emotional power of the negative, but also helps you see even more positive things! Hypnotherapy sessions themselves place you in a trance like state which uses REM and so can move things from the amygdala to the intellectual part for you.
The first thing you notice when starting hypnotherapy is that you sleep more easily and wake more refreshed. This is due to the bucket being emptied more and more. If you have been given a CD to listen to as well, this will increase this change, making improvement that much quicker. Solution focused hypnotherapy also changes your reactions and perceptions to negative events in your day-to-day life. It does this by keeping you in the intellectual part of your mind, even though anxiety and stress may be occurring. This allows you to see and react to these events clearly and logically rather than emotionally and irrationally.
So, for anyone who suffers from anxiety and stress related problems, solution focused hypnotherapy is a clear way of helping you resolve these issues without having to delve into them in a forward focused, quick and simple way.