Glasgow Anxiety Therapy

_A poor night`s sleep makes us miserable. And a refreshing sleep is a delight. If our sleep patterns get disordered it is easy to see how it can affect our general wellbeing, our relationships and our work.

Cognitive behavioural therapy, supported by hypnosis, works well for getting sleep patterns back to normal. There is lots of research evidence to support this. The most common problems are failure to drop off to sleep or waking early and failing to get back to sleep. This can be caused by worrying, so cognitive approaches are very effective. It can be caused by coffee or other stimulants, so a behavioural approach is useful.

Sometimes big changes in our lives can get us into new patterns which spoil our sleeping patterns. For example, you might have a lovely new husband, but he might snore, so that you can`t sleep. You might help him by some of the new equipment available, and you can help yourself by changing the way you think about the snoring. (Rather than What a dreadful noise, you can be reassured that he is still alive!)

And of course it can be all of these things, so getting a clear idea of the cause of a change in sleep pattern is essential.

For some people the boundaries between rapid eye movement sleep and non-rapid eye movement sleep get confused. This confused boundary can cause sleepwalking and sleeptalking. Late evening coffee or alcohol can cause this, but some people are predisposed to it. Hypnosis is very helpful for this.

There are a number of rare sleep problems. Most of us experience a sort of paralysis when asleep, so that our bodies feel heavy and it can take a while after we have woken up for our bodies to wake. Where this paralysis does not occur, acting out dreams can sometimes happen. This is a medical condition and doctor`s advice should be sought.

The symptoms of anxiety are caused by the flood of hormones rushing through your body - the body's way of preparing you for danger,  the fight or flight response. This response can be triggered by lots of different things. These symptoms can come out out of the blue. The fight or flight response happens instantly when we sense a threat. This could just be a preconscious recall of a difficult experience, triggered by smell, the sight of something linked to the situation, or a wide range of seemingly unrelated things. Whatever it is, if we sense danger, this hormonal response is triggered.

It takes a few seconds for the thinking part of the brain (the cortex) to process the situation and evaluate whether the threat is real, and if so, how to handle it. So the hormones get triggered quite a bit before your brain gets involved. If the cortex sends the all-clear signal, the fight-flight response is deactivated and the nervous system can relax. But if we now start worrying about why we felt this way, we can get those hormones racing again.

If you are menopausal, these symptoms can be purely related to the changing hormonal balance. They may feel like anxiety, but they are just physiological. They have no meaning. (Hot flushes can be managed by hypnosis.)

Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy will help you to understand and manage anxiety symptoms, so that you get relaxed and comfortable again quickly.

American research shows that people with anxiety prefer a flexible treatment package, rather than just relying on drug therapy. They developed an approach called CALM - Coordinated Anxiety Learning and Management. (The idea in the name of the approach is that clients learn to manage their own symptoms - a long-lasting and effective response.)

CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) appeared to be the most popular treatment choice among those in the CALM group—57% chose CBT and medication combination treatment, and 34% chose CBT-only treatment, while 9% chose medication-only treatment. This preference is consistent with research that finds those with anxiety disorders tend to favour psychosocial treatment approaches over medication to treat their illness, according to the researchers.

Participants in the CALM group showed significantly greater symptom improvement than those receiving usual care. After 12 months, about 63.6% receiving CALM had responded to treatment compared to 44.7% in usual care, and 51.5% receiving CALM had remitted compared to 33% in usual care.

So it seems the reason why people prefer to include CBT is because it works. I combine CBT with hypnosis because the combination makes treatment more effective.

Where anxiety has been with you for a long time, professional help is useful. I practice cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy, and this gives rapid results. Or your doctor can offer you cbt through the NHS.

Anxiety is physiological arousal triggered by the Stress Response. Powerful hormones are released when your body senses danger (real or imagined) and these hormones generate arousal and anxiety. Elevation of the chemical stress pathway (glucocorticoids - mainly cortisol) tends to be associated with depression, whereas elevation of the electrical stress pathway (epinephrine -mainly adrenaline) more frequently is correlated with anxiety.

But there is also a Relaxation Response. When you are relaxed, the hormone balance is changed to include naurally occurring benzodiazapines (sedative and relaxing) and cannabinoids, which work a bit like dopamine, and result in good feelings. Also released are  melatonin, which can help you sleep at night and be alert during the day.

You might wonder if all that is really worth knowing. Most of us who get anxious are getting into a routine of filling our bodies with stress hormones. These can build up in our bodies and cause long-term damage. There is quite a lot of information on this. But there is less talked about the real physiological benefits of deep relaxation.

If you are relaxed, you just cannot be anxious. The hormones won't let you do it. Learning deep relaxation is the first step to managing your anxiety. It is easy to learn. (I teach this and most of my clients are astounded at the impact). Just 5 or 10 minutes a day will do the trick. If you think about it, you probably spend hours a day feeling anxious.

Get started now on managing your anxiety. Learn how to really relax with hypnosis. Give me a call.

Chronic worriers probably try loads of ways to control their worrying. But somehow they don't work. The worries keep coming. Clearly these techniques are not working. What is going on here then?

What about trying hard not to think about the worry? We all know that if you are worried that you might keep looking at the spot on your friend's nose, you will be unable to keep your eyes off it. It is just the same when you try not to think about your worry. Your mind keeps coming back to it again and again. The more you try not to think about something, the more you tend to think about it.  Frustrating and depressing.

The thing is, that if you try actively not to think about something, you have to think about it in order not to think about it. Mmm. So that method is not going to work. The benefit of cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy as a treatment is that the toolkit of techniques is huge with something suitable for everyone.

Anxiety is the feeling of fear we all experience when faced with threatening or difficult situations. It helps us to avoid dangerous situations, makes us alert and motivates us to deal with problems. Worrying is one of the symptoms of anxiety. Anxiety disorders are common - nearly 25% of people will experience anxiety disorders at some time in their lives.

Everyone experiences feelings of anxiety at some point in their life. For example, you may feel worried and anxious about sitting an exam or having a medical test or job interview. Feeling anxious is  perfectly normal.

However, people with generalised anxiety find it hard to control their worries. Their feelings of anxiety are more constant and often affect their daily life.

The good news is that there is plenty of evidence to show that cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy is an effective treatment. Short term treatment with long term results.