Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Controlling Unwanted Thoughts – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Nov 22, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Controlling Unwanted Thoughts – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

As well as all of the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety, worry and stress, it is often the constant stream of anxious thoughts that causes the most distress.

You may find your thoughts racing off in all sorts of negative directions. You find yourself thinking the worst, catastrophising and overthinking everything. You feel mentally exhausted, making it even harder to deal and cope with your thoughts. They follow you around inside of your head, turning everything into anxiety, dread, fear and worry.

And you may very well find yourself stuck in the negative spiral and cycle where your anxious thoughts lead to anxious feelings increasing. And all of those anxious feelings lead your thinking towards the source of all the worry and dread and you find yourself imagining and thinking about things getting worse and worse. That cycle of thoughts increasing feelings, and feelings increasing thoughts can start to become more and more habitual, persistent and distressing. Your anxiety can start to pervade into all areas of your life as you worry about things going badly or wrong in some way.

There are many ways you may try to deal with your unwanted anxious thoughts. You may try and distract yourself and aim to avoid thinking about those things (although you probably find they still come into your head again in quieter moments). You may go through a gruelling battle inside your own mind as you battle with the anxiety generated thoughts. Or you may simply find yourself lost in the never ending flow of anxious thoughts as they spiral from one thing to another and one worst case to another catastrophe of some kind.

As well as many of the strategies I’ve covered before for dealing with anxiety and anxious thoughts, an approach that is quite common within hypnotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy is to start to learn how to challenge, dispute and undermine those thoughts and, in so doing, to calm your anxiety and take back control over what goes on inside of your own head.

Mindfulness For Anxiety and Depression – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Nov 14, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Mindfulness For Anxiety and Depression – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Anxiety and depression are two of the main things that people come to see me for help with. All of those unhelpful thoughts and feelings can feel overwhelming, impact upon all areas of your life and leave you feeling stuck, low and full of distress.

In conjunction with other coping mechanisms and strategies, hypnotherapy has an excellent track record and body of evidence to support it’s effectiveness for helping you with anxiety and depression. By learning how to take control over your own thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions, you can start to alleviate your symptoms and feel more comfortable inside of your own mind.

Alongside hypnotherapy, mindfulness can also be very effective for anxiety and depression. Something that certainly exacerbates how bad you feel are all the negative and worrying thoughts that seem to dominate your mind. It’s like your brain always finds something to feel anxious, low or fearful about. And all of the ceaseless negative thinking can feel more and more draining and exhausting for you, leading you to withdraw from the things you might usually do and enjoy. In some cases, you might even start to fear the thoughts that go through your own mind and wonder if you will ever be able to feel better.

Yet, by developing your skills, through hypnotherapy and mindfulness, you can start to feel more calm and comfortable in yourself. You can learn how to feel more at peace inside of your own mind and how to notice your thoughts without engaging with them or responding negatively to them. By doing so, not only will you start to reduce the volume of problematic thoughts you experience, you will also be more and more able to let thoughts come and go and manage what goes on side of your own mind.

Self Compassion and Social Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Nov 8, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Self Compassion and Social Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

When I used to struggle with social anxiety, perhaps one of the most detrimental things I used to do came from the excessive level to which I would be hard, negative and harsh upon myself. Never mind what anyone else was thinking (probably nothing if we are honest), I would chastise, criticise and berate myself over any slight perceived failing or embarrassment. If I felt I’d said something stupid, done something not quite perfectly, or if I missed the opportunity to do something positive, then that self-critical inner voice would be there.

And, swith social anxiety, that inner voice and the way we communicate with ourselves, probably won’t stop with just the current perceived self-failing. In my case, it will probably then also drag out a whole load of the other past mistakes and other justifications for considering myself to be a failure, stupid or an idiot in some way. A lack of self compassion, self encouragement and support can easily exacerbate and consolidate that social anxiety and the worries about failing or being judged negatively by others.

