Two Types of Anxiety – Anxiety Help in Ely and Newmarket

When you break it down, you could say that there are two types of anxiety. And that’s not only about what you think and feel, or how you currently do those things in a way that makes you feel anxious.

I was chatting about this, the two types of anxiety, with a client earlier this week. Either your anxiety comes in high and you need to know how to quickly and effectively bring it down again. Or your anxiety starts small and starts to grow. In this case, you need to know how to cut it off at that point. Of course, overall you want less and less unnecessary moment of anxiety, yet all emotions are normal human reactions so you want to know how to manage your own thoughts and feelings effectively. What you do in either of these situations dictates how bad you feel and how long you feel bad for.

We can all have some moments where our feelings kick in seemingly instantly and sometimes at an intense level. It’s very similar to the startle response. You are going about your day and suddenly and unexpectedly a loud noise goes off right near you. You flinch, automatically take a big breath in and all your focus goes onto the source of the sound. Sometimes you may even feel your heart rate increase and a bit of adrenaline going through you. You the realise it was just a sound and that all is well and your feelings and responses settle down and return to normal.

With anxiety, sometimes an old association, trigger or habit can mean it suddenly feels like your anxiety has instantly rocketed. It feels like it is so fast, and perhaps unexpected, that you have no time to react. You are filled with uncomfortable anxious feelings. Of course, you can lessen this happening through hypnotherapy. Yet, when it happens you may find that the things you think, feel and do next just add to how anxious you feel and how long you suffer with it until it subsides. You need to know what you can do in that moment so that you aren’t just inadvertently adding to your own anxiety. This is when that sense of anxiety being unpredictable and capable of striking at any time can lead to worrying about becoming anxious. You find yourself fearing the fear.

In other moments, you feel a little anxious and then this starts to grow. You notice those first physical sensations, start focusing upon them and start thinking about how bad you feel. You worry about other people noticing. You worry about the anxiety getting worse. You worry about worst case scenarios. Those inner thoughts make you feel more fearful and your anxiety rises. This leads to a spiral of feeling even worse, thinking more and more catastrophically and an escalation of anxiety. In these cases, you need to be able to cut off the anxiety before it spirals out of control. You need to have the sense of capability and the confidence to know you can do this quickly and effectively.

With both of these two types of anxiety, it is very achievable to learn how to start feeling better. You can bring it down, cut it off and lessen your unnecessary anxiety.

Anxiety & The Two Stage Thinking Process

I’ve written before about the two stage thinking process of anxiety. It’s over in this article: Two Stage Thinking Process – Anxiety Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

Our minds are funny things, all sorts of random, habitual and other thoughts can come to the forefront of your awareness. Some times these are deliberate, conscious thoughts. Other times (and a lot of the time) thoughts just pop up.

This is very true when you feel anxious. A worst case scenario or other catastrophic thing comes into your mind. This is unsurprising as to your mind it is all about upcoming threats and perceived dangers. If you feel anxious thinking about it then you find that it takes over your thinking. Even if you distract yourself for a bit, it soon comes back into your thinking.

You think about some worst case scenario and then you engage with it inside your mind. You start to think of how catastrophic that thing would be and you start to worry about all the consequences that would follow. And the whole time you are filling yourself with more and more anxious feelings of dread and fear about how you imagine things will turn out. It all gets very uncomfortable, both psychologically and physically.  That stream of anxious thought carries you along and you are thrown from one anxious thought to the next. You start to focus, not on the first thing you began to think about, but rather on all the negative and catastrophic things that you imagine happening many steps beyond it.

Most of us are never taught how to take back control over the thoughts we think. We rely on distraction or hope that the anxious thoughts will just fade away. For a one off situation they may well pass, only to come back before a similar future situation. For many people, anxiety has a way of simply moving on from one thing to the next. There seems to always be something to worry and overthink about. It can feel exhausting.

There are really two stages to a thought and you have a two stage thinking process with anxiety. There is the initial thought that comes into your mind about some future situation or circumstance (and that makes you feel anxious). Then there is what you then do with that initial thought inside of your mind. If you accept the thought and run with it, you start to accelerate down a mental pathway of anxiety, discomfort and dread. If you know how to interrupt, dispute, diffuse, change and tackle your own thoughts then you can influence and direct what goes on inside your own head next. This is certainly a key goal of anxiety hypnotherapy. It puts you back in control over your own thinking.

You can’t always control what comes into your mind or which random thoughts come to the front of your awareness, yet you can learn how to direct what happens next and how you then manage your own thinking. You can very much be in control of what you think, in the same way you think all sorts of other non-anxious thoughts each and every day that allow you to function and get stuff done and that don’t bother you emotionally in the least.

Overcoming Anxiety

With both of these two types of anxiety, you can learn how to start feeling better.

If, for some reason, your anxiety comes in fast and high, you can bring it back down and diffuse those uncomfortable feelings. And if your anxiety starts gradually, you can interrupt it and redirect your thoughts and feelings towards feeling calmer quickly. With hypnotherapy for anxiety, you can train your mind to feel calmer, more automatically, more of the time. You can soon be handling, dealing and coping with things quickly and easily. And, even better, you find yourself feeling calm, confident and in control in your everyday life and knowing how to keep things that way.

To your health and happiness, 

Dan Regan

Award Winning Hypnotherapist 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

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