.ANXIETY

CAROL DENICKER

"The easiest way to break bad habits is through hypnosis" - Newsweek Magazine

"Hypnosis can be used very effectively for pain reduction. It can also be very useful in treating anxiety in people who are anxious. Hypnosis has been shown to be effective in helping people to stop smoking and in controlling overeating." David Spiegel, M.D. Associate Chairman of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University

Click here to get to the MAYO CLINIC'S site regarding hypnosis and complementary medicine: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hypnosis/SA00084/si=2765
 

Origins of Fear
One of the primary reasons people seek therapy is the need to deal with fear reactions. We're all subject to fear.  Many originate during childhood when undeveloped reasoning ability allows for developing fears of the unknown.  Fears do manifest in adulthood through traumatic experience, but most will prove to have originated in early, impressionable years.

Common Fears
Flying, high places, rejection, failure (or success), pain exposure, poor performance (sports, scholastic, job, theatrical, sexual), death, the unknown, contamination, blood, animals (spiders, sharks etc.), water, impending danger, darkness, open spaces, closed spaces and loss of control. There are many others, all of which vary in by degree of severity.

Is Fear Ever Useful?
Yes!  Fear is not always a bad thing. In fact, fear is valuable if it serves a useful purpose, such as creating caution or being prepared for emergencies, etc. 

Fear can be triggered by unknown or irrational factors, and when it is experienced so frequently it affects one's normal activities.  The inability to understand the causes will often result in uncontrollable or unreasonable behavior.

Fear of the Fear
When a person is threatened by something that does not in reality present a life threat, yet the reaction is the same as if it were real.  The fear generates more fear, and the situation cannot be confronted in a calm state, so the victim makes every effort to avoid it.

Specific fears often emanate from apprehension of impending danger, and tend to manifest into the foreboding of approaching disaster... the source of which is not understood.  The fear of loss of control is primitive and is a common element.

The progressive development of fearful reactions follow (to varying degrees) four phases:

• Unrealistic self-statements create a state of alarm
• Fear of the fear itself develops
• Personal feelings and reason are rejected as the fear escalates
• Avoidance begins of any person, place, thing or situation which generates feelings of arousal or fear.

• the replacement of catastrophic thoughts with truthful statements.
• the realization that the physical sensations can cause no harm.
• the slowing down of a rapid heartbeat
• the achievement of a sense of balance
• the generation of deep relaxation
• freeing the throat to swallow
• overcoming intense sensations of heat and cold
• the promotion of clear-headedness.
• restorative diaphragmatic breathing.

*Hypnotism for medical or psychological problems requires a referral from a licensed practitioner of those healing arts.
 

CAROL DENICKER, MEMBER BOARD CERTIFIED HYPNOTIST NGH INSTRUCTOR, ADJUNCT FACULTY MEMBER CERTIFIED HYPNOBIRTHING®  EDUCATOR PRESIDENT, LI-NGH