Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

The Physical Sensations of Stress and Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely

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

The Physical Sensations of Stress and Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Back when I used to struggle with anxiety, it was the anxious feelings that used to really trouble me and that used to quickly escalate to the point when they felt overwhelming and uncontrollable. There were times when I would be low, shaky and uncomfortable to the point that I just wanted to be safely back home and in a place where I felt calmer and safer (and then all the anxious thoughts would arrive to remind me of how useless I was for feeling that way). It can be hard to appreciate just how bad anxious feelings can get unless you’ve experienced it and had it affect your life. The avoidance, the escaping, the gruelling discomfort and the repetition of the unpleasantness can really start to get to you and limit your life.

And it doesn’t matter whether the anxiety is about something specific (like driving, flying or public speaking) or more generalised (where there seems to always be something that the anxiety latches onto). When those bodily sensations and feelings strike and get you, it can feel debilitating and crushing. Things you know you can ordinarily do become impossible to you. Every atom of your being seems to be focused upon how anxious you feel, how bad it makes you feel and how, in situations when you feel anxious, it seems inescapable until you flee to somewhere else and away from it all.

One of the issues that people with anxiety know all too well is how you then start to become anxious about the possibility of becoming anxious. Even when you aren’t in the anxiety-provoking situation or at the event, you can still feel the dread, the sense of approaching doom and you can still be overwhelmed with the worry. When you get there (in the car, on the plane, about to give your presentation etc.), everything becomes massively ramped up and amplified. The anxiety gets more and more linked, associated and embedded with the situation/event/person/place and so the next time a similar thing is looming, the worry, anxiety, stress and dread grow and repeat with ever increasing vengence.

Yet it is very possible to overcome those anxious thoughts and feelings and to take back control over what is going inside of your mind and body. I’ve helped hundreds of people to move on from unnecessary anxiety and to learn how to effectively manage their thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

Yet first, it’s important to understand and remove any confusion about exactly what is happening in your mind and body that leads you to experience those physical sensations of stress and anxiety.

The Effectiveness of Walking in Nature For Anxiety and Depression – Hypnotherapy in Ely

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

The Effectiveness of Walking in Nature For Anxiety and Depression – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Ah the great British weather! Last week the sun was out and shining bright and, in the warmth, I started to think about whether it was time to dig out my shorts. Then this week it’s been cold and wet and windy and I had to search back in the cupboard for my winter coat before heading out anywhere.

Now, whatever the weather, it’s always great to get outside, whether that is for exercise or just to take a mind clearing walk. Few things top those moments when you are out walking in nature. Recently we’ve been for a family walk through the Abbey Gardens in Bury St Edmunds and for an explore on our first trip to Audley End House. On top of that I always enjoy my walk through the quiet fields on my way to and from work (especially now that the clocks have changed and it’s lighter in the evening).

I love those moments when you feel connected to nature as you walk along. There are the trees and the brightly coloured flowers and the green grass. There are the insects buzzing around and often a squirrel or two scampering about. I could watch the sights and listen to the sounds of nature in some secluded spot (on a nice day at least!) for hours. One of the reasons I love my office in Ely so much is because I can look out over the fields and catch sight of the deer, or a bird of prey, and even recently a fox walking through the undergrowth.

I often suggest to clients with anxiety, worry and stress that they start taking a daily walk to get the mental health and well-being benefits of moving and exercise, and as a way of seeking to get some time off from unwanted thinking. And there are even better benefits if that walk is in nature, where you feel a sense of connection to nature, as the mental health research clearly supports.

Anxiety About Dentists, Doctors and All Things Medical

by Dan Regan | Jan 31, 2022 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Anxiety About Dentists, Doctors and All Things Medical

It’s been a hectic start to the year with things now well and truly back in full swing. I’ve been busy helping people to overcome anxiety, build confidence and to take control over eating habits and it’s been fantastic to see so many positive results. Outside work, I’ve been busy with my exercise and doing a bit of running again, I’ve been continuing to learn guitar (snapping some strings along the way) and spending fun time with the kids (well, maybe 95% of the time with the kids is fun, the rest is nagging them, cajoling them, reminding them to do things and tidying up after them!).

