Glasgow Anxiety Therapy

When something bad happened in the past, we can fear it coming back again.

So, having made an effort to recover from a bad event and finding pleasure, happiness and contentment, there is an uncomfortable niggling feeling that it won't last. That the bad thing is going to happen again. This takes away much of the delight of appreciating your success in overcoming difficult times. It stops you from living in the present.

Something bad in the past is in the past. It is over. Processing the experience fully will allow you to spot the difference between past, present and future.

Certain images and thoughts about a bad experience can pop into your mind unbidden and you get all those unpleasant sensations of anxiety. And then you worry that these feelings are telling you something important, that there is danger present. But these feelings are just normal reactions to the thought of the earlier experience. Feelings get confused with real danger. But there is no threat.

As a result, though, sometimes we avoid getting involved in things that are a bit like the bad experience. All this does is make your world smaller. To recover, we need to get involved again. Back into situations that trigger these memories. Only then can you learn that history doesn't have to repeat itself, and that you can cope. You've coped before and you will again.

Anxiety and worry generally involve a tendency to over-estimate the severity and likelihood of danger and to under-estimate our ability to cope.  But if we look back, our worst fears seldom happen. We seem to get into a habit of bigging up our worries - catastrophising. (You might remember the insurance ad that said we won’t turn a drama into a crisis.)

There are some things you can do to help overcome any tendency to catastrophise.

Imagine that feared situation, your worry, and get right into the detail. Now give it some marks out of 10. How awful is this? What is the chance of this actually happening? What mark would you give yourself for coping?

When people rate the awfulness of a situation - how bad or upsetting it seems -the first number they come up with is usually close to 10.  So it helps to have a comparison. For example, what recent terrible disasters could you give a mark of 10 to? For me, it would be the Japanese tsunami. So compared to these situations, what mark can you give your fear? Probably not as bad as tthe tsunami. Maybe a 6 or a 7? It is helpful to keep a comparison in mind because it will help you to adopt a more balanced perspective.

Now, imagining the feared situation again, what is the most likely scenario?  What is likely to happen? Rate its awfulness, the chance that it will happen and give yourself a mark for your coping ability.

All of us have deep resources for coping, some more than others, but of course the more we cope, the more skilled we become. When we only focus on the awfulness of something, we forget to consider what resources we might call on to help us. We get into the habit of awfulising but we don’t come up with a coping plan. And so we feel helpless and hopeless.

So now, develop a coping plan.What might you do to deal with this problem? Who might help? Where can you find information? Make it as detailed as possible. Get into a habit of spotting your Worry and then coming up with a Plan.

Now, with your coping plan in place, rerate the severity of the problem, the likelihood that it will happen and your chances of coping.

Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy helps you to observe your tendencies to catastrophise and shows you how to switch over into decatastrophising mode, able to rationally analyse your fears, come up with a plan and develop your coping skills.

When we think of a situation that scares us, our feelings can so overwhelm us that we cannot imagine managing. So even before the situation is happening, we can feel overwhelmed. This is significant. Just by thinking about the situation, we can experience the situation as though it was really happening. So understanding how your thoughts affect you helps you to manage these situations. With hypnotherapy, this understanding is combined with teaching relaxation in the face of pressure. Imagining a scary situation whilst at the same time continuing to relax is effectively done in hypnosis. So in the end, the feelings associated with the situation are calm relaxation. What a relief.

As well as dealing with the emotions triggered by feared situations, we need to look at the practical side too. What can we do to make things better? If this situation really did occur, what could you do to handle it well? Getting a clear idea of the series of practical steps you could take.

Preparing in imagination means we don't arrive in difficult situations unprepared. Write up a shopping list of coping plans – all the things we could do in various difficult situations - and then in hypnosis try them out to see how they fit. Some work well, some less so. This problem-solving approach soon becomes a habit. We can try out a wide range of approaches and that flexibility itself helps us to cope better and feel confident about responding appropriately in difficult situations.

And then some things we just have to endure, and we can learn acceptance without catastrophising.