Anxiety: A Paper Tiger

Anxiety* is an insidious, haunting monster that can suck the joy out of your life; and is one of the most common reasons for people to see me, after weight loss and addictions.

My anxiety battle began in Nursing school, when I ate too many chocolate covered espresso beans and ended up in the emergency room. (I know, silly reason to go to the emergency room, but I didn’t know what was happening — I thought I was having a heart attack.) But this was only the incident that “primed” the anxiety engine. After that introduction, I started having anxiety attacks all the time, because now I knew what panic felt like.

Surprisingly, anxiety is one of the major causes of non-biological depression (i.e., your thoughts cause depression), because the chronic worry changes your brain connections, and “teaches” you the habits of hopeless thinking, which soon turns into a way of life.

Ugh! Anxiety is my personal archenemy! I have a special zeal for battling anxiety in my clients! Without managing or eliminating anxiety, life can become a hopeless prison.

I have a personal working theory of Anxiety, and it has four parts (NOTE: There are many factors which are out of a clients control, such as genetics, environment, etc.. I am concentrating on the controllable factors):

1) Experiencing a initial sensitizing event which introduces you to the feeling.

2) Worrying about the future, and only concentrating on what can go wrong.

3) Feeling anxiety in your body, and then getting worried, which creates more signals in your body, etc. (Cycle of anxiety.)

4) Believing anxiety is real. Fearing anxiety, and then having that fear trigger anxiety.

So, how do you combat this? The simplest way is to stop these cycles before they start to build upon themselves.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), the most common type of Therapy treatment used today, teaches you to break the cycle of “Feeling Anxiety in your body” and works on thinking (the cognitive part of CBT) techniques that focus on “concentrating on Positive outcomes.”

Medicine works on changing the chemistry of the brain, so that anxiety is reduced; antidepressants (for thinking) and anxiolytics (anti-anxiety meds) to reduce symptoms of anxiety in both the long term and short term.

Astute readers my have noticed that this only works on three of the 4 components of my hypothesis of Anxiety. Both of these treatment modalities cannot address the initial sensitizing event (ISE).

How does Hypnosis differ?

Lets look at how 5-PATH hypnotists would tackle each of them.

1) ISE: Age regression hypnosis to a) desensitize the client to the ISE and subsequent events and b) rewrite the narrative of the past at the deepest level, thus neutralizing the feelings associated with those past events.

2) Future Worry: Hypnotic suggestions are given that will be triggered to alert the client of worrying about the future, and replace those worries with focusing on all the positive things that can happen instead, both at the Conscious and Unconscious levels. In addition, Age Progression and Forgiveness of Others/Self is used.

3) Bodily Sensations: There are many techniques that can be used to resolve this part, including Age Regression to desensitize and neutralize past fears (which are being referenced when your Unconscious triggers an Anxiety response), teaching profound relaxation techniques (while in hypnosis, which teaches the Unconscious how to relax. This is important, as the Unconscious is in charge of bodily sensations!) and of course Post Hypnotic Suggestions to trigger more positive responses.

4) Specific hypnotic scripts designed to reveal that Anxiety is an illusion, made by your mind, that has no real power, at all. During the session(s) anxiety is dissected and revealed to be nothing but smoke and mirrors, a paper Tiger with no ability to affect you if you don’t believe in it. Once your Conscious and Unconscious believe this, anxiety can’t work (unless it tricks you again, which is possible. However, the other techniques have been installed and will decrease the likely-hood that any more “illusions” will deceive you.)

As always, I suggest using ALL available modalities — Therapy, Medicine, Hypnosis, etc. — to resolve your internal struggles. But hypnosis is the only one that addresses ALL of the aspects of anxiety.

My personal goal is for you to believe that anxiety is nothing to be worried about. I want you to feel like Anxiety is something you used to feel, before you knew it was actually nothing at all. I want you to be so over anxiety that you barely even think about anxiety, and when you do, you literally laugh at how silly it was.

Stupid anxiety, you’re a fraud. You ain’t got nothin!

If I could give you one peice of advice it is this: Belevive me, PLEASE, if you don’t worry about anxiety, you wont have anxiety. Anytime you feel anxiety, just tell yourself, “Oh, there is that fake signal again,” and get a little mad.

F** you anxiety! You can’t trick me!

And then forget about it, and go on with your day.

If you need support with anxiety, do all the normal things, call your doctor, talk to a therapist. After that, contact a 5-PATH hypnotist.

I heard a hypnotist describe anxiety like a video game final boss battle. You don’t have to win the first time, or even the second or third … or 12th. But each time you battle it, you gain knowledge, and eventually you beat it. You can get to the point where you can beat it everytime, quite easily. You just need to not avoid it, and learn. Winning is inevitable!

As always, I wish you relief, peace and joy. You deserve it (you really do!).

*I am using Anxiety in the common usage of uncontrolled fear and worry, not as a diagnosed disorder.