Many of the people I’ve been helping recently have come to see me about anxiety and fear to do with medically related things. For some, all medical things create anxiety, and they avoid the doctor and dentist because of the overwhelming uncomfortable feelings the thought of it evokes. Sometimes even talking about medically related things can be enough to create the fear and panic, even where the actual situations and events purely concern other people. There can be fears about needles, injections and blood tests and again, avoidance will be the main way they have of trying to deal with the fear and uncomfortable sensations.

As with most anxiety and fear, there is a cycle of imagining the worst case (e.g. needing a blood test and passing out), which creates anxious feelings and leads to avoidance and struggling.

Yet, however your fear and anxiety affects you right now, it is possible to take back control over your thoughts and feelings so that, like other people seem to do with ease, you can calmly go and do whatever medical things you may need to do.

Health Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

by Dan Regan | Nov 11, 2021 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Health Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Recently a client with health anxiety was telling me how he couldn’t even put the TV on listen to the radio without coming across several mentions of health-related issues. There’s an almost constant stream of adverts and stories about illness, heart disease, cancer and other health issues. And, of course, over the last couple of years, all the mention of COVID-19, long covid and death from the pandemic has presented a challenge to anyone who struggles with health anxiety.

When I work with health-anxiety clients, they often tell me how any slight physical sensation or niggle gets magnified and amplified inside their imagination. Rather than being able to calmly consider and assess that slight pain, discomfort or niggle, their health-anxiety quickly escalates to a worst-case scenario where it is something serious like cancer (and then there are the fearful thoughts about everything that would come with that from impacts on them and their loved ones, to uncomfortable treatment, anxiety and the panic over their potential death).

Whilst the internet is a wonderful thing, with health-anxiety it can become a source of vague information that always points to a serious health condition (just about any physical symptoms can probably be directed towards something catastrophic like cancer).

And, of course, anxiety itself can cause physical sensations, for example in your stomach, chest or muscles, which adds more fear and anxiety to an already racing mind. Your health anxiety can lead to more sensations and aches, tension and pains, which then only adds to your worries about your health and maintains the things you are feeling in your body.

Now, of course, we shouldn’t just ignore every physical sensation and put it all down to anxiety. Yet, like my clients, you can develop the ability to calmly assess what you are feeling, to consider what may have caused it and to decide upon and calmly take any actions that may be needed to treat it. And, of course, the calmer you are able to be, the more clearly you can think, the better your decision-making processes will be and the easier it will be to consider what you are experiencing (without anxiety creating or exacerbating it). And so rather than thinking that twinge in your chest is a sign of a heart issue, you can calmly recognise that you probably strained a muscle exercising.

COVID-19 and the pandemic have certainly added to the health-anxiety levels of many people, whether from a rise in stress or anxiety about catching the virus and being seriously affected. And health-anxiety and the fear of contracting COVID-19 is something I’m covering here today.

Anxiety and Exercise – Anxiety Hypnotherapy in Ely

by Dan Regan | Nov 10, 2021 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Anxiety and Exercise – Anxiety Hypnotherapy in Ely

Knowing from experience how horrible and limiting it can be, helping people to overcome their anxiety really is my passion. There is no greater feeling than helping a client move from despair, lowness and overwhelm from their anxiety, to a place where they feel lighter and happier. I love it every time when someone tells me how they now feel calmer, more confident and more in control of their thoughts and feelings, no matter what challenges come their way.

Hypnotherapy for anxiety relief has good evidence to support it, as well as the wealth of positive feedback my previous clients have kindly left about their sessions.

And, as I’ve covered before, exercise can also help with reducing anxiety symptoms, and works well alongside hypnotherapy. I’ve also drawn upon exercise to support my positive mental health, and I firmly believe it now helps me to stay in a good place and to deal with whatever comes my way in life.

I enjoy exercise, with my weekly bootcamps, gym work and running. Yet, I know some people (like my wife!) shudder at the very thought of structured exercise. Especially if you had unpleasant experiences with exercising in the past (my school P.E. experiences were largely miserable!), then you may not enjoy the thought of getting exercising. Below I cover the evidence that suggests that sitting less and moving more in some form, really can help your mental health effectively.

Of course, if you wait until you feel like exercising then it may never happen! I know that at 6.25am on a cold and dark winter morning I really do not feel pumped and excited about being at bootcamp! Instead, I focus on just doing it, on making it a routine behaviour (like brushing your teeth or going to work, just something you do regardless) and focus on all the positives that I’ll get after exercising, such as positive feelings, reduced anxiety and enhanced mental health.

