Everyone feels anxious sometimes, but for some people, their anxieties can start to take over their whole lives. If you are always feeling worried or anxious, and you cannot seem to get these feelings under control, you may be suffering from an anxiety disorder. These disorders can negatively affect many parts of your life, including your general health, so finding an effective treatment is important.
The use of hypnotherapy to treat anxiety disorders can be an effective tool for helping to reduce the impact of anxiety on your life. However, many patients are unsure exactly how hypnotherapy works, and they may have concerns that need to be alleviated before the therapy can be effective. If you are considering using hypnotherapy to treat your anxiety, the following information may be helpful.
In hypnotherapy, the therapist will use various techniques to help you enter a hypnotic trance. Such a trance involves a state of heightened awareness that allows you to maintain an intense focus on a specific task or train of thought, while blocking out anything else that may be going on around you. This hyper-focused state can be very helpful in allowing you to deal with the root causes of your anxiety.
There are two main ways in which your therapist may use hypnotherapy for anxiety disorders. The first is suggestion therapy, which involves making suggestions that help you change certain patterns of behavior or overcome ingrained habits of thought.
While you are in the hypnotic trance, your mind is more susceptible to suggestion. If there are certain behaviors or habits that are contributing to your anxiety, it may be easier for you to alter these patterns of thought while under hypnosis.
Some patients worry that this involves brainwashing them or letting the therapist control their minds. However, this is not the case. Even under hypnosis, you cannot be made to do anything dangerous or anything that you would not otherwise be willing to do. All hypnotherapy is doing is making it easier for you to make the changes that you already want to make.
The other main use for hypnotherapy is in the analysis of your condition. If there are hidden or suppressed psychological causes or traumas that are contributing to your anxiety, a skilled therapist can use hypnosis to uncover these and bring them to the surface. Once you are conscious of these influences, it may be easier for you to face them and deal with their effects on your life.
Hypnotherapy can be used for many other psychological problems other than anxiety disorders. For example, it can be helpful in dealing with phobias, sleep disorders, addictions, and the grieving process. An experienced hypnotherapist can help you learn how to better control your anxiety disorder so that it does not control you.
Anxiety disorders, if left untreated, can wreak havoc on your life. A program of treatment that includes hypnotherapy to help with anxiety disorders can be very effective in letting you control your anxieties so that you can enjoy a happier and healthier life.