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Three of the Best Tips and Exercises to Reduce Anxiety

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How to Remove Anxiety by Watching Boring Objects

Know that life is a series of moments. Developing an ability to watch the present moment, and only this present moment, is the first skill in limiting and removing anxiety. Much the same as we can watch a rock detached, we can watch our thoughts, detached. A rock cannot independently hurt us or endanger us in much the same way our thoughts cannot, unless with empower them to do so. Utilize the following mindfulness exercise to develop this skill and subsequent capacity of removing or lowering anxiety.

Exercise

Watch an object (best if it’s as boring as possible in nature). Develop an awareness that you’re watching the object. Hold it for 10 seconds (or more, whatever is an achievable challenge for you) and switch that awareness to your thoughts. Then watch your thoughts for 10 or more seconds, don’t try and change the thoughts; simply hold the watching of the thoughts for a period of time. This will slowly and naturally engrain within you a natural emphasis on the present moment where you’ll learn that there is no reason to be concerned or worried about imaginary issues because you are in this moment, where no immediate danger exists.

Proactively Think Negative Thoughts and Take Control

Our imagination helps us be creative, problem solve, and ultimately does help us in our lives. But our imagination also creates most of our anxiety. Daydreams turn into worrying nightmares. Thoughts and imaginary scenarios represented by the following thought patterns are examples:

“The bills are piling up, too much is going on my credit card and I will have to pay interest”
“I haven’t made enough sales this month, I could get fired”
“I might not get enough work next month, nor have enough money for the mortgage”

These imaginary scenarios that we stress about very rarely come to reality. One way of taking control of these thoughts, not allowing them to happen onto you, is to proactively inoculate yourself from them – removing their power and their hold. One way of doing that is to go negative. It seems counter intuitive but if we sit down and proactively write down all the possible worst case scenarios and subsequently plan for those rare outcomes, we remove the stress ‘charge’ by being prepared and confident that we’d be able to deal with that negative outcome if it occured.

Exercise

The following is a good example and an exercise you can do yourself:

“I may lose my job next week, there’s talk of sackings

What would I do if that occurred?

If that occured, on the day I was to be fired, I’d make sure I’d walk out with a good reference from multiple people. I would get my resume in order. In fact, I’ll see if I can get both of those two things in order now. I would call other companies and market myself and I would find out what they want and need in employees, using that information to help me get a job somewhere else if I didn’t get one there. I would call agents to see what’s available. I would follow up. I would scour the internet. I would simply find a way to make it happen. If all else fails I’ll borrow money from family. I will survive. I always have.”

Suddenly you’ve inoculated yourself from the feared thoughts because you are prepared and thus more confident in the event that something like that occurred.  You can thus dismiss anxious thoughts more easily and the fear associated with them.

My Favourite Technique

I firmly believe that all anxieties and negative emotions have healthy origins and are healthier in nature that how we represent them to ourselves. These anxieties are simply signposts to suggest that something isn’t right and to pay those feelings attention. One way of releasing negative emotions and anxieties is to sit with them, and pay them attention. They only ever want attention. They do not want to be pushed away and suppressed into yearning the benefits of bad habits. Once they get the period of attention they need, they will simply dissolve. Children are good at this, when they get upset everyone knows it and they release the energy immediately. Adults on the other hand often suppress emotions and this consequently develops the appearance of a background anxiety, or negative feelings.

Exercise

A good little exercise to release these anxious thoughts and feelings is the following. It allows you to accept the feelings and anxious thoughts and this naturally allows them to be released. It is very, very simple but highly effective and repetitive. It is a series of questions. The answers aren’t important but the questions and an awareness of the anxiety, heavy emotions in the body are.

The questions are:

“Can I embrace this feeling?
“Would I want to let it go?
“Could I let it go?
If so, when?”

Repeat the exercise 10 -15 times with your eyes closed and you’ll surely notice a difference to how you feel.

There have been numerous scientific studies that show the benefits of hypnotherapy for anxiety and phobia conditions also. I strongly suggest that modality if you want further assistance in feeling better.

Paul
Hypnotherapy Melbourne

Denying Reality Through Smoking, Drinking and or Eating Too Much

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A realisation that I had recently really put bad habits in a perspective I hadn’t considered before. Not only have I understood for a long time that we carry out nonsensical behaviours because of benefits that are conscious and or often unconscious, we do them also because they help us deny reality, or at least, to briefly escape from it.

