Glasgow Anxiety Therapy

Well, first of all, it is normal. So most of us know what it feels like.  Anxiety is the physiological arousal that follows fear. It is the arousal that comes from all those fight or flight hormones which are launched into our bloodstream when we become aware of something dangerous. And it is instanteous. Fear is protective. It gets us running away from the sabre toothed tiger before we have even articulated the thought that a tiger is coming at us. It is instinctive.

So since man (and woman) walked the earth, we have been learning the sense of running from danger and our bodies are geared to help us get away. We respond automatically, as our forebears did.

But although we don't live in constantly dangerous environments any more, we create new situations to be scared of. We think something awful is going to happen to us, and we respond to the thought of danger. So when we are about to give a talk to colleagues at work, Danger Danger. Or we are going to sit an exam, or meet someone who seemed to take a dislike to us. We respond in the same way. What can we do?

Well, we are not going to change millennia of evolution overnight. We will always respond to danger in the same way. But we can stop scaring ourselves, we can stop filling our heads with thoughts of disasters that might befall us. If we don't keep coming up with new ways to scare ourselves, then we will manage our anxiety.

Thoughts are not reality. While you might come up with all sorts of horrible possibilities - What if this, or What if that - these are just thoughts. With cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy, you will be able to deal with your thoughts in a helpful and productive way, rather than feeling overwhelmed. Give it a try.

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.