More than ever before scientific research is attesting the primary responsibility of stress in triggering or aggravating different physical and emotional afflictions. A headline from a 1983 Time Magazine called stress “The Epidemic of the Eighties.” It also said that stress is our prominent health problem. And it is unquestionable that our world has become even more complex and stressful over the past two decades since that article was written.
Many surveys indicate that most adults perceive themselves as being under a lot of stress. Authorities in the field estimate that around 75 to 90 percent of the visits to primary care doctors are related to stress.
Most adults say that their job is the primary reason of their stress. Stress levels have also soared in children and the senior population because of several reasons including: Peer pressures that often push people to everything from cigarette smoking to alcoholism and drug abuse; the loss of family and religious values and ties; increased crime rates; threats to personal security; but also social isolation and loneliness.
Stress can be responsible for conditions such as diabetes, ulcers, low back and neck pain, hypertension, strokes and heart attacks. This is because of the augmented sympathetic nervous system activity along with a high level of cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones. Chronic stress is corollary of defective immune system resistance. Stress can contribute to anxiety, depression, and its numerous effects on the body’s organs.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines “stress” as follows: “To subject to physical or mental pressure, tension, or strain”
The following is the definition of “tension” from the same dictionary: “Mental, emotional, or nervous strain”
The following is the definition of “anxiety”: “A state of uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties”
And the following is the definition of “depression”: “The condition of feeling sad or despondent”
It defines “clinical depression” as follows: “A psychiatric disorder characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, loss of appetite, anhedonia, feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness, and thoughts of death.”
We can nonetheless be sure that our mind is the chief reason for our experience of stress, anxiety and depression. In other words, what we think about, and our attitudes and the way we view our experiences strongly influence our feelings. So if we can manage to alter our thoughts, attitudes, and points of view, then we can be relieved of our feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression and change them for a more positive state of being.
People have always tried methods that would allow them to release stress. With the pharmaceutical industry there seems to be a drug for everything. For that the industry has designed a wide array of tranquilizers from Valium to Xanax. If you choose to utilize drugs for relief, please be sure to be aware of the side-effects by reading the fine print, which often are, among others, addiction and dependency. Indeed these kinds of drugs aim at curing the symptoms, instead of the cause. So as soon as one stops ingesting them, the symptoms can come back.
A more appropriate way of getting rid of tension, stress, anxiety, and depression is to try to cure the root cause, which as I said previously, is generally our thought processes. There is some good news. The basis of hypnosis is relaxing. The AMA recognized hypnosis in 1958 as an effective way to cure stress or stress related symptoms. And unlike drugs, there are totally no negative side effects.
When you enter hypnosis, you are in the Alpha level of consciousness. It’s the daydream like temporary psychological state that we pass through as we are about to fall asleep in the evening. And we pass through it once more as we wake up again. There are a lot of different ways we can guide ourselves into this state of tranquility, from progressive relaxation to visual imagery to listening to hypnosis CD’s.
Once we access a hypnotic state, we can communicate with our unconscious mind, which is the seat of our emotions. And it becomes easier to acknowledge new points of view and ideas that can help us to get rid of anxiety, or even avoid it completely.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP, which is a new kind of hypnosis, has a lot of excellent techniques for eliminating stress. Perhaps the most effective technique is called the “swish” pattern – or the “flash” pattern. After using the “flash” pattern, your unconscious will automatically use bad, stress producing mental pictures, as triggers for tranquilizing mental pictures. Put differently, your stressors will now cause relaxation!
TO SUMMARIZE Tension, stress, anxiety, and depression can be prompted by our thoughts. So if we change our attitude and the way we resent our situation and what we have lived, we can get rid of these feelings at the root. Hypnosis and NLP are natural tools that allow us to change our attitude and point of view to easily get rid of the source of these negative feelings.
Author:
Alan B. Densky is an NGH certified hypnotherapist. He offers a complete line of anxiety management hypnosis CDs, and advanced stress management CDs through his Neuro-VISION self hypnosis website. You can visit his video hypnosis blog, and download a free MP3.