Anxiety: Being Aware And Acceptance of Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket
This past weekend we took a family trip to the zoo, our first visit there for quite some time. One thing I love about being around animals, whether in the zoo or in nature, is how watching them has a way of taking you mentally away from all the busyness that can otherwise occupy your mind. Away from screens, household chores, things to do for work and so forth, you can get some positive mental clearness and space.
Listening to the sounds of the animals, watching them move and interact, and noticing the vast array of colours and sounds is a really beneficial mindful experience. On top of that, spending quality time with the kids is always guaranteed to bring amusement and fun. There were flamingos, tigers, camels, penguins, sea lions and a vast array of other animal and birds on display and it was a really great day out.
Now, of course, it’s possible to find some ‘escape’ in many other situations and places, and I’ve written before about the many benefits of time in nature and natural settings for supporting your mental health. And, of course, you can practice mindfulness type approaches from the comfort of your own home too. Both mindfulness and hypnosis have been shown to be able to help you to reduce anxiety and stress, and combining the two together can also bring you fantastic results for anxiety reduction.
In many cases of anxiety reduction, you are learning how to interrupt, reduce and deal effectively with the anxious thoughts and feelings that had been causing you so much despair and discomfort. Learning how to regulate emotions effectively means that you aren’t overwhelmed by anxiety and worry. Finding effective ways to control your thinking means you can disengage from anxious thoughts, dispute them, block them or just find yourself thinking more along the kind of lines you would wish to. As you learn how to direct, control and calm your thoughts, feelings and behaviours, you will find yourself feeling better and staying that way.
All too often, because of the uncomfortable anxious thoughts and feelings, it can become a battle inside your own head and body. You don’t want the anxiety and so you engage in it and try and fight it and suppress it. That inner battle, fight, frustration and stress can inadvertently add to the anxiety and leave you feeling worse and feeling like you’ll never be able to find a way to feel better. You try to suppress your anxiety and you find yourself feeling even worse. This is where approaches, such as mindfulness hypnosis, can really help. By accepting the thoughts and feelings, you weaken them and they pass quicker. You learn how to notice them, observe them, and have the ability to calmly and confidently carry on with things. You become an expert at successful emotional regulation and being at peace inside of your own head.
The Effectiveness of Hypnotherapy as a Treatment For Anxiety
Hypnotherapy is a very effective treatment for anxiety. Scientific evidence supports the overall effectiveness of hypnosis as a treatment for anxiety, with the research demonstrating that hypnosis is a highly effective intervention for anxiety (Valentine et al, 2019).
The findings of the research has shown that hypnosis is a highly effective intervention for anxiety. They found that the average participant treated with hypnosis achieved more anxiety reduction than about 79% of control participants at the end of active treatment and about 84% of controls at the longest follow-up.
I first wrote about this research in this earlier article: The Effectiveness of Hypnotherapy as a Treatment For Anxiety
And it’s always worth being reminded that hypnosis adds to the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (Ramondo et al, 2021). There’s more on the latest research about this in this article: Hypnosis Enhances Results Of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Updated Science and Evidence
Using hypnotherapy, therefore, it is very possible to reduce the anxious thoughts and feelings that you have been experiencing. Instead you can find yourself feeling more calm, relaxed, comfortable and at ease.
Mindfulness For Anxiety
Mindfulness based programmes have become more popular and widespread over recent years. Research has found that, compared with taking no action, mindfulness based programmes can help with mental health issues such as anxiety and depression (Galante et al, 2021).
Given that mindfulness does seem to help many people with anxiety and stress, it’s certainly worth utilising it alongside other therapeutic approaches you may be taking to support your mental health. And given that we know that hypnosis is strong scientific evidence to support its effectiveness, what happens when you combine mindfulness with hypnosis to help you tackle your anxiety and stress?
Well, again, we have scientific research that shows that if you combine mindfulness and hypnosis together, it can help you with anxiety and stress.
