Here's how Hypnosis can help reduce Stress

What is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis is a procedure which affects your subconscious mind, putting you in a trance-like state where you have higher concentration and focus. The procedure is usually done by a therapist using verbal repetition and mental images in order to calm you down and make you more open to suggestions and recommendations. Hypnosis affects the subconscious mind, which is responsible for the root causes of our habits and is used to help you gain control over undesired behaviours such as smoking and overeating as well as to help you cope better with anxiety, stress and pain.

Why you should reduce Stress ASAP

Hypnosis has an emphasis on mental relaxation, which makes it a highly effective way to manage stress symptoms and develop healthier and better self care habits that help reduce stress and improve your wellbeing. Stress is normal and is a part of everyone’s life, however, chronic stress has the potential to severely affect a person’s quality of life and contribute to physical and mental issues such as high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, anxiety, sleep issues and also sexual side effects. It can also cause severe migraines and exacerbate existing conditions.

Is Hypnosis really effective?

Hypnotherapy breaks down your negative thought patterns and responses to stress and replaces it with a healthy reaction. This is accomplished through the subconscious mind which is the part of our brain that is constantly working in the background and is the part responsible for our habits and thought patterns. The hypnotherapist will make you enter a state of deep relaxation which makes your subconscious mind more open, the hypnotherapist will then give you new positive ways to respond to and deal with stress. 

Hypnosis has been proven to help reduce symptoms of stress and anxiety, there has been much research on the efficacy and effectiveness of hypnotherapy to treat chronic stress related disorders and the findings have been positive. A meta-analysis which reviewed and analyzed the findings lamost 400 records, many studies and trials of hypnosis as a way to control symptoms of anxiety have concluded that it is the most effective way to reduce anxiety. Another study where patients with acute stress disorders were offered either cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) or a combination of both CBT and hypnosis has shown the latter to be more effective in reducing symptoms of stress. Another review of research which examined 9 different studies that investigated the relationship between hypnosis and stress reduction concluded that 6 of them showed hypnosis had a significant impact on stress and helped the patients reduce and manage their stress much more effectively.

How Hypnosis Works

When our minds enter a state of hypnosis, it relaxes and becomes much more receptive to new information. The subconscious part of your mind; which is where 90% of your actions are taken; is free from the critical part of your mind to accept new information and update its thoughts and beliefs. This state of mind will empower you to reframe your mind, and fill your subconscious mind with positive reinforcement which will overpower all the negative thinking that is making you stressed. There are three ways that this can be done: 

1. Reframing Negative thoughts- Our mind has always been conditioned to think negatively about stressful situations because we needed to protect ourselves from danger using the fight and flight syndrome. Hypnosis can help train the mind to recognize negative thinking patterns and come up with new positive ways to think about stressful situations.
2. Calming the mind- There are plenty of situations these days where we experience stress on a daily basis, especially during the pandemic, whether it’s financial, social or just daily stresses. Our mind does not shut off when we experience stress, it constantly runs loops of thoughts making it hard to be able to calm down and relax. By using self-hypnosis, your mind will be able to relax and you can calm down in just a few minutes.
3. Empowering your sense of confidence- Sometimes stress is caused by your lack of confidence or an inner voice that you hear which doesn’t support and encourage you, hypnosis helps change that and works on the subconscious mind in order to teach it to be more supportive.

Hypnosis is available in many forms, you can download the programs online but they will not be that effective because they were not tailored specifically for you and your requirements, you can also try self-hypnosis such as by practicing deep breathing, countdown, positive affirmations and visualization but the effectiveness is not guaranteed and they just work temporarily to reduce your stress. If you really want to become less stressed by targeting the source of the stress directly then you should consider sessions with a hypnotherapist. If you are interested in Hypnosis and you would like a consultation do not hesitate to contact Dr. Narindr Vang at one of the links below.