Dan’s Blog

Anxiety and Squirrels

by Dan Regan | Oct 20, 2025 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Anxiety and Squirrels

In this article I’ve got a short video for you. It’s about anxiety and how a squirrel reminded me about a particular aspect of it.

While I was out on my run around Ely the other morning, I had a little encounter with a squirrel. It was a beautiful Autumn morning and I was running through Ely Country Park. All of a sudden there was a whole cacophony of noise and rustling and commotion going on next to me. I didn’t know what was going on!

When faced with a sudden disturbance, it’s no surprise that your mind and body hone in on it and prepare you for action. In the absence of knowing what is going on and what is going to happen, you want to be ready to do something if you need to. These moments can happen now and again. There’s some uncertainty or confusion. You take in a breath, your heart speeds up a bit and you can feel that little bit of adrenaline go through you.

And sometimes when I’m working with people for anxiety in Ely, they tell me how draining, limiting and exhausting their anxiety is. All that overthinking and tension tires you out. It can interfere with your daily life. The little moments of this that come and go aren’t the problem with anxiety. It’s when that spiral of anxious thoughts and feelings seems to go on and on. You think the worst, feel anxious sensations and probably turn to avoiding things.

I’m often asked by an anxiety client about how they can switch off their anxiety and never experience it again. Some tell me they never want to have anxiety, worry or fear about anything ever again, full stop.

The 3-3-3 Rule For Anxiety

by Dan Regan | Oct 19, 2025 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

The 3-3-3 Rule For Anxiety

If you struggle with anxiety then you already know how overwhelming it can feel at times. You want some simple strategies to help you to calm your mind and body. That’s where the 3-3-3 rule for anxiety can become part of how you interrupt anxiety and regain focus.

When anxiety takes over, your mind starts to race. You struggle to think clearly. Everything is filled with negativity, thinking the worst and catastrophe. Your chest feels tight, your heart may pound and you feel hot, restless and tense. It can feel like you’ve lost control over your own mind and body. You start to panic even more. You think there may be something seriously wrong with you. Even in calmer moments you find yourself worrying about becoming anxious again.

You get caught up in the cycle of anxiety. You don’t know what to do with yourself or how to think more clearly and calm yourself down. I know how bad it feels because I’ve been there myself. However, as my anxiety clients soon discover, it is possible to calm your mind and body.

Rather than getting caught up in anxiety, you can calm your mind and body. That’s where the 3-3-3- rule for anxiety can become part of your strategy for interrupting anxious thoughts and calming yourself down physically. It’s a simple, grounding technique that can make a difference. It’s effective and easy to remember and apply. You can use it anywhere and at any time.

Why Do You Feel Anxious?

by Dan Regan | Oct 14, 2025 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Why Do You Feel Anxious?

Why do you feel anxious?

If you’ve been feeling anxious for no reason then this question may have been going around and around inside your mind. You go over and over past events to try and find an explanation for how anxious you feel right now. Yet you still can’t work out why you feel anxious. It’s frustrating and can make you feel even more stressed and tense.

No matter how much you dwell and overthink, you still feel anxious and it still makes no sense.

Sometimes there is a past event that kick-started your anxiety. Yet more often, your anxiety took hold and became a habit. It could have been a general tendency to worry and think the worst that intensified for some reason. Or maybe a whole series of stressful things were going on and you reach a point that spills over into problematic ways of anxious thinking and feeling.

The problem with trying to work out why you feel anxious is that anxiety isn’t logical and rational. Anxiety is purposeful. Your brain is looking for possible threats to try and keep you safe. Trying to use logic to work it out often just leads to frustration.

As I tell my anxiety hypnotherapy clients, even if you thought you had discovered what caused your anxiety, it doesn’t change how you are feeling right now. That’s why you want to shift your focus from the past and on to the present. By looking at how you are doing your anxiety, and what you are doing, you identify what is driving it. That’s when you can start to intervene by changing your thinking or altering how you feel.

In my short video further down the page, I talk about the question of why you feel anxious. And I cover shifting that focus to what you are doing now that means that your anxiety continues to rumble on and on.

Guided Self Hypnosis For Calm and Confidence

by Dan Regan | Oct 13, 2025 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Guided Self Hypnosis For Calm and Confidence

Today I’m sharing a short guided self hypnosis technique for calm and confidence. This fits nicely alongside the strategies I covered in my last article about Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy for anxiety (go check that out if you haven’t already).

Problematic anxiety may be something you’ve always struggled with, or perhaps it is something relatively new. Either way, you struggle with the racing thoughts and overthinking. And with all the uncomfortable feelings that come with it.

