Reducing Christmas Stress with Hypnotherapy

As the winter holiday season approaches, I thought it might be a good time to highlight how hypnotherapy can help those who might be anticipating a less than happy Christmas or holiday season.

Depression and anxiety are on the increase in the UK, with more than 12 million people going to see their GP with some form of mental health issue each year- and many more struggling on without any form of help. For some people, the festive season exacerbates their existing symptoms, and for others, depression and anxiety are quite specific to this time of year, approaching it with dread rather than excitement. When everyone else seems to be getting ready for a merry time with their loved ones, for some people this time of year only worsens their feelings of isolation, depression and loneliness, and for others, the struggle to cope with the pressures associated with having a great time, managing finances, family and all of the associated stressors creates a tremendous feeling of anxiety.

What sorts of things cause this “Holiday Stress”? Well, it depends - these feelings are all individual, and of course what makes one person sad, anxious or depressed may not affect another person at all.

Typical sources of holiday stress can include trying to balance all the demands of family with shopping and the social engagements, unrealistic expectations, financial worries and sometimes bereavement - this can be a very difficult time of year. Sometimes the pressure of being with people (often family) that you would not choose to be with can lead to relationship tension. There’s been a lot of talk in recent times of environmental factors too and Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

So it’s not a great time for those who feel depressed or anxious. Symptoms can range from increased headaches, excessive drinking, comfort eating, insomnia, trouble concentrating, to mood swings, fatigue, tearfulness – while everyone around seems so happy. So what can be done to help?

Hypnotherapy can help by overcoming negative thinking styles. Solution Focused Hypnotherapy (SFH) uses practical, modern and well-researched strategies to help make significant, positive changes in your life in a relatively short period of time. We focus on what you want to achieve rather than on the problem(s) that prompted you to seek change. The approach focuses on the present and future and not on the past. This enables you to identify possible solutions for yourself and work towards them. Hypnosis itself reduces anxiety and this is done very simply through relaxation and visualisation, allowing you to focus on the positive aspects of your life that encourages a shift in perspective.

I am enthusiastic about how hypnotherapy helps clients at this time of year. I have been able to help many people to deal with holiday sadness, depression and anxiety. It is such a powerful and truly positive technique as I am able to work with what the client wants to happen rather than focus on negatives. It’s great to know that I can work with people to proactively help them have a happier festive period.

Combat Stress; Think Happy Thoughts!

As Mental Health Awareness Week is approaching at the end of the month (21 - 28 May 2012), I thought I would write a post to highlight how hypnotherapy can help you cope with stress by generating positive images of the future.

A recent survey shows that 3 million people in the UK suffer with an anxiety disorder. The good news is that recent research into the relationship between what we think and how we feel could help you think yourself happier.

It seems that worrying thoughts and imagining unpleasant situations can produce physical stress in the body. A study in 2007 found that performing guided imagery of moderately unpleasant situations results in physical responses such as accelerated heart rate, faster breathing and sweating.(1) It seems that imagining unpleasant events can activate the brain’s fear network and result in an activation of the sympathetic nervous system.(2)

If we ever needed proof that worrying is not good for us, well here it is! Just by imagining these unpleasant situations, it triggers the "fight or flight" response as if it were actually happening to you at that precise moment, resulting in all those unpleasant physical sensations which are associated with anxiety.

The good news is that the converse also seems to be true; imagining positive events can make us feel better. A large part of my role as a hypnotherapist is helping clients imagine their preferred future, how they want things to be rather than how they don't want them to be, which as well as helping them feel happier, also enables them to make the changes necessary to make that future become a reality.

The validity of this approach would seem to be supported by research which demonstrates that the benefit of generating images about positive future outcomes may not be limited to mood but extend to subsequent behaviour.(3)

I use Solution Focused techniques in combination with hypnotherapy to help my clients replace unhelpful, negative thinking patterns with more beneficial thought processes. By thinking more positively, their anxiety levels reduce enabling them to cope better with life’s challenges.

So there you have it! To combat stress; think happy thoughts!

