How you defeat your anxiety with hypnotherapy


BY ANDREW MCDONALD

HYPNOTHERAPIST

You have two major parts of your mind. The conscious and the subconscious. The first is responsible for all the things you do deliberately, the second for everything you do on autopilot.

All purposeful action is controlled by your conscious. All your behaviours and habits by your subconscious. Which do you think is more powerful?

If you said your subconscious, you’d be absolutely right. This is why it is so difficult to overcome anxiety with your conscious mind. It’s the equivalent of an unarmed, infant human child going up against a fully grown, adult gorilla. There’s only going to be one winner.

Yes, I know David beat Goliath, but he did that with a sling full of shot, not a right hook.

Anxiety is a way of being. It is a behaviour. A habit.

Smokers find it very difficult to quit, right? Again because they are trying to defeat an unconscious, habitual behaviour with their conscious, deliberate mind. In the battle between autopilot v purposeful action, the former has an infinite advantage.

What if you could turn all that on its head?

You can. And it’s easier than you ever imagined. All you need is to manipulate a natural physical process to your advantage. In other words, use your subconscious.

Here’s how.

You know that feeling just before you fall asleep? That point where you aren’t fully conscious but you aren’t completely unconscious either? Chances are, if you’re reading this, you experience that every day. That’s the point where your conscious and subconscious are in harmony and communicating most effectively with each other.

Now, whilst it would be a bad job to start the chatter going between these two parts of the mind when you’re trying to fall asleep, it’s perfectly possible to reach that state at other times of the day. This is where hypnotherapy comes in. Hypnosis is not weird, nor is it magical, all it does is relaxes you into that between consciousness and unconsciousness state where the real work can begin.

Once you are in hypnosis, just like when you are at that point between being awake and falling asleep, your conscious and unconscious minds are speaking to each other. At that moment, the purposeful action you want to achieve, being less anxious, can inform your habitual behaviour of its desires.

This is why a hypnotherapist will hold a consultation with you prior to an appointment. To find out exactly what you want to get out of life. A discovery meeting where you express how you want to defeat your anxiety, why and what life would be like for you if anxious thoughts and behaviours were no longer part of it.

It is those ideas that a hypnotherapist will then speak back to your unconscious mind when they have you in that deeply relaxed state. From there, your conscious thoughts become subconscious behaviours and habits. A life without anxiety awaits.

 

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