You feel stressed and uncertain and your mind and body slip into a pattern of tension, worry and overthinking. The more anxious you feel, the more your thoughts race from one negative thing to another. Those thoughts then worry you even more and create more tension. The more anxious you feel, the harder it becomes to switch off from it.

An effective way to calm anxiety and support your confidence is through self hypnosis. I’ve covered a brief guided self hypnosis script for calm and confidence further down this page. You can use this alongside the other strategies I cover in my articles to start to direct your thoughts and feelings so that you feel better in yourself. Self hypnosis is a natural way to physically relax, quieten your mind and draw upon your capability to reprogramme your mind for positive change.

With regular practice, you can prime your mind to respond to challenges with calmness and confidence instead of stress and tension.

Tackling Anxiety with Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy

by Dan Regan | Oct 12, 2025 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Tackling Anxiety with Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy

In this article, I cover tackling anxiety with Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy.

For some people, it can seem as though their anxiety creeps in when they least expect it. For others, anxiety has been a way of life for too long. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, yet always present.

You know that there is no real, actual danger and nothing for you to actually feel anxious about. Yet your heart races, your mind races faster and your body can feel as if it on high alert. It’s exhausting, and it can leave you feeling as though you’re stuck in an endless loop of tension and worry.

Anxiety isn’t a sign of weakness, failure or something being wrong with you. It’s a learned response that has become habitual. Those patterns of thoughts, feelings and reactions have become automatic through repetition. No matter how long you have struggled with anxiety, there is good news. You can change those patterns and replace them with something more calm and helpful.

This is exactly where my cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy comes in to help you to tackle your anxiety. We will combine the practical tools of cognitive behavioural therapy, helping you challenge and reframe unhelpful thinking, with the relaxation, focused imagination and skills of hypnosis. You can create lasting change that helps you feel better and better. You can calm your mind and body and direct your own thoughts and feelings.

Below, I’ve covered five simple action points that you can start using today to help you relax, refocus, reset and feel calmer.

Take Control Over Alcohol

by Dan Regan | Oct 11, 2025 | Excessive Drinking and Binge Drinking

Take Control Over Alcohol

Is alcohol running your life and ruining your life? Do you find it too hard to cut back and stop when you want to? Do you need to take back control over your alcohol consumption and habits?

I work with so many people who enjoy a drink yet know they need to cut down. Although, in fact, many no longer even enjoy more than the first few sips or that initial first taste. The rest is just habit.

Alcohol impacts upon your health and can help you pile on the pounds. After a couple, you probably don’t want to do anything very productive or worthwhile. You might say or do things you regret and that you then feel guilty for, and apologetic about, afterwards. You fall asleep easily but your sleep quality is poor. You can wake up the next morning feeling a bit lethargic. And you may have found yourself caught on the ceaseless treadmill of habitually drinking in the evenings and weekends.

For many people, alcohol starts to take over their routine. You find yourself looking forward to a drink at the end of the day. Whether it is a stressful day, positive day or somewhere in-between, you easily find a reason to drink. One drink can then lead to another and you may struggle to find the off switch. You fall asleep easily but you know it isn’t good quality sleep. You wake up and feel the effects and get through the day. You probably already know you’ll drink again that evening. It becomes a habit of drinking too much and you struggle to make yourself stop for any length of time.

Whether you want to cut down your alcohol consumption, or you want to quit drinking completely, hypnotherapy can help you find the focus, motivation, persistence and control that you need to put you back in charge of what you drink, when you drink and how much you drink.

How To Cope With A Smear Campaign

by Dan Regan | Oct 10, 2025 | Hypnotherapy Hypnosis and NLP

How To Cope With A Smear Campaign

Today I’m writing about how to cope with a smear campaign.

I’ve written before about how we overestimate how much other people think about what we say and do. Other people spend much less time thinking about us than sometimes we expect and imagine. Anxiety, low confidence and low self esteem can cause us to worry unnecessarily about failing or messing up in some way.

But what if someone or some people are talking about you? What if they are doing it to deliberately try and damage your reputation in the eyes of other people? What happens if they are posting untrue things about you on social media that everyone else can read? Hoe do you cope with a smear campaign when somebody, or some people, are trying to tear you down?

Imagine being aware of the whispers, hints and outright accusations about you. In a world of social media, false word spreads. It seems like people are shifting their glances and not answering your messages. You feel misunderstood, misrepresented and attacked. Not for things you did, but based on what others say you did. This is the painful power of a smear campaign.

