Imagine, if you will, a symphony orchestra. The conductor is directing and guiding them as they produce harmonious and pleasing music. But then, imagine that the attention of the musicians begins to wander – one violinist loses his place, finds himself three bars behind the rest of the string section, a distracted percussionist jumps six bars ahead and the conductor begins waving his arms around in a heightened tempo that is twice that of the score. The chaos perpetuates, until the music becomes a virtual frenzy, resulting in the orchestra collapsing in a heap on the stage floor, instruments strewn around them.
In a similar way, as a person perpetuates stress in their life, and continues to endure excessive amounts of tension, they may also experience an escalating frenzy, an inability to stay in control. Whilst some types of stress can be healthy for you (think about a romantic encounter, for example), the stresses that begin to have a detrimental effect on your emotional well-being, even causing depression and other emotional problems, are completely undesirable. Whilst we may not be able to change the factors causing stress in our lives, with the use of hypnotherapy, we have the ability to begin to change our responses to it.
There are literally hundreds of factors which can contribute to stress-related problems – everything from physical causes such as illness or fatigue, environmental causes such as an unhappy workplace or a poor living environment, through to emotional upsets – and just as there are hundreds of causes of stress, there are also hundreds of ways, both physical and emotional, in which stress and tension can manifest itself.
It would, of course, be ideal for us to live stress-free lives. However, for the vast majority of us, that is simply not possible, and no matter where we live, work or play, stress is around us. But, on the positive side, once we acknowledge that stress is part of our daily life, there are many things that we can do to help resolve it., and one of the first steps is to take care of yourself properly – mind and body. The responsibility for taking care of your physical body ultimately falls with you. But hypnotherapy can be a great help in resolving emotional stress.
Hypnosis employs a different state of consciousness to the normal ‘alert’ state – it employs a deeply relaxed state of both mind and body, into which you are gently guided – a state where you are neither awake nor asleep, prone to imagery and association, with a pleasant feeling of calmness and relaxation behind it all. Even in it’s own right, the experience of hypnosis allows your mind and body to become calm and quiet, but when managed by a skilled hypnotherapist, beneficial and positive suggestions can then be given to your receptive unconscious mind – suggestions which are individually tailored to your unique needs. Under hypnosis, these suggestions are accepted far less critically than in the normal state of mind, constructive ideas are “seeded”, enabling behavioural patterns and attitudes to be subtly changed at their source.
This state of purposeful co-operation between the therapist and the subject allows an effective way of making contact with the unconscious mind – a reservoir of unrecognised potential and knowledge as well as the unwitting source of many of our habits and problems. For stress related issues, hypnosis can help you step away in your mind from a stressful situation, giving you an opportunity to resolve stress before it gets out of hand. It can help you to step aside and let the negatives roll on by, to give yourself permission to do the best you can, and allow you to find answers to problems, resolving stress that you may have now or may encounter in the future.
As these positive suggestions automatically become part of your unconscious mind you will soon begin to notice a new, positive habit in your life – a feeling of liberation, which ultimately enables you to live your life in a way that is so much more rewarding and fulfilling to you.
Written by Catherine Farr