A lack of self compassion and kindness to yourself, and a habitual tendency towards self-criticism and negative self judgements, can feed your ongoing social anxiety and contribute to more generalised anxiety, lowness, perfectionism and low self esteem.

Yet, of course, just because your social anxiety patterns of thinking and feeling currently lead to worry, negativity and lowness, doesn’t mean that you are stuck that way. It is possible to learn how to be more balanced and rational in your own thoughts and feelings towards yourself, to even encourage yourself sometimes, to recognise that sometimes things do go awry and to to feel more comfortable in your own skin so that you can be more relaxed around other people.

Information Needs Among People with Depression and Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Aug 5, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Information Needs Among People with Depression and Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Perhaps one of the challenging things about struggling with anxiety and depression comes from the uncertainty, the unknown and the fear that something is wrong with you. On top of that, there is the worry and dread that all of those unwanted thoughts and feelings may be things that endure and that you will have to always struggle with.

Anxiety and depression can fill your head with all sorts of worrying, fearful and stressful thoughts. These exacerbate all of the bad, uncomfortable and unwanted feelings you are experiencing, and in turn, those feelings add to even more of those unwanted thoughts that crowd your head. Even things that might ordinarily seem like little things, can get magnified and amplified inside your head until they seem like great battles to face and challenges to try and overcome.

To compound matters, you may find yourself withdrawing from your usual activities and from your friends, giving you yet more time to think and less to be distracted by. You may find your appetite is affected, that you drink more alcohol or caffeine and that you struggle to sleep. These things mean you are more stressed, agitated and tired, making everything seem much harder and burdensome (which adds even more unwanted and troublesome thoughts and feelings to the mass of things you are struggling with).

One of the most common early steps when you are struggling with your thoughts and feelings is to turn to the internet and try and work out what it is that you are experiencing. You just want to understand what is happening to you and what you can do to try and feel a bit better. You are worried that something is seriously wrong with you so it’s only natural to try and work out what it could be and how serious it is.

Unfortunately, within the mix of anxiety and depression information online, there are also many potential pitfalls, filled with inaccuracy and misleading information, that can exacerbate your worry, anxiety and stress. And there are many types of information about your anxiety and depression that you may seek out.

Using Music to Help With Anxiety and Stress – Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Jul 21, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Using Music to Help With Anxiety and Stress – Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

Can music help you to be able to better handle, deal and cope with your anxiety and stress? We all encounter music of some kind every day, whether it’s on TV, a film soundtrack, listening to the radio, playing your playlist, hearing someone sing, overhearing someone else’s music, or some other form of music that you encounter during your day.

Several days a week my day starts with exercise and listening to the accompanying music selected by the trainer (much of which is of a dubious quality in my opinion!). I use music through the day to support the hypnosis work I do with people and there will probably be some sort of music going on when I get home, whether that’s from the TV or one of my children singing.

As it happens, only recently one of my girls was part of a choir that put on a celebratory musical performance at a local theatre. I love the way that kids just sing with a smile of their faces and a real sense of positivity and enjoyment. Throughout the various acts and songs at the show you could sense the fun, energy and excitement coming from each and every person involved, which added to the enjoyment of us watching them. Certainly my daughter is always buzzing from the experience afterwards. One of the songs they performed was ‘Happy Together’ by the Turtles, and now if anyone in our house says the word ‘imagine’ (the first word in the song) they can expect to person they are talking to to break out into a rendition of the song.

Before the performance started there was a video on loop showing interviews with some of the kids where they described how important music was to them. And one of the key themes was about how music can help you to deal with stress, to feel better after a bad day and how it can help lift your mood. I know from my own music listening, as well as playing the guitar, that when you get engrossed in music then you are often just there in that moment and other thoughts and other mental noise fades away and can diminish.