I should know. I’ve been there. And if you are in this position, know that you are not powerless. The hurt, shock and confusion are real. But there are steps you can take to protect yourself, maintain your integrity and merge stronger. There is the internal mindset work you can do. And the external actions you can use to cope and rebuild.

Why Do I Feel Anxious?

by Dan Regan | Oct 8, 2025 | Anxiety Stress and Panic Attacks

Why Do I Feel Anxious?

One of the most common questions I get asked is, why do I feel anxious?

Someone will be sitting in my office for a free initial consultation or at their first hypnotherapy session. They’ll tell me about their racing, negative thoughts and how they always think the worst. They’ll tell me about the fast breathing, heart palpitations, sweating and other physical symptoms of anxiety. And they’ll then tell me that they don’t know why they feel anxious.

Often life is good and there is not an actual, factual reason for the anxiety. It’s frustrating. The same old thoughts and feelings going around and around. You know you don’t have anything to feel anxious about but it still happens. You may have spent hour after hour racking your brain to try and understand why you feel the way you do.

Logically there is probably no reason for you to feel anxious. Sometimes someone has experienced something, after which they started struggling with anxiety. In those sort of cases we can point to what started it.

Yet, for most people, the anxiety sort of starts and you don’t realise it is a problem until it is already a problem. Then you are stuck with the same habitual pattern of anxious thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions. Your brain is seeking to keep you safe but is overprotecting you because you already know there is no threat. This is where hypnotherapy can help. You can take back control over what is going on inside of your own head. You can start to feel more calm, confident and in control.

Ely Runfest – Hypnotherapy for Running

by Dan Regan | Oct 6, 2025 | Sports Improvement

Ely Runfest – Hypnotherapy for Running

This past weekend, I ran the half marathon at the Ely Runfest event.

Being Welsh, I’m not always a fan of running in the Fens, especially on a blustery day like the one of the race. I’d rather a few hills along the way, or at least my legs seem to prefer it. However, I really enjoyed this race.

I’ve completed the Ely Runfest marathon on two occasions in the past. We are quite lucky to have it on the doorstep here in Ely with the start/finish located right outside the awesome Ely Cathedral. As always, it was a well organised event with friendly and supportive marshals along the route. The fantastic organisation is a real credit to Ely Tri Club who host the event. And the medal is among the best I’ve ever received for completing a race.

I wrote a while back about how I was planning to run the marathon at the Runfest. Sadly, life got in the way of that. Thankfully, the organisers kindly let me drop down to the half marathon so I could still take part (thanks so much again!).

I’ve written plenty of times about the mental health benefits of exercise and activity. It can help with issues such as anxiety, stress and depression. It’s certainly not a ‘fix-all’ but all the research and evidence shows it helps.

When it comes to running (and all sports), your mindset is key to how well you perform. Hypnotherapy can help with so many of the psychological and emotional aspects around running and sport. If you want to perform to the best of your capability, then hypnotherapy can help you to get there.

Domestic Abuse Awareness Month

by Dan Regan | Oct 6, 2025 | Hypnotherapy Hypnosis and NLP

Domestic Abuse Awareness Month

October is Domestic Abuse Awareness Month. It’s a time to shine a light on a subject that sadly affects millions, often behind closed doors and in silence. Whether emotional, psychological, physical or financial, domestic abuse can leave deep scars, not just in the moment, but long after the abusive relationship has ended.

I’ve written before about post separation abuse awareness, something I have personally experienced and that often follows on at the end of an abusive relationship. Even before the post separation stuff, I was trapped in a very controlling relationship, which some would describe as being abusive.

Awareness campaigns highlight the signs of abuse and promote ways you can keep yourself safe and supported. However, it is equally important to talk about the journey of healing, and how tools like hypnotherapy can help you to regain control, confidence and calm after experiencing abuse. You can reclaim your confidence and find inner peace.

And this is important, because domestic abuse isn’t always visible. Many of the psychological and emotional impacts are internal and can be long lasting. Anxiety, low self esteem, PTSD, guilt, depression and even chronic feelings of fear or ‘being on edge’ can continue for months or years after the abuse has stopped.

I’ve worked with many clients who have left abusive relationships but who still carry the heavy emotional burden with them. Some struggle with flashbacks, nightmares or a constant sense of dread. Others have difficulty overcoming anxiety and with forming healthy relationships again. Those unhelpful patterns of thinking and feeling can leave you feeling stuck. And this is where hypnotherapy can offer gentle yet powerful support.

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