That the undercurrent of feelings that we often hold in our bodies and minds force parts of our minds to want to escape from and deny them. That the mind looks for the quickest mechanism it knows in which to do so. That’s where smoking comes in for a lot of smokers. That they nip down from their office building a few times a day to have that smoke to avoid the stressful environment of working in a job they probably don’t like. It’s why many smokers smoke more during times of stress and tension. The need to escape and deny reality through the act of smoking increases during those periods of heightened stress and people smoke more accordingly.

Binge drinking is another common example. At the end of the day people are still usually in flight mode, or stress mode, wanting to return to a state of equilibrium, a state of comfort. But it can be a bit hard when there are 100 different issues going on inside that persons mind. To escape reality they have a drink, which turns into ten, because our minds say “hold on, let’s take advantage of this and escape from the tension, stress, and worries”.

The solution most of the time to all of this is to confront reality. To not deny it or escape from it, but to confront it head on. And that means noticing the feelings and thoughts in the body and mind when that part of you wants to escape and deny reality. This is when you want to smoke or when you want to drink or eat chocolate (comfort food).

Be present with your body and mind when you finish work. Where do you notice stress being held in the body? What is the underlying feeling like? By being aware of the part of the body, or all of the body where the stress is being held, the body sends signals to the brain to release that stress and tension. It’s why there are so many yoga fanatics out there, because it works. Their focus is on the body, and when our focus and attention are on the body, that anxiety or yearning for that negative behaviour is released because one isn’t denying reality anymore or trying to escape from it. It can be difficult initially but with practice, learning to watch the body gets easier as does living without the habit or behaviour (hypnosis can fast track this generally).

There can be of course biological reasons why we crave certain things. Nicotine in cigarettes, sugar in comfort food etc. But most of these desires are psychological in nature. Smokers don’t freak out generally when they’ve sat on a plane for a bit less than a day travelling half way around the world and haven’t been able to smoke. For most smokers it’s not nicotine, it’s the need to deny and escape the stress, the reality. But when we go inside and face that reality it never really is that bad. Parts of our mind just thought it was.

Paul Brickhill
Hypnotherapy Melbourne

Are You Ready to Stop Smoking?

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Hypnotherapy to stop smoking is a powerful tool and aid in helping someone cross that line once and for all and quit smoking permanently. However there are a few important considerations that should be considered before you look at quitting. These considerations should help you evaluate whether now is the right time. It is true that there perhaps is never a right time, but I’m a firm believer that there is certainly a preferred environment that helps the process along too. And being as consciously ready as you can be only increases your long term chances of success.

Are your home and work environments stable?

Oddly I’ve seen lots of people who are going through a relationship breakdown or family crisis that want to stop. Regardless of whether hypnosis is utilized or not,  success is limited with these individuals. I advise people that if they’re going through any sort of relationship or family crisis to seek counseling first before they seek to quit.

Equally if you hate your job or are under any sort of significant stress, its best that you seek to remedy the situation to lower stress levels before you attempt to cease smoking. Hypnosis can help with that.

Do you ‘have to’ change? Do you ‘need to’ change? Or do you WANT to change?

There is certainly a successful correlation between those that want to change as opposed to ‘needing to’ quit or ‘having to’ quit and finally stopping. The ideal answer would include all three of course with a more primary emphasis on wanting to quit. “I want to quit because my life will be better” et cetera.

Is this your decision to stop or someone else’s?

Consider beforehand whether you’re solely driving this decision or whether the decision is being driven by someone else. For the attempt to be successful long term, I believe the person must want to quit for his or her own reasons and not because they feel compelled to through fear of losing a relationship or job.

Understanding possible sacrifices.

For most people they don’t have to sacrifice anything long term to be a non smoker, that they realize that life is better in every way healthy. However it must be accepted that other things might have to be sacrificed in the short term. A good example is drinking alcohol. A student can’t really go out and get intoxicated five times a week and expect to hold it together in the week they cease smoking cigarettes with or without the help of hypnotherapy. A period of abstinence from drinking alcohol, or the addition of hypnosis for drinking prior to stopping cigarettes would be of benefit. A good little exercise is writing down the typical moments in which you smoke more and to ask yourself whether you’re able to sacrifice those moments for a period of time. Good examples include a brief cessation of dinners with smoking and drinking friends, night clubbing, cricket club environments et cetera.