When someone is anxious, stressed or depressed they often describe to me how they have lost their love of music or have stopped listening to the things they used to enjoy. They are focused on the negative and unwanted thoughts and feelings, and in doing so, often get caught in an increasing spiral of worry and negativity. And sometimes if we do listen to music then we match it to our mood so that when you are happy then you will likely play happy, upbeat tracks and when you feel sad you play slower, sadder songs. Again, this can magnify, reinforce and amplify how you are feeling (helpfully or less helpfully).

So what is the impact of music if you want to alleviate your symptoms of stress and anxiety?

Health Anxiety and Online Health Information Seeking – Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Jul 4, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Health Anxiety and Online Health Information Seeking – Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

Health anxiety has always been a common type of anxiety that I help people with. In these days where things like heart issues and cancer are likely to have affected someone you know, and where our media is full of warnings about symptoms and requests for donations from health charities describing their work, someone with health anxiety can find that their worries and fears are never far from the forefront of their mind.

People with health anxiety describe to me how any physical symptom can start an anxious spiral that takes over and leads to excessive anxiety and worry about their health, along with fears about the impacts that would be there if they couldn’t work or needed care, or about how their family and others would cope if they died. That health anxiety can attach to any ache or pain, can be fired off by hearing of someone else’s health condition, or can be a sense of fear of dread about what if something was to happen.

And, of course, the physical symptoms you experience from health anxiety and worry can lead to heart palpitations, aches from being tense, a tight chest and other anxious symptoms. These physical sensations then in turn add more fuel to your anxiety as you worry that these are the signs of something being seriously wrong with you. That can then lead to you feeling even more anxious, experiencing even more anxious overthinking and feeling even worse.

The excessive worry from health anxiety can be about the likelihood of possibility of illness or a negative health issue, a heightened awareness and worry about bodily sensations and a sense of catastrophising that a physical sensation (even a normal bodily sensation) is something threatening and dangerous.

The pandemic with all of it’s warnings, uncertainty, fear and information (as well as mis-information) certainly exacerbated health anxiety for many people. Particularly in the early days when everything was unclear and there were pictures of hospital beds full of sick people and daily reports of high levels of illness and death. Now, of course, there can still be worry about covid and long covid, what could happen if you got ill and a worry about any physical symptoms you may notice. And alongside this, there are the ever present risks and dread of cancer, heart disease, heart attacks and so on that for someone with health anxiety can surface and be triggered by anything health related.

And these days, someone with health anxiety is likely to head over to the internet to search out information about what they are feeling and experiencing. Now the internet can be a fantastic resource for finding out about all sorts of things, yet, as anyone who has ever done it knows, relying on ‘Dr Google’ and trying to self diagnose online can easily become problematic and counter productive.

Could A Social Media Break Help Your Mental Health, Depression and Anxiety?

by Dan Regan | Jun 21, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Could A Social Media Break Help Your Mental Health, Depression and Anxiety? Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

Now I don’t know about you, but in our house the most powerful threat of punishment I can call upon with my kids is to threaten to take away their screens and to switch off the wi-fi. There is nothing else that is as guaranteed to bring an expression of horror and fear upon their faces and to get them moving and doing whatever it is they are meant to be doing!

Screen time and social media use are things that have risen massively in recent times. At least in our house, I can usually reliably find my wife and kids engaged in something on their screen and pretty oblivious to the world around them. And, at least in the case of my kids, some of the stuff I’ve seen them watch on Tik Tok and the like just seems to me to be pure mind numbing nonsense (although that may be cause I’m old and out of touch, as they like to often remind me!).

Now, of course, not all online social media use is of this type. There’s much on it that can be informative, amusing and worthwhile. It can help in communicating, understanding, keeping up to date and sharing news. I use social media to find out things, to share work and life posts and photos and to keep in touch with people. It’s a tool for enhancing life, communication and productivity.

Yet it seems clear that, for some people at least, social media can have a detrimental impact upon their well-being and mental health.

