Hypnosis and anxiety
Fear is a useful emotion. Fear causes you to seek protection in the face of danger. However, unreasonable fear can actually get in your way. Unreasonable fear makes you afraid to fly. Because you think that the chance of that plane crashing is naturally much greater than the chance of you crashing on the way to the plane. On the contrary, flying is in fact the safest mode of transportation. But your feelings of fear don't care about that and that's why you don't fly. Even though you really want to go to America or some other faraway destination.
For practical reasons like these, you naturally want to get rid of your fears. In many cases, this means going back to basics. Where did the fear originate? Was there an event that made you anxious or is your anxiety hereditary?
Fears are, in fact, also passed down from your parents. There’s nothing wrong with that—it’s part of your upbringing. The fear of being hit by a car while crossing the street—and therefore paying close attention to ensure it doesn’t happen—is, for example, a useful fear that you learn from your parents.
Unfortunately, you can also develop unreasonable fears that prevent you from getting everything out of life. Many fears of spiders, for example, are passed down from mother to daughter.
To do something about anxiety, you can use hypnosis. You can go to a hypnotherapist or apply self-hypnosis.
What fears are reduced with hypnosis
There are an awful lot of fears that are eliminated or reduced with hypnosis. There are many fears for which treatment with a hypnotist is available or where, for example, the dentist applies hypnosis to reduce your anxiety. Anxieties can be divided into 2 types of anxiety. Namely fear of a situation and fear of tangible things( 1).
Hypnosis is already used for the following fears in some cases:
- Fear of the dentist.
- Fear of a medical procedure.
- Fear of childbirth.
- Fear of chemotherapy.
- Fear of school.
- Exam anxiety .
- Fear of flying.
- Fear of eating.
- Fear of s exual penetration.
- Fear of Hospitals.
- Fear of Driving.
- Fear of driving a bus.
- Traffic anxiety.
- Fear of weddings.
- Fear of slides.
Fear of tangible things, such as birds and cats, can also be reduced and even eliminated completely with hypnosis. Among these are the following unreal fears:
- Fear of cats.
- Fear of spiders.
- Fear of birds.
- Fear of dead birds.
- Fear of mice.
- Fear of dogs.
- Fear of wasps.
- Fear of worms.
Hypnosis to reduce anxiety and phobias
Fears of animals usually form in early childhood in children up to age 7. For example, an acquaintance of mine was scratched across her belly at age 3 by a cat belonging to her parents' friends. She doesn't remember anything about the whole visit or much about the rest of that third year of life, but that cat scratch, which in her mind went all over her belly, caused her to remain afraid of cats well into her adult life.
That is, until she moved in with a friend who already had a cat and showed her that cats don’t always scratch. If the opposite is never proven, hypnosis can offer a solution for visiting friends with pets without too many problems.
One way to use hypnosis to address a fear of cats in this case is to go back to that moment and change the thoughts you had about it, so that they make you stronger rather than weaker. This is called regression therapy.
Precisely because anxiety is a complex emotion, you are not always rid of it immediately, and combinations of hypnosis techniques are often used. These can vary by phobia and patient.
Anxiety creates tension in your body, which is incompatible with relaxation. Therefore, the first step in a hypnosis session against anxiety is to relax with deep breathing exercises. This is very important in order to keep the tension away and to think rationally about your anxiety.
The therapist then comes up with a list of ways to confront one's phobia, for example initially with a picture of a dog and then confronting the dog. The patient must then rank that list by fear. It is important that this be done in the relaxed state of hypnosis so that you can think rationally about your problem.
Next, the patient must visualize the situations on the ranking list, trying to stay in the relaxed state so that anxiety has no chance to develop. Repeating this exercise under supervision can help you get rid of anxiety.
Then, by experiencing the situations in real life, you can use relaxation techniques to stay calm so the anxiety stays away. Over time, it doesn't even have to take effort.
