>>> Anxiety Disorders and Hypnotherapy <<<

Hypnosis is a state of intense inner focus, where the subconscious mind is at front side and the conscious mind is secondary. The situation arises during the sleep but hypnosis begins to work when a person is awake. In other words, it is a process of critical thinking faculties of the brain being replaced by selective perception and thinking.

Hypnotherapy is not to be confused with the act called “hypnotism”, when you just surrender yourself to the opposite person who performs hypnosis, usually for fun and entertainment. In fact, clinical hypnotherapy is a much deeper concept and it is used to treat various disorders. The word “hypnos” means “to sleep” in Greek. Hypnotherapy is a complex therapy consisting of various psychological techniques and is performed when a person is hypnotized. General anxiety and panic attacks are caused when a sufferer’s mind gives way to old unpleasant emotions and feelings and allows them to come to the surface. A person affected from these old emotions doesn’t necessarily know where and when have these emotions originated. Hypnoanalysis is trying to uncover these types of emotions and to remove their bad effect.

The hypnotherapy teaches to control the breathing, heart rate and relaxation. These all get disturbed when a person is suffering from anxiety disorders. Hypnotherapy helps in recovering the bodily disturbance and hence also reduces the levels of anxiety. We all know that it is quite difficult to unlearn the things. For instance, how can you unlearn bike riding or swimming? Hypnotherapy plays an important role in situations like this. It works by accessing and changing sub-conscious thoughts and patterns and helps to unlearn the triggering events of the anxiety and other worries.

By changing the perception and by eliminating the causative factors surrounding the fear and anxiety, hypnotherapy can significantly reduce the anxiety levels in mentally disturbed patients. The best results are usually achieved when hypnotherapy is applied in combination with the traditional treatment (psychotherapy and medication) or with some of the alternative methods.

Before the actual hypnotherapy is performed on a person, they are asked certain questions related to their tensions. It is aimed to evaluate what kind of trouble they are actually facing. With various, sometimes tricky, questions, a list of the triggering factors which bring up the anxiety in them is prepared. This “bunch” of triggering factors is noted down in a separate sheet and then it might be discussed with the relatives of a person who is suffering from anxiety disorder to get a more complete picture. As with every other traditional or alternative treatment for anxiety disorders, the level of cooperation and understanding from close family members could significantly influence the final results of hypnotherapy.

The biggest downside of hypnotherapy is the fact that this treatment is entirely focused on changing the perception and behavior of the anxiety disorder sufferers and it doesn’t address the actual cause of the problematic behavior. Therefore, if a person gets overwhelmingly anxious while riding on a train, for instance, a hypnotherapist might help the patient to overcome that particular fear but without finding and treating the real cause of the problem is very likely that anxiety and fear will just shift their forces and start occurring in some different situations (while driving a car for example).

However, as already mentioned, hypnotherapy works very well in some cases, especially when applied as a secondary treatment. Lack of confidence and low self esteem are other symptoms often present in all anxiety disorders and although hypnotherapy doesn’t address these issues directly, by eliminating some specific causes of anxiety and fear, it can certainly boost their levels to much higher degree. By any means, hypnotherapy is a treatment well worth of consideration while trying to overcome panic attacks and anxiety disorders, even more if other, more traditional, approaches have already failed to deliver the satisfactory results.