Hypnotherapy Information Exchange

Anger is best defined as an emo­tional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation, to intense fury and rage. It is a per­fectly natural and poten­tially pro­ductive human emotion; a response to a threat that inspires powerful, often aggressive feelings reactions, which allow us to fight back and defend ourselves. As such, in the days of pre­historic man, exper­i­encing anger was critical to our survival.

However in more modern times, we usually feel anger when we are being hurt; our boundaries are being violated; our needs are being ignored; or, during numerable other scenarios where our expect­ations are not being met. In these situ­ations we express anger as a means to regain control of the situation and in that regard; it is a per­fectly natural state.

Most people experience a healthy dose of anger many times during their lives. However anger becomes a problem when it is exper­ienced too fre­quently, too intensely, or for long periods of time.

•Too Fre­quently – most people respond to dif­ficult everyday situ­ations by exper­i­encing rel­atively healthy emotions such as stress, frus­tration, hurt or even fear; they reserve anger for the really serious situ­ations in life. However for some of us, we tend to react to everyday situ­ations by imme­diately getting angry and it becomes an all too frequent response, affecting our rela­tionships, our careers and the quality of our lives.

•Too Intensely – even when most people get angry, the level of anger is usually restricted to raising the voice and expressing a few choice words. However for some of us we find our anger is much more intense, and when we get court up in it, it leads to unne­cessary levels of aggression and quite possibly violence.

•Too Long – and even when ordinary people get angry to a more intense level, as a result of venting the anger, they usually find it subsides within a short space of time. However for some of us, once we’re into the cycle, it’s dif­ficult to get out of. Even after the situation is over, we may stay caught in a loop, mulling over agitated thoughts and images for no pro­ductive purpose, leaving us with a lingering sense of anger, vic­tim­ization, and dis­ap­pointment that per­meates us and those around us for hours, possibly days.

And when we experience anger that’s too frequent, too intense or too long lasting, there are harmful effects on our health — because anger involves the activation of many physical arousal systems, anger causes a very real strain on your body. Recent sci­entific studies have found that recurrent anger con­tributes to a number of serious ill­nesses, including heart disease and hypertension.

For those of us who realise we’re hurting and pushing away the people in our lives, damaging our family, social and work rela­tionships, not to mention our health, there is a plethora of self-​​help material out there on the web.

But do they work? Well that’s something that you’re going to have decide for yourself. But here’s the point, the primary source of anger related issues is the sub or uncon­scious mind. Anger is not a con­scious response — if you could con­sciously decide to stop getting angry, wouldn’t you simply decide to do so?

The reality is that this would be a little like asking your con­scious mind to forget how to ride a bike. You couldn’t could you, even if you tried? And that’s the point, whilst all these self-​​help strategies may have some merit, they do not deal with the real source of the issue, they do not access the uncon­scious mind, the reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that sit outside of our con­scious awareness and influence all of our beha­viours and experiences.

Through hypnosis, we can access the uncon­scious mind and harness its extreme power to reprogram habitual patterns of behaviour, such as responding angrily to everyday situations.

Hypnosis bypasses the con­scious mind and creates an alternative state of con­sciousness in which attention is focused away from the present reality. Rather like day dreaming, attention can then be focussed towards par­ticular images, thoughts, per­ceptions, feelings, motiv­ations and beha­viours which will help change our habitual responses and learnt behaviours.

Our body already has natural mech­anisms to handle stress and regulate emotions such as anger, but occa­sionally they need help in operating properly. Hypnosis helps you do just that – it enlists the help of your uncon­scious mind in making the necessary long term changes for you to be free of anger, allowing you to be alto­gether more relaxed and in control in all those situ­ations in which you used to lose control.

Ori­ginally posted 2009-​​04-​​06 20:44:56.

Hypnosis is of enormous help in reducing stress and/​or anxiety levels, though there are two dis­tinctly dif­ferent methods of treatment. Whether you need help for a ‘one-​​off’ situation like a driving test, for example, or a more per­sistent and possibly deeper-​​rooted problem, Hypnosis can help you. The best method for any indi­vidual can really only be determined by con­sultation, many people finding that two or three sessions, spread over a month or so, are sufficient.

For more information on exactly how Hyp­no­therapy can help you visit www.noelbradford.com

Ori­ginally posted 2009-​​03-​​29 19:54:04.

Why can’t I cure my own bad habit?

If you have a bad habit — such as comfort eating, smoking or an addiction to gambling or alcohol, for example, then you can probably answer the question for yourself. A lot of us simply can’t kick a bad habit on our own — we tend to say that it’s because we don’t have the willpower to actually carry it through.

The fact is that any kind of bad habit takes hold of you both psy­cho­lo­gically and phys­ically. So, when you try to kick the habit yourself you have to deal with a lot of mental stress and physical side effects that can really throw you. So, for many people, it’s simply easier to pick up the bad habit again to make the nasty symptoms go away. This doesn’t make us weak or mean that we lack willpower — it simply means that our bad habit has taken such a hold we need external help to deal with it once and for all.
How can hypnosis help?

There are all kinds of methods you can try to help you kick a bad habit. Most of these will try and appeal to your brain on a con­scious level. So, for example, you might go along to a ‘Quit Smoking’ group where you socialize with other smokers and counsel each other on the effects of smoking and so on. On a purely rational level you will walk out of a meeting knowing that smoking is bad for you and knowing that you want to quit. Read the rest of this entry →

Ori­ginally posted 2009-​​03-​​24 21:09:33.