In their study, Olendzki et al (2020) found that mindful hypnotherapy participants recorded large, statistically reliable, and clinically significant improvements in perceived stress, and reductions in psychological distress such as depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and anger. Using mindful hypnotherapy can be an effective way that you can significantly decrease psychological anxiety, distress and stress.
It’s perhaps no wonder then, that so many of my clients benefit from incorporating elements of mindfulness into their hypnosis sessions for anxiety.
There’s more about mindfulness and anxiety in these articles:
Mindful Hypnotherapy to Reduce Stress and Increase Mindfulness
Mindfulness For Anxiety, Stress and Promoting Mental Health
Acceptance of Anxiety
The acceptance approach involves you noticing, accepting, and sometimes even embracing your thoughts and feelings, rather than trying to fight them or avoid them. Becoming more accepting of them, and building upon the positive research into hypnosis and mindfulness, can help you to reduce your anxiety
Learning how to effectively regulate your emotions is a key part of developing psychological resilience and the ability to handle challenges that come your way in life. Without this ability to manage emotions, you can experience uncomfortable and persistent emotions, such as excessive anxiety. Rather than being able to deal with your thoughts and feelings, you may try and suppress them, avoid them or use other strategies to try and cope with the negative thoughts, feelings and sensations. That suppression and avoidance of anxiety can often have a counterproductive effect of increasing your anxious thoughts and feelings.
Campbell-Sills et al (2005) investigated the subjective and physiological effects of emotional suppression and acceptance in a sample of individuals with anxiety and mood disorders. Participants with anxiety and mood disorders were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group listened to a rationale for suppressing emotions, and the other group listened to a rationale for accepting emotions. Participants then watched an emotion-provoking film and applied the instructions (to suppress or accept their emotions).
Both groups reported similar levels of subjective distress during the film, providing evidence that, despite it’s aim of doing so when used, suppression is ineffective at diminishing the experience of negative emotion. In addition, the suppression group displayed more negative feelings afterwards, compared to the acceptance group. Emotional suppression, rather than acceptance, did not alleviate distress in individuals with anxiety and mood disorders.
There is also some evidence that supports acceptance therapy approaches being as effective as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for people with anxiety (Forman et al, 2007, Arch et al, 2012). As highlighted above, adding hypnosis to cognitive behavioural therapy tends to improve it’s effectiveness.
If you struggle with anxiety then you are likely to negatively evaluate internal experiences such as thoughts, emotions, and physiological sensations, and will use thinking and behavioural strategies as a means of escaping or avoiding these experiences. Roemer et al (2008) examined the efficacy of an acceptance-based behavioural therapy, aimed at increasing acceptance of internal experiences and encouraging action in valued domains, for people with generalised anxiety disorder. They found that acceptance based therapy led to statistically significant reductions in anxiety symptoms that were maintained at three and nine month follow-up assessments; significant reductions in depressive symptoms were also observed. The treatment was associated with decreases in experiential avoidance and increases in mindfulness.
The evidence here supports the use of an acceptance based approach for anxiety, whereby you seek to experience your emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations without trying to change, control, or avoid them. Now, hypnosis, acceptance, mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy may all share some common mechanisms, as well as having some differences in how they achieve the overall result of helping you to reduce your anxiety. In fact, it probably makes sense to have the flexibility to draw upon all of these approaches within your therapy for reducing anxiety.
Being Aware of Anxiety
Anxiety acceptance type approaches encourage you to experience your emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations fully without trying to change, control, or avoid them. Your focus here is upon mindfulness of thoughts and acceptance of uncomfortable feelings, rather than trying to avoid or suppress them (which can be counter productive and inadvertently lead to increased levels of unwanted thoughts and feelings). If you try too hard to suppress something or avoid experiencing it, that effort and strain can have a rebound type effect.