And as the science in this article shows, by calling upon exercise and hypnotherapy, you really can find relief from your anxiety and start feeling better and better in yourself.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Anxiety Disorders – Hypnotherapy in Ely

by Dan Regan | Nov 8, 2021 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Anxiety Disorders – Hypnotherapy in Ely

If you struggle with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) then you’ll already know how unpleasant, uncomfortable and limiting the symptoms can be. Although intensity and frequency of symptoms can vary, they include abdominal pain and bloating. People generally suffer with constipation, diarrhoea or a combination of both.

If you have IBS you may also struggle with mental health issues, such as anxiety. I’ve worked with clients who get anxious about leaving the house, being in situations where they are uncertain of access to toilet facilities, or any other situation where they may feel ‘trapped’ in some way. I’ve known of clients who need to allow over an hour of additional time before leaving the house and those who won’t eat all day to try and minimise their symptoms. You may feel anxious about going to new places, long journeys and other situations where your symptoms could impact or you feel they might embarrass you.

Of course, one of the common symptoms of anxiety is itself uncomfortable feelings in the stomach. And so there can be a negative spiral of anxiety and IBS, and IBS and anxiety, where each exacerbates the other. The end result is with anxious thoughts and feelings, frustration, stress, annoyance, catastrophising and limiting or avoiding situations.

Perhaps even more frustratingly, there is no certain test or procedure that can medically confirm the IBS. With severe symptoms, you may have undergone multiple investigations and tests, which can rule other things out, but which frustratingly can’t confirm that you have IBS (they just confirm that you don’t have the other conditions).

And because the symptoms of IBS can be unpredictable, and you may have better and worse moments, your anxiety can lead you to worry about the worst happening this time, or what if you have that bloating, discomfort, constipation or diarrhoea. Worse, what if others notice or you experience intense symptoms in front of people you would rather not know about your IBS, or where you just can’t get to a toilet quick enough, or where you just need to be in the safe environment of home?

Anxiety Help in Ely and Newmarket – Dan Regan Hypnotherapy

by Dan Regan | Oct 22, 2021 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Anxiety Help in Ely and Newmarket – Dan Regan Hypnotherapy

When you struggle with anxiety, it can seem like there’s no escape from all those unwanted thoughts and unpleasant feelings. Those intrusive thoughts, filled with worst case scenarios, negativity and dread can dominate your mind and your thinking. And those uncomfortable anxious feelings just lead to more worry and uncertainty.

It can be exhausting trying to cope with everything you are battling with internally, as you try and get through each situation or each day.

And, of course, the natural reaction to anxiety and dread is to avoid things, to get out of them or get away from them as quickly as possible. Yet that avoidance just exacerbates anxiety and means that the same unwanted pattern keeps repeating over and over.

Whether your anxiety is about something specific, like work or social situations, or is much more generalised, anxiety has a way of creating its own cycle of misery. You feel anxious and struggle with negative thoughts and you avoid things or have to struggle through them. There may be moments of relief when you feel a bit better, but that same anxiety pattern comes right back at you when faced with a similar situation or circumstance again.

In fact, because anxiety is so unpleasant you may even start to dread the anxiety itself and worry about being anxious, all of which just adds to that internal mixing pot of unwanted thoughts and feelings. It could be said that the more anxiety you experience, the more anxiety you will experience. It can take over, stop you thinking straight, keep you awake at night, make you feel tense and sick, destroy your confidence in yourself and curtail your ability to engage in things and enjoy the things that you used to.

Disputing Your Irrational Anxious Thoughts – Hypnotherapy in Ely

by Dan Regan | Oct 5, 2021 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Disputing Your Irrational Anxious Thoughts

There can be few greater simple pleasures than spending half an hour or so reading at night before going to sleep. Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve loved reading detective stories, with anything containing Sherlock Holmes always being a favourite (in fact, I seem to recall that I based my English GCSE exam story composition upon a Sherlock Holmes story I’d been reading beforehand!). Agatha Christie’s Poirot is another favourite, and I love anything in the British Library Crime Classics collection.