Social media can help you with finding support and encouraging talking about how you feel, yet all too often people start to feel their life isn’t as good as others, and that they have less shiny things and fun and happiness and the like. Everyone likes to show the good stuff (real or otherwise) on social media, and those aspects of their lives that aren’t as good get papered over and are kept from view. Negative comparisons, a sense of not being as good, a feeling of lacking and too much unproductive, sedentary time can lead to negative thinking, feeling low, anxiety and have a negative impact upon your well-being and mental health.

With so much time now spent with faces buried in screens, the question moves to whether taking a break from social media could have benefits for your mental health and help with you with the symptoms of anxiety and depression?

Hypnotherapy in Ely Video Review – Dan Regan Hypnotherapy

by Dan Regan | May 9, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Hypnotherapy in Ely Video Review – Dan Regan Hypnotherapy

I always regard it as a massive honour when someone takes the time and trouble to leave some positive feedback about how their hypnotherapy sessions have had a beneficial impact upon their thoughts, feelings and behaviours. They continue to inspire me and I know that it gives many other people the hope and belief that they need to take active steps to seek help for their own mental health, rather than continuing to struggle and battle with how they feel.

Recently, Ian very kindly took a couple of minutes to record his hypnotherapy review following on from our sessions together. You can take a look at what he had to say in his review video further down this page. It really is worth a watch.

And if you want an even greater positivity fix then you can find all of the video hypnotherapy reviews from my clients over on this website page (there are nearly sixty review videos there): Hypnotherapy Review Videos

Or, if you want to have a look at all of the feedback from clients about their hypnotherapy sessions, then take a look at these (nearly three hundred) positive reviews: Hypnotherapy Testimonials

I’m always massively grateful when you take the time and effort to leave a review, so thank you to all of you!

And now, on to my newest feedback review and Ian’s video…

Pregnancy Related Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Apr 19, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Pregnancy Related Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Life can be funny when you’re a parent. One minute they are on the way, and then they arrive and the life is full of ups and downs, and laughter and telling offs and getting stuff done (and then even more needing to get things done!). In no time at all, old photos are popping up on social media memories and you realise how much has gone on and is still to happen in their lives (and your own too).

Recently my youngest had her birthday and, amongst all the fun, we talked about some of early memories of her. There where the moments when we first met her at the hospital, when her sister excitedly saw her for the first time, the laughs, the chats and the other little quirks that we love so much and that happened along the way. A friend brought her little baby around to our house and you suddenly remember there was actually a time before they could even answer you back!

And pregnancy and babies seems to have been very much the theme at home recently, with my wife currently training to be a doula (which I think she’ll be fab at) so that she can provide guidance and support to new mum’s, especially during those early days when everything goes haywire and the level of demands and challenges massively magnify.

I often work with women during pregnancy where they may be struggling with anxiety and a sense of overwhelm. There may be anxiety about health, about being in hospital and coping with the birthing process, and about how well they think they will cope with having the responsibility of a new born to look after. There is no doubt that there are a lot of demands, challenges and things to learn through pregnancy and into parenthood (as well as a lot of love, happiness and joy, of course!!).

Mental Health and The Positive Impact of Pets…And Meet Frank!

by Dan Regan | Apr 19, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Mental Health and The Positive Impact of Pets…And Meet Frank!

I’ve written before about the positive mental health impact that can come from having a pet. Naturally you need to have a pet that fits with your own individual circumstances, yet, the companionship, emotional support and need for routine can certainly bring you psychological benefits.

Sadly we lost our lovely rabbit, Nibbles, last year, but now we have a new arrival into the Regan household! So today I’d like to introduce Frank (although I’m not sure if that really is a proper name for a rabbit??!), who will shortly be joined by a companion.

So amongst all the excitement and playing with Frank the major decision right now is what to call his friend when she arrives? My vote goes to Jesse so that we create the namesakes of those famous outlaw brothers (Jesse and Frank James). Or how about Nancy, so that we have the father and daughter Sinatra named rabbits? Although knowing how things generally turn out in our house we’ll probably end up with a rabbit called Sparkles or Sniffer!

So here is the lovely Frank for you to meet…

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