These are just 2 examples of hypnosis techniques used to reduce anxiety. A combination of multiple techniques often offers the best and fastest results.
Hypnosis for anxious situations
In the medical field—such as at the dentist’s office, before surgeries, and during childbirth —hypnosis is also used to reduce anxiety about these situations and even eliminate it entirely.
Nearly 11% of children and adults are afraid of the dentist. This might be because, for example, the dentist pulled out a baby tooth that was already loose when you weren’t quite ready for it as a child. Maybe it even hurt a little. Fear of the dentist can also be passed down through family members. As a child, you may start to mimic that fear.
Nearly 30 percent of dentists find it difficult to treat an anxious patient. After all, dentists pay attention to body language, and if you are immediately tense, they can't actually draw the right conclusions for their actions. Therefore, it is important for you and for the dentist that you get rid of your fear, so that your body actually responds only to his actions and not to your irrational thoughts about what could happen and how scary that mirror in your mouth actually is.
A scientific study of techniques dentists use to reduce anxiety found that dentists are very inventive. For example, hugs are used with children and the dentist explains what he is doing and what each instrument is used for. Relaxation techniques and hypnosis are also used, and the latter two techniques work best against dental anxiety ( 2).
Social anxiety and hypnosis
In addition, you may also suffer from social anxiety, which you can overcome with hypnosis. Social anxiety includes, for example, the fear of rejection, the fear that you’re not good enough, fear of a job interview, and so on.
Social anxiety is often linked to self-confidence and self-esteem.
With social anxiety, chances are that you will start avoiding social events. This is very inconvenient because eventually it can lead to loneliness and, of course, joblessness, because most of the time you have to work with other people anyway.
A case study shows that hypnotherapy can then help you get rid of social anxiety. This helps you stop avoiding social events, set social goals and boost self-confidence( 5).
Self-hypnosis to reduce anxiety
If you’re susceptible to hypnosis, you can also learn self-hypnosis techniques to overcome your fears. Self-hypnosis primarily involves exercises that build self-confidence and help you see situations from a different perspective.
With self-hypnosis, it is important to find a comfortable place to sit because a self-hypnosis session can take half an hour. In doing so, like any other hypnosis session, you begin with relaxation exercises through deep breathing.
Next, you can visualize situations to make sure your anxiety is reduced. You then visualize your ideal situation. For example, if you are afraid to drive you can visualize what the perfect car ride looks like for you.
A study on hypnosis and self-hypnosis through visualizations at the dermatologist ( 3)found that self-hypnosis is the second best way to reduce anxiety at the dermatologist. The best way is through hypnosis of the dermatologist himself. So if you are being treated by someone who cannot, you can hypnotize yourself with almost the same results.
Visualizations were also used in this study. You can then focus on why you are at the dermatologist, such as beautiful skin. At the dentist, on the other hand, you can visualize not wearing dentures later.
Fear of hypnosis
Unfortunately, many studies show that not everyone can be hypnotized. In fact, 1 in 15 people are not susceptible to hypnosis. This depends greatly on the hypnotherapist. Previous experiences of people with psychotherapy played a big role on sensitivity to hypnosis. Anxiety created by a bad hypnotist is very detrimental to treatments in the future.
In fact, research on hypnosis against fear of flying shows that people who were sensitive to hypnosis (14 out of 15 people) had twice as much benefit from their hypnosis therapy as people who were less sensitive to it ( 4).
Helping others against their fears with hypnosis
Are you a dentist, midwife, or do you work with anxious people in some other capacity, and would you like to help them with hypnosis? If so, you can take a course that—as a professional who works with anxious people—can help make your job easier and make your patients feel better in the process. It’s a win-win situation.
Also, follow the free hypnosis master class to learn more about hypnosis and how it can be of great help to you and others.
Also pin this handy infographic as a reminder:
Sources:
3. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207144.2013.784096
4. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00029157.2015.967086