Here is a way you can build upon the benefits of acceptance of your thoughts and feelings to help you to alleviate your anxiety:
1. Ensuring you are sitting somewhere quiet, take a deep breath and close your eyes. If you know self-hypnosis techniques you could incorporate these here. Start to extend your out breath and say the word ‘relax’ to yourself on every breath out. You could tense and relax each part of your body or tell yourself that each part of your body is relaxing. You could imagine a calm colour or sensation spreading through you or fill your mind with a relaxing sound. You could engage your imagination and imagine being in a remembered or created place of calmness, seeing the sights and hearing the sounds. Or you can draw upon and utilise any other ways that allow you to feel comfortable, calm and relaxed. Your aim here is just to feel as safe, calm and comfortable as you can right now.
2. Start to become aware of your entire body as one, from the top of your head down through your body and into the tips of your toes. Just aim to be aware of your entire body as one right now. You don’t need to try to change anything and you don’t need to try and stop anything from changing. Just notice what you notice, feel what you feel in your body and be aware of your entire body as one, with a sense of contentment.
3. Now, move your awareness to your breathing. Notice the sensations of your breathing. The rise and fall of every breath that happens so automatically. The feeling of your chest expanding, and then relaxing. Notice the sensations anywhere and everywhere caused by your breathing. Just tune in and watch your body breathing. If your mind wanders at any point you can gently bring your awareness back to your breathing.
Tune in and notice the sensations of your breathing as you let your body do the breathing, almost as if you were watching someone else breathing, or a little bird in a tree breathing or like you are watching a perfectly working machine. Imagine that you are breathing in calmness and becoming more calm, balanced and at ease as you breathe out.
4. Now, start to become more comfortably absorbed in the sensations of your body. Become aware aware of the sensations in your arms, in your chest, in your stomach and legs and then into each and every part of your body. You can notice whether each part of your body feels warm or cold or somewhere in between, whether you feel lightness or heaviness or something in between and just be content to notice what you notice as you let your awareness go deeper into your body. And throughout you can bring your awareness back to your breathing, the rise and fall of every breath that happens so automatically.
5. Then begin to gently turn your attention deeper, into your mind and towards your thinking. Become aware of the thoughts in your mind. Just notice, watch and observe your thoughts, the things you say to yourself, any images in your awareness, deliberate thoughts and the things that may just be drifting through your mind, thoughts at the back of your mind and those in your current awareness.
Allow each thought to come and go in its own time, without trying to remove those thoughts or to change those thoughts, just observe them and just watch them happening. Watch your thoughts as they come and go, thought by thought, moment by moment and all the while remaining calm and comfortable.
6. Bring to mind and remember a time when you have felt uncomfortable levels of anxiety. Imagine being there now, seeing what you would see, hearing what you hear and feeling those sensations. Be aware of the shades of light, the colours and the details. Notice the sounds nearby and any further away. And just tune in and notice everything about this scene. You can be aware of how you body feels and the bodily sensations you are aware of. You can be aware of the kind of thoughts that go through your mind in this situation.
As you continue to imagine being in this place where you would feel uncomfortable levels of anxiety, just accept any anxious feelings as being natural, temporary and harmless to you. Observe, notice and allow any feelings without seeing to battle them, suppress them or to become fearful, frustrated or angry with them. Just experience what you experience without trying to change anything and without trying to stop anything from changing. Just notice what you notice, feel what you feel in your body with a sense of acceptance.
Accept any feelings and sensations you experience and recognise them as being normal human experiences. Acknowledge them and notice them and recognise that all feelings and sensations come and go, that they are natural, passing and harmless to you.
7. As you continue to allow any feelings, watch the anxiety. Imagine it is outside of you and you are just observing it. Notice any anxious thoughts and then just observe them in a detached way. Be aware of the thoughts inside your mind and just notice, watch and observe your thoughts here in this situation. Allow each thought to come and go in its own time, without trying to remove those thoughts or to change those thoughts, just observe them without evaluating them, judging them or engaging in them and just watch them happening. Watch your thoughts as they come and go, thought by thought, moment by moment, all the while staying calm and comfortable.
