Resolving fear of change with hypnosis and other tips

Change, it's something that comes with life, but some changes can make you anxious about future changes. Fear of change is incredibly inconvenient, because while your life may be the same for a while, it often doesn't last very long. It is therefore good to do something against the fear of change and to have resources to arm yourself against change so that you can cope with it

Change happens everywhere in life. Your personal life can change due to all sorts of things; people come and go in your personal life. A friendship can fade due to a move or something similar, and people eventually pass away —which is also a major change. Falling ill can also be a source of fear for you.

The fear of change is also a fear of losing control. Change makes it difficult to plan where your life is headed and throws a wrench in your plans.

In this blog, I take a brief look at fear of business change and fear of personal change.

Fear of business change

A reorganization, a layoff, a promotion, a new manager—all sorts of things can happen at the company where you work. Even if you’re a self-employed entrepreneur, you’re affected by change; clients come and go.

Research shows that executives in particular who have the power to achieve certain goals suffer more from fear of change than people who don't have too much say in where the company is going anyway. This is because they lose the sense of control more than people who did not feel in control anyway.

Especially when change is imposed by upper management, the fear of change makes it difficult for people to adapt. This fear is, in fact, a fear of danger (is my job still secure?), a fear of pain, and a fear of anxiety stemming from having to approach things differently. It is, in essence, the fear of making mistakes.

The fear of change also stems from the fact that change can be challenging because it goes against your own beliefs about how the world works and how the company operates within it. Depending on your confidence in the company’s ability to handle change, you’ll experience more or less fear of change.

Fear of personal change

Fear of change has big consequences. A little fear of change is very normal, but sometimes the fear of change can have big consequences.

There is even a clear link between major life changes and the development of mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression; in some cases, it can even go so far as to lead to schizophrenia.

This is why it is so incredibly important to overcome the fear of change and to be able to change with them when the situation calls for it.

For example, young people can be deeply affected by divorces and other reasons why their family situation suddenly changes. This can lead to a fear of future changes in their personal lives.

Cause of fear of change

Whatever fear of change you have, it is important to find the cause of the fear of change. By knowing why you fear change, you can do something about that reason.

There are several ways to identify the cause of your anxiety. In cases of anxiety, regression is often used to identify the cause. Regression is a hypnosis technique that allows you to travel back with your subconscious to the moment when the fear originated. This can yield many surprising results, as many beliefs are formed during childhood. Something that is completely illogical can be the source of the fear. Once you discover this, it can already go a long way toward reducing your fear of change.

Practical tips against fear of change

Overcoming the fear of change is something that is very useful to do because it has many benefits when you do not resist change but rather change with it (on your own terms or not). Therefore, first a few practical tips to overcome the fear of change.

Tip 1: Get out of your comfort zone

The fear of change is actually also feeling very comfortable in the situation you are in. Nothing is wrong and everything is taking its course. Change is also something unknown something where you have to do new things to make it something familiar. To have less fear of the unknown and have confidence in your own adaptability and creativity, it is helpful to do something outside your comfort zone regularly, at least once a month.

By doing something outside your comfort zone, you actually confront the fear of the unknown and learn that you can do more than you think.

Tip 2: Accept the situation and create your own conditions

In order to change with you and thus reduce the fear of change, it is important to accept the changed situation. This is just the situation you are in, then you can work on your own conditions. How do you make the best of this situation? Is this a situation you want to be in and ask yourself what you can do, what is in your power, to make the situation better for yourself.

Tip 3: Determine your learning moments

The fear of change can also be the fear of making mistakes in the new situation. By thinking about those mistakes not as mistakes, but as learning moments, you ensure that the change is a lot less scary. Nothing in life goes perfectly and life always goes on. So why not learn from moments that don't go right once? By looking at how to handle it differently in the future, a mistake becomes more something to look forward to rather than fear.

Hypnosis and fear of change

These practical tips are very helpful, but you may find that you still have roadblocks to implementing those practical tips and therefore you cannot overcome the fear of change.

So hypnosis can already help you figure out the cause of your fear of change, but hypnosis can help for other tasks as well.

To determine learning moments, for example, it is important to overcome fear of failure. Hypnosis also helps against fear of failure. To accept the situation as it is, mindfulness is needed, and then to control the situation to your own will, confidence in your own ability is needed. To go out of your comfort zone requires self-confidence that you can manage outside that zone.

Hypnotic suggestions against anxiety

Hypnosis offers several ways to tackle anxiety, and one of them is through suggestions. The goal of these suggestions is for them to become more deeply embedded in your subconscious than the beliefs that cause your fear of change.

A hypnosis expert will first ask you about why you are fearful of change in order to find out "unhealthy" beliefs. To this he will then put suggestions. You repeat these suggestions daily at home during self-hypnosis or listen to them during self-hypnosis if the hypnosis expert has recorded them for you.

Suggestions may include:

"I can adapt to any situation."

"I am creative and knowledgeable."

"I can learn from new situations."

"Everything always works out."

These are just examples of hypnotic suggestions; depending on your beliefs about change, a hypnosis expert may offer you other suggestions.

Hypnotic Confrontation

Overcoming fear is also done by confronting fear. This is largely done with going outside your comfort zone, but you can also confront your specific fear. You then make a list of your top 10 change fears. Then you will work with the hypnosis expert to overcome them piece by piece. This is usually done first during a visualization. Through a visualization, you can better imagine how to deal with a change which also makes that change a lot less scary.

During the guided visualization, you may start to feel anxiety—the muscle tension, the change in your breathing, and other symptoms of anxiety. Your hypnosis expert will then teach you how to control your physical reaction to anxiety so you can calm down immediately and maintain a rational approach to facing your fear. This will help you gain increasing confidence in your ability to cope with change.

So, there are many ways to overcome fear of change—with practical tips and hypnosis. Want to learn more about how hypnosis works? Then come to a workshop or another event hosted by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.

Sources:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08853134.2004.10749012

https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/full/10.12968/bjsn.2016.11.6.299

https://wsimag.com/wellness/22073-overcome-your-fear-of-change-in-7-steps