Chest pain, shortness of breath, and a “feeling of doom” are all symptoms of a heart attack. Hundreds of thousands of people come to emergency rooms across the country with these symptoms, and less than four people in ten are diagnosed with a heart attack. Amazingly, the problem that nearly half of those remaining are experiencing is anxiety.
Anxiety is expensive. Employers lose a surprising amount of production time from workers because of this problem. People who are paralyzed by stress and anxiety find it difficult to keep their attention on their work. Finally, medical bills related to panic attacks or severe anxiety cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.
People who struggle with anxiety often find the treatments frustrating and ineffective. Medicines prescribed for anxiety are expensive and make people feel too tired or drowsy to work. In addition, these drugs are habit-forming and cause people to become dependent on them. Although they treat the symptoms of anxiety and help people to relax temporarily, they do not cure the cause, and individuals must either continue to take their anti-anxiety drugs or have more anxiety or panic attacks.
Sometimes, people attend group therapy or individual counseling to help control their anxiety. Usually, these therapies are about as effective as medicines. Because these techniques do not treat the actual cause of the problem, most people continue to suffer from panic attacks on a regular basis.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioners have devised a technique called the Anchoring to help people experience relief from anxiety. Clients are taught to recall peaceful memories, and to anchor to them by touching two fingers together. Then, when they become anxious or panicky, they can touch these two fingers together and trigger feelings of calm and comfort.
Many people who have tried drugs and counseling become discouraged by the lack of relief. They don’t know that they don’t have to suffer from repeated, disabling panic attacks any more. Through the use of techniques offered by NLP practitioners or trained hypnotherapists who use Ericksonian techniques to provide indirect suggestions of calm, tranquil feelings, clients can experience freedom from panic.
