Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety Disorders – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

The level of anxiety disorders that are recognised and diagnosed seems to continue to rise and rise. More and more people are sadly struggling with anxiety, and within the plethora of possible treatments and ways forward, it can be tough to be sure that you are making the best decision that you can. Luckily, we have an increasing body of scientific research and evidence that can point you in the direction of the most effective treatments for anxiety disorders.

Rather than having to endure all of those never ending anxious thoughts that race through your mind, and having to struggle with all of those uncomfortable anxious feelings, it is possible to learn how to take back control over your thoughts, feelings, action and reactions. In fact, you can come out of the other side of your treatment even better equipped with tools, strategies and the self-belief you need to handle, deal and cope with any future challenges you may face too.

Cognitive behavioural therapy and hypnosis grew out of a shared therapeutic background so it is unsurprising if I call upon aspects of each when helping people with their anxiety. By drawing up the most helpful approaches that are tailored to your own needs, you can move forwards past anxiety and start feeling better again.

As I describe below, hypnotherapy has strong evidence to support its effectiveness as a treatment for anxiety, and adding hypnosis to your cognitive behavioural therapy has been demonstrated to increase positive outcomes.

And here I’m taking a quick look at research into the long term effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety related disorders.

 

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Anxiety Disorders

Cognitive behavioural therapy is often identified as the main point of call for anxiety disorder treatment and it has been shown to be helpful in the short term. It forms part of how I help my clients to deal with, and overcome, their problematic anxiety and it sits nicely alongside hypnosis, mindfulness, NLP and other psychotherapy approaches. Cognitive behavioural therapy can help you to break your negative cycles of thinking, feeling and behaving and to equip yourself to manage challenging situations more effectively.

Cognitive behavioural therapy is recommended for anxiety related disorders, but evidence for its long-term outcome is limited. To aim to address this gap, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to aim to assess the long-term outcomes after cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety disorders, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) (Van Dis et al, 2020).

The findings of the meta-analysis suggested that, on average, cognitive behavioural therapy was associated with moderate symptom reductions in anxiety disorders, post traumatic stress disorder and OCD until twelve months after treatment completion. At a follow-up of twelve months or more, these effects were still present for generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder and PTSD.

Whilst cognitive behavioural therapy may not be for everyone (and certainly part of that is who you work with, how flexible they are to meet your individual needs and how the principles are described and assigned to you), this is good evidence that it can be very effective in helping with anxiety.

 

Hypnotherapy For Anxiety Disorders

As well as this positive evidence for the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety disorders, we also have the evidence that shows the effectiveness of hypnotherapy for anxiety.

There are dozens and dozens of individual reviews on my website that support this, yet we also have the scientific evidence that supports the benefits of hypnotherapy for anxiety.

Valentine, Milling, Clark, and Moriarty (2019), brought together the results of all controlled studies of hypnosis for anxiety to quantify the effectiveness of hypnosis in treating anxiety. They found that hypnosis is a highly effective intervention for anxiety, and concluded from the evidence that:

“The findings of this meta-analysis show that hypnosis is a highly effective intervention for anxiety. Our results indicate 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“.

This is hugely impressive evidence and really demonstrates the beneficial impact of hypnotherapy for anxiety. There’s a bit more on that research in this previous article of mine:  The Effectiveness of Hypnotherapy as a Treatment For Anxiety

 

Hypnosis Enhances Results Of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

That research demonstrated the effectiveness of hypnotherapy as a treatment for anxiety. And there is a whole wealth of scientific evidence supporting the effectiveness of hypnosis in the treatment of issues such as anxiety,  depression, stress, irritable bowel syndrome, pain and a whole range of other conditions.

There is also strong evidence that supports the value of adding hypnosis to other treatments, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to improve it’s effectiveness and results. In these sorts of studies, both treatment groups get identical treatment (e.g. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) except that one treatment group also incorporates hypnosis as well (making it possible to compare and evaluate the benefit of adding the hypnosis).

The most recent analysis of the evidence (Romando et al, 2021), found that adding hypnosis to cognitive behavioural therapy can help you to achieve a more positive result, and a more long lasting one.  That is, rather than just stand alone cognitive behavioural therapy for your anxiety disorder, adding hypnosis into your treatment as well means that you are much more likely to get positive results, and to get results that endure over time too.

Their review found that the adjunctive use of clinical hypnosis can help make cognitive behavioural therapy a more efficacious and enduring treatment, with 66% of participants at posttreatment, and 72% at follow-up, experiencing better outcomes than those who only received cognitive behavioural therapy without hypnosis.

There is a lot of evidence supporting the effectiveness of hypnotherapy with issues such as anxiety, depression, stress and IBS. And this research shows that, even when compared to another active treatment (here, cognitive behavioural therapy), adding hypnosis into your treatment improves your results. This is great news if you are seeking help to deal with an anxiety disorder and you want to make the best choice for you about how to move forwards towards feeling better in yourself.

I’ve covered the research on using hypnosis with cognitive behavioural therapy to improve results in this article: Hypnosis Enhances Results Of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Updated Science and Evidence

If you are seeking help with your anxiety, and whether or not you are also calling upon prescribed medication, by drawing upon the evidence supported approaches mentioned here, namely hypnotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy, you can massively increase your chances of improving and feeling better. Better still, by drawing upon the different aspects of these approaches, rather than being rigidly tied to a certain way of doing things, you can find and develop an individually tailored set of solutions that will enable you to take back control over your thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and to keep things in a good place for you no matter what comes your way in the future.

 

To your health and happiness, 

Dan Regan

Anxiety Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

 

Struggling with anxiety, stress, worry and fear and need some help? Find out how I can help with a Complimentary Hypnotherapy Strategy Session. Learn more here: Appointments

Find out what dozens of other people have said after their hypnotherapy sessions with Dan: Hypnotherapy Testimonials

And check out these powerful hypnosis downloads that can start helping you right away with anxiety, confidence and more: Hypnosis Downloads

 

References:

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.

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.

Van Dis, E.A., Van Veen, S.C., Hagenaars, M.A., Batelaan, N.M., Bockting, C.L., Van Den Heuvel, R.M., Cuijpers, P. and Engelhard, I.M., 2020. Long-term outcomes of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety-related disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA psychiatry, 77(3), pp.265-273.