Imagine you are watching your thoughts from a distance, outside of you and that you are just observing them. Recognise that your thoughts come and go, moving from one thing to another, always temporary, passing and harmless to you.
8. As you continue to imagine being in this situation, imagine that you act and behave normally here and carry on as if nothing is happening, as if you’ve overcome any anxiety you used to experience. Imagine that you behave as if you are free of anxiety, in what you do and how you do it. You continue in this situation confidently and capably. Imagine progressing through this situation and engaging in this environment courageously.
Continue to imagine being in this situation, accepting your feelings rather than fighting them, watching your anxious thoughts and observing them, behaving normally as if everything is fine for you now. Keep imagining and running through this in your mind, being here in this situation and finding yourself feeling more comfortable as a result of staying in this situation and acting confidently.
9. You can bring to mind other times, places, people and situations, and with each of these, imagine being there, accepting your feelings and sensations, watching your thoughts in a detached way, as if curious about them, and acting as if you are free of anxiety. Distance your thoughts and accept any feelings and allow yourself to become more and more calm, relaxed and comfortable as you imagine being in these moments.
Start to adopt a mindset where you expect the best and you expect things to improve for you in real life situations from today. Be confident and positive and start to think of the steps you will take from today that will give you undeniable proof that you are improving and feeling better.
10. And then, when you are ready to bring this process to an end, take a deep breath, count up from 1 up to 5 inside your mind and then open your eyes and reorient yourself to your surroundings.
There you have it, a method of learning how to experience and accept your emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations without trying to change, control, or avoid them. The more you practice this, the easier you will find it to apply when you are actually in real life situations where you’ll be able to abate any anxiety by accepting it and observing it.
And to really benefit from this approach, do get yourself a copy of this hypnosis download where I guide you through this awesome strategy for reducing anxiety: Being Aware Of Anxiety
To your good mental health and well-being,
Dan Regan
Online Skype and Zoom Hypnotherapy
Face-to-face hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket
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References:
Arch, J.J., Eifert, G.H., Davies, C., Vilardaga, J.C.P., Rose, R.D. and Craske, M.G., 2012. Randomized clinical trial of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) versus acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for mixed anxiety disorders. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 80(5), p.750.
Campbell-Sills, L., Barlow, D.H., Brown, T.A. and Hofmann, S.G., 2006. Effects of suppression and acceptance on emotional responses of individuals with anxiety and mood disorders. Behaviour research and therapy, 44(9), pp.1251-1263.
Forman, E.M., Herbert, J.D., Moitra, E., Yeomans, P.D. and Geller, P.A., 2007. A randomized controlled effectiveness trial of acceptance and commitment therapy and cognitive therapy for anxiety and depression. Behavior modification, 31(6), pp.772-799.
Galante, J., Friedrich, C., Dawson, A.F., Modrego-Alarcón, M., Gebbing, P., Delgado-Suárez, I., Gupta, R., Dean, L., Dalgleish, T., White, I.R. and Jones, P.B., 2021. Mindfulness-based programmes for mental health promotion in adults in nonclinical settings: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. PLoS medicine, 18(1), p.e1003481
Olendzki, N., Elkins, G.R., Slonena, E., Hung, J. and Rhodes, J.R., 2020. Mindful hypnotherapy to reduce stress and increase mindfulness: A randomized controlled pilot study. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 68(2), pp.151-166.
Ramondo, N., Pestell, C., Byrne, S. and Gignac, G., 2021. Clinical Hypnosis as an Adjunct to Cognitive Behavior Therapy: An Updated Meta-Analysis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.
Roemer, L., Orsillo, S.M. and Salters-Pedneault, K., 2008. Efficacy of an acceptance-based behavior therapy for generalized anxiety disorder: evaluation in a randomized controlled trial. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 76(6), p.1083.
Valentine, K.E., Milling, L.S., Clark, L.J. and Moriarty, C.L., 2019. The Efficacy of Hypnosis as a Treatment for Anxiety: A Meta-analysis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 67(3), pp.336-363.
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