For more information on Hypnotherapy in Bristol

References:
(1) Sebastiani L, D’Alessandro L, Menicucci D, Ghelarducci B & Santarcangelo E L (2007), Role of relaxation and specific suggestions in hypnotic emotional numbing, International journal of psychophysiology, Vol.63 pp.125-132
(2) Kosslyn S M, Ganis G & Thompson W L (2001), Neural foundations of imagery, Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, Vol.2 pp.635-642
(3) Pictet A, Coughtrey A E, Matthews A, Holmes E A (2011), Fishing for happiness: The effects of generating positive imagery on mood and behaviour, Behaviour research and therapy, Vol.49 issue 12 pp.885-891

REM Sleep Helps Process Negative Thoughts and Memories

When we think negatively about events and situations in our lives, these negative thoughts and memories are accumulated and stored by our brain. I like to think of these negative thoughts and memories as being stored in a stress bucket. This stress bucket fills up with our daily negative experiences and thoughts which contribute to stress; these things can be small things like being late for work or not being able to find a parking space, or large things like losing your job or a relationship breakdown. They all add up and our head can get rather crowded by these unwanted thoughts and memories!

If you are a fan of Harry Potter, you might recall the ‘pensieve’ that Dumbledore uses. When he has too many thoughts and memories in his head, he siphons the excess thoughts into the basin using his wand. He says that "it becomes easier to spot patterns and links" in the memories when they're collected in the “pensieve”. In reality, REM sleep, or Rapid Eye Movement, is our equivalent of this “pensieve”.

At night, we enter in to REM sleep; the stage of sleep where we dream. During this stage of sleep, we re-run the events of our day and anything that might be in our stress buckets, either in clear exactly as it happened or metaphorically. These thoughts are then moved from the primitive part of the brain, where they are an emotional memory, to the intellectual part of the brain where they become a narrative memory. What this means is that the emotion has been stripped from the memory and you have a better control over it – you can think about it when you want to rather than it randomly popping up in your head when you don’t want it to. You can still recall that is wasn’t a pleasant experience but it no longer triggers the same emotional response as it once did and you are able to rationalise what happened.

I am sure that you are already familiar with how REM works, even without realising. Let’s say someone says something to you at work that upsets you. You go to bed that night and during your REM sleep your brain enters in to the process of emptying your stress bucket, changing those memories from emotional to narrative. So when you awaken in the morning, you may well have forgotten about what the person said, or you might not but you will definitely have more perspective on the event and be able to see the bigger picture, like with the “pensieve”.

Recently, BBC News Health reported that dreaming ‘eases painful memories’. Using MRI scans, Scientists were able to shed more light on how the brain deals with the memory of traumatic events and other negative, unpleasant experiences. The research carried out at The University of California showed that after a period of REM sleep, there was less activity in the areas of the brain linked to emotion (the amygdala) but instead, the part of the brain linked to rational thought (the prefrontal cortex) was more active.

In addition to emptying our stress bucket, during REM sleep there is a decrease in the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, a chemical transmitted by the brain associated with stress.

So as you can see, REM sleep is pivotal at helping to keep our stress levels down and emptying out those thoughts and memories which are no longer useful for us anymore. It is also of great advantage to those suffering with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

When our stress buckets are full to capacity or even overflowing, it makes sense that our brain would want to partake in more REM sleep to empty it. Unfortunately, this is not possible as the REM stage of sleep is restricted to approximately 20% of our sleeping patterns. So if our stress bucket is full, we never completely empty our buckets during our sleep and wake up still feeling stressed and affected by those unprocessed memories.

But there is good news! Hypnotherapy mimics REM sleep, helping to trigger a reduction in stress hormones and allowing your brain to process those painful memories and empty that stress bucket. Another great advantage of the hypnosis-induced REM state is that it doesn’t eat in to the 20% REM allowance of your sleep pattern – so you can go for a hypnotherapy session, listen to a hypnosis CD before you go to bed then still have your full 20% allowance of REM sleep, helping to process all those negative memories and thoughts and empty your stress bucket quickly and effectively.

Read the BBC News Health article Dreaming ‘eases painful memories’
Read The University of California Berkeley article Dream sleep takes sting out of painful memories

Read more about what Hypnotherapy is and what to expect from a hypnotherapy session

Read more on how hypnotherapy can help Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)