Exercise

Most people say that they will exercise after stopping smoking, that they will get fit again and improve their body’s abilities. It’s obviously a good idea, but I recommend that you get back into fitness before you quit. Everything is harder smoking but the truth is, you’ll get in touch with your body, you’ll notice how much it needs you to stop, and it will motivate you further, ramping up your own personal desire to cease cigarettes and taking it to a higher level.

If you’re looking to do the program please read the quit smoking program details on the website, to read other articles go here hypnotherapy Melbourne blog.

The Benefits of our Bad Habits.

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We are made up of parts, almost individual little people that have their own wants, desires and needs. It’s a bit crazy to say but the reality is that its closer to the truth that us humans being one wholesome uncomplicated unit with one set of drivers.

When I smoked cigarettes it was almost as if I had multiple personally disorder. There was the part of me that wanted to go outside and have that cigarette and there was another part of me that wanted to quit and would say things like:

“You don’t need to have that cigarette”
“You’ll regret it and feel guilty”
“Stay inside”

And then I’d have that cigarette.

I would have these internal discussions and arguments inside my head and would often wonder how the part of me that represented logic and reason would never seemingly prevail. That it was always the smoking part that won. Or the eating or the drinking part for others.

For most that ‘bad’ part represents a benefit – that it holds onto that behaviour because there’s a positive pay off, seemingly a ‘benefit’.

At the end of the day many smokers have a cigarette as a way of ‘calming down’. It doesn’t really calm them down, it simply has been associated with a sense of relief that the day is over – this association is the benefit that that part fears losing and thus advocates to the smoker (often unconsciously), to continue to smoke.

Another part of me that told me to continue to smoke would tell me that I wouldn’t enjoy socializing as much if I did stop.  That somehow I wouldn’t appreciate those moments in the same way without the two thousand odd chemicals that go with smoking. Of course, its only when you do stop smoking permanently that you realise that those moments socializing with friends and family are infinitely better as a normal person, a non smoker.

One of the objectives of hypnosis is to align these parts, to have them let go of the ‘benefits’, and to drop the negative behaviour.

If you’re looking at making a change, with or without hypnotherapy, look underneath the surface of the behaviour. How does it benefit? How will I replicate the benefits? Do I need to make any other changes that will make this change more streamlined or easier?

Let’s use a fictional chocolate addiction as an example – many people have a chocolate addiction. They eat chocolate at night and sometimes throughout the day.  Lets say for this example I had one.

Example:

How does it benefit?

It emotionally comforts me. It gives me a little sugar buzz. I start thinking more positive thoughts. It’s anchored to better feelings. It helps me avoid negative thoughts and feelings.

How will I replicate the benefits through a more positive means?

I can get similar benefits doing things that I perhaps did when I was younger, or hobbies I’ve forgotten I actually like. Eg. Painting, gardening, online learning, building a website etc. I can increase my levels of protein to help support this decreased sugar diet.

What are other changes could be made to support this change?

Ending or accepting what causes you stress (see stress release exercise), exercise or meditation.

The process of change is far easier with hypnotherapy, but the process is much clearer if the client has an understanding of the respective ‘benefits’ of their vice.

To read other articles, click here. To book an appointment, click here.

One Powerful Stress Release Technique

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Emotions can be felt consciously. We know when we are angry, sad, annoyed, frustrated etc. But often, it’s not these emotions that are the cause of unwanted behaviours.  It’s the emotions that have been suppressed unconsciously over the years and have been stored inside the body that are the things that yearn for these behaviours.

One simple way of releasing these emotions is the following stress release technique.  It is extremely simple but highly effective.  So simple that some may think it won’t work.  It is ideal for situations where you might be craving for comfort food, or cigarettes and are wanting to stop smoking.  It is also ideal for when you can physically feel tightness or a level of stress inside the body.  It is also handy for unwanted thoughts.

The first step is locating in the body the stress, tightness or emotional heaviness.  It can usually be found in the chest or stomach. The more you can feel a presence, the more you’ll benefit from this technique.  So with an awareness of this feeling, you can ask yourself a series of questions.  The answers are not important but an awareness of the feeling is and the guiding questions are.

The questions are:

“Could I embrace this feeling”
“Could I let it go?”
“Would I let it go?
“If yes, when would I let it go?

Simply repeat the series of questions at least 10 times or until the feeling has gone.  You should notice an immediate benefit within a few minutes of doing the meditation.