In these stories there’s no need for excessive violence, there are no computers or mobile phones or DNA to call upon, and it’s all based upon deduction and reasoning to bring the plot to a successful conclusion. Perhaps it was this love of the logic and rational thinking and reasoning that led me to study my law degree (or maybe it was watching LA Law on TV, if you’re old enough to remember that one!).

Poirot calls upon his ‘little grey cells’ to evaluate, analyse and solve cases, and there’s perhaps no detective more famous that Sherlock Holmes for rational thinking and calling upon the facts (although he never actually says ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’ in any of the Conan Doyle stories).

And so I was delighted and excited recently when I found out that my daughter’s English class were studying Victorian Crime and Detective Stories, and particularly Sherlock Holmes’ stories. I’d have loved that at her age, and even now I would happily go and sit at the back of the class so I could listen in! Ah here, I thought, was a shared thing that my daughter and I would be able to discuss and dissect with a shared passion for old detective fiction. Only it turned out she wasn’t that bothered about the stories, so that was the end of that!

So why am I talking about these great-thinking detectives here today? It’s because very often, inside our own minds, our thinking gets distorted, generalised, embellished, catastrophised and we suffer from all sorts of thinking errors and biases. We can jump to conclusions, give meaning to things, make assumptions about what other people are thinking, make erroneous predictions, catastrophise and imagine and create all sorts of worst-case scenarios. Emotions like anxiety can lead to these kinds of negative and irrational thoughts, and the thoughts (which may or may not be accurate) can create emotions like anxiety.

If you struggle with anxiety then you will be familiar with the overthinking, worst-case scenarios and ‘what if’ thoughts. Your anxiety can latch onto a train of thought and before you know it, it has been amplified and magnified inside your head and your anxious feelings increase. An initial thought can move down that rabbit hole of thinking that moves further and further away from the current situation, and where things get worse and worse in your mind.

So there is certainly benefit in bringing thoughts back to the present, and to the facts, rather than letting emotions like anxiety, stress, fear and worry take over. To take control over our thinking and feel better in ourselves, perhaps we all need to think a bit more like Sherlock in these moments when he said, “whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign Of Four).

Hypnotherapy For Anxiety in Ely – Client Video Review

by Dan Regan | Sep 9, 2021 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Hypnotherapy For Anxiety in Ely – Client Video Review

My own personal experience of hypnotherapy for overcoming anxiety, and the many, many people I’ve helped with hypnotherapy to find freedom from anxiety (many of whom have kindly left reviews on this website), provide ample evidence of how effective hypnotherapy for anxiety can be. Rather than being ruled by your anxious thoughts and feelings, you can take back control and start feeling happier and better in yourself.

We also have the scientific research to support its effectiveness in alleviating anxiety. The review, which looked at the overall effectiveness of hypnosis as a treatment for anxiety, found that hypnosis is a highly effective intervention for anxiety (Valentine, Milling, Clark and Moriarty, 2019).

From the evidence they concluded 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“.

That’s a hugely significant and impressive level of effectiveness. And once you add in other potentially positive factors, such as individual support around your own needs and working face to face with a therapist, alongside all of the other strategies and techniques that I’ve covered in the articles on this website, the likelihood of a positive outcome can only be enhanced.

Certainly that’s the experience of a client who has very kindly shared a video of her experience of our sessions of hypnotherapy for anxiety and panic attacks.

Boost Your Well-being and Reduce Negative Thoughts and Feelings

by Dan Regan | May 29, 2021 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Boost Your Well-being and Reduce Negative Thoughts and Feelings

I hope you are keeping safe and doing well. It’s hard to believe how quickly this year is racing by! I hope that you have been able to stay safe and healthy during lockdown and the pandemic, and that you are doing well as things open back up again. And if you’ve had your jab then I hope you didn’t suffer as much as I did for the few days after mine!

One of the best things about lockdown easing is that, as effective as online hypnotherapy continues to be, it’s wonderful to be able to now meet people in person at my locations in Ely and Newmarket. Welcome back! I’ve missed you!

Outside work I’ve been keeping busy with my running and continuing to learn the guitar, as well as having lots of fun with my girls (and the odd stern word too!). Within work, I’ve had time to write many articles that can help you to boost your sense of well-being, positivity and optimism, as well as helping you to reduce anxious and negative thoughts and feelings. I’ve highlighted a few of these later on in this article to bring them together in one place for you.

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