How Hypnosis Can Help You Stop Panic Attacks
By Dr Janet Hall, Clinical Psychologist and Hypnotherapist
"What's the use of living when I feel this bad? I used to be happy and excited about life. Where did the old me go? I just want her back. I want to feel safe again. I want to be independent and not this scared blob of sadness"
Jen burst into uncontrollable sobs. She had had enough.
Forty-two years of age. Jen looked much older. Her hair was messy, her eyes had deep shadows underneath them and her shoelaces were undone. She noticed me looking and said; "I know I look pathetic. I never used to let myself go. I used to look a million dollars."
It all started for Jen four years ago when she began to suffer from panic attacks. She described her job then as a Secretary in a busy law firm as being usually satisfying. She thrived on her ability to cope with multiple demands from many people. Then she suddenly began experiencing panic symptoms such as heart racing, sweating and a feeling of losing control. Initially they happened mostly during meetings, where she was expected to take notes. Her symptoms overwhelmed her, she went blank and eventually had to leave the room to recover. Later she felt humiliated.
Jen decided that she needed a change to a less stressful job. She started to help a friend who ran a small florist shop. The panic attacks continued, and after a month, Jen found that she was dreading leaving the house. In fact, she dreaded waking up in the morning. She became deeply depressed.
Thus started a four year search for help. By the time she consulted with me, she had been on medication and had weekly sessions with a psychiatrist for two years with no improvement. She said "I can't even bother to have a shower".
For the first session, Jen cried and cried and cried as she described her depressed and helpless feelings. I decided that she needed a gentle treatment that would compassionately help her to boost her self-esteem and ability to cope and give her some expectations of enjoying life again. I explained the treatment process of hypnosis to her as "a natural antidepressant and relaxant".
Treatment of anxiety and depression can be a long process. In fact, the slow progress can be fearfully depressing!
Wouldn't you be interested in a gentle way of enhancing your good mood and revving yourself up to achieve what you are capable of?
Hypnosis could help!What is Hypnosis?
You may well ask - What is this fabulous technique called hypnosis and how does it work?Here's the amazing truth.Hypnosis is not magic.
Hypnosis is a state of altered consciousness that happens to everyone!
It can occur naturally when a person has become totally absorbed in what they are doing.
So, like day-dreaming, hypnotic-like states can occur regularly in normal people.
Hypnosis is not the same as sleep. And it's certainly not like an anaesthetic.
You don't pass out and you are not unconscious when you are hypnotized.
Nor do you lose control over your mind or your feelings.
You don't give up your willpower or surrender to another person in hypnosis.
In fact, hypnosis can strengthen your willpower!
In hypnosis, it is usual to feel relaxed, at ease, and you may well enjoy a special peace of mind. Many people comment on their feeling of comfort or security or the sensation of lightness of floating.
What is particularly wonderful about the use of hypnosis is the fact that it is natural and safe when used by trained professional hypnotherapists.
Also almost everyone can learn to use it on themselves and be helped by it.
It can be learned to be used by adults, adolescents and children!
There are two ways that hypnosis can be used to help people change for the best:
1. Hypnotherapy
This is where a hypnotherapist induces an altered state of attention or degree of awareness in another person. The process may result in a variety of phenomena, which occur spontaneously or in response to verbal suggestions. These phenomena include changes in memory and an increased openness to, and sometimes even surprising acceptance of, changes in thoughts, feelings and behaviours due to suggestions made by the hypnotherapist.
2. Self-hypnosis
This is where a person puts themselves in a state of deep relaxation and altered state.They can do this by listening to a prerecorded audiotape or CD which has suggestions which they themselves chose to make are recorded in their own voice.
The suggestions help them move rapidly into hypnosis and further suggestions help them to focus on positive changes that they have decided that they want to have happen in their lives.
If they do not wish to use a tape, they may simply allow themselves to be suspended in the changed state of consciousness and trust that positive changes occur in them as a result.
So What Happened with Jen?
You know, it's such a marvellous feeling to see someone overcome a problem that was making their life deplorably miserable! Over the next six months Jen had hypnotherapy in session and practised at home with her personalised self-hypnosis audiotape.Positive changes were very gradual. At first she started to take care of her appearance. She cut her hair, put the track-suit in the cupboard and found her lipstick. She said the hardest part was getting into the shower in the morning but once in there she would repeat her hypnotic suggestions to herself over and over again to get herself ready for the day.
Jen started walking with her daughter in the evenings after dinner. She said "At first I walked to get out into the fresh air but then I found I lost some weight and that was a great bonus!"
She started back at work with her friend, the florist, but only part-time. Jen was determined that she was never going to push herself to be "superwoman" again.
So What Are the Benefits of Hypnosis for Anxiety?
- Hypnosis is a natural relaxant! You can be drug-free.
- You are the initiator of change and it proceeds at your own pace.
- It is gradual and boosts your self-esteem from the inside.
- Hypnosis helps enhance the positive expectations of the future.
- You can relax and use self-hypnosis in the privacy of your own home and in your own time.
To contact Dr Jan at her Richmond rooms, call (03-9429 1677) or check out her website at www.goalmaker.com/asc.
You can also contact Dr Jan about her prerecorded Self-hypnosis Audiotapes from the Super-boost Your Success collection which are designed specifically for help with Depression, Anxiety and Panic Attacks:
- How Hypnosis Can Help You Defeat Depression
- How Hypnosis Can Help You Stop Panic Attacks
- How Hyonosis Can Help You Sleep Deeply (Every Night)
- How Hypnosis Can Help You Stop Procrastinating ; and
- How Hypnosis Can Super-boost Your Self-Esteem
