It feels impossible to avoid stress in our busy lives, and to be honest, it probably is. However, what we can do is manage stress before it becomes overwhelming. If you’re struggling with feelings of stress, you’re not alone – and you don’t have to feel this way.
We’ll take a closer look at stress, and how hypnotherapy can help you manage these overwhelming feelings.
What Is Stress?
Mental health charity Mind describes stress as “how we react when we feel under pressure or threatened”, and this explains it perfectly. Our brains go into stress mode when we feel out of control or that we’re not managing our worlds.
A bit of stress can actually be healthy – you’ll have noticed how many of us perform better under pressure, from meeting deadlines to am dram productions! However, when stress builds up it can be very distressing, with people experiencing stress describing it as like “being in fog” or “wading through a swamp”.
While stress itself isn’t technically a mental health condition, it can make existing issues like anxiety far worse. It could even contribute towards someone developing a condition like anxiety. This is why is you feel that everyday life is like wading through that swamp, or that you simply can’t disentangle those millions of thoughts, it’s time to seek help.
What Causes Stress?
What causes stress? It can occur for a range of reasons, possibly because work responsibilities feel too much, or because we’re worrying about life issues like our finances, kids or health. Discrimination, bereavement, natural disasters, relationships… There are a lot of potential causes of stress.
You know the old saying “It never rains but it pours”? That’s how stress often feels, as these different factors pile in on top of each other. In hypnotherapy, we call this “the stress bucket”.
What Is The Stress Bucket?
Imagine an empty bucket. Actually, that’s unrealistic, so imagine a bucket with just a bit of water in it. It’s manageable. The bucket is light and easy to carry. Then you pour in a cup of water. It’s a bit heavier, but still OK. Someone else comes along and tips in three, four cups, then you add a jugful yourself. Suddenly, your bucket is feeling unwieldy. Another cup comes, then another, then the water starts to spill out over the top…
Our brain is the stress bucket. Stress is usually manageable, but when the stressors (cups of water) keep coming, our brains begin to feel too full. Overwhelm is when our buckets finally overflow. How can we begin to get our metaphorical levels back to normal?
Solution focused hypnotherapy is a great way to empty the stress bucket, because it encourages us to look forwards rather than be stuck in this moment of extreme stress.
How Hypnotherapy Helps You Empty The Stress Bucket
Hypnotherapy reduces stress levels by helping you to manage life’s ups and downs. You’ll start to feel back in control of your world, and you’ll feel a lot more rational.
The primitive side of our brains still responds to modern stressors like deadlines and overdrafts as if they’re sabre tooth tigers. Our adrenaline kicks in, and we go into flight-or-fight mode. Hypnotherapy encourages our primitive brain to listen to our intellectual brain. How do we do this? It comes down to a simple-sounding approach: goal setting.
The Importance Of Setting Small Goals To Manage Stress
If a client gets in touch with me because they’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, we work together to manage this using a combination of psychotherapy and hypnotherapy.
We start out by understanding what are the causes of your stress, than look at what we can do – or rather, what you can do – to reduce these to manageable levels. The beauty of solution focused hypnotherapy is that it focuses on how you want things to be rather than what they’re like at the moment, then comes up with ways to reach this hoped-for future.
I work with my clients to create a series of small, easily manageable goals. Let’s use an example: someone is feeling stressed because their job is overwhelming.
The goal is to feel that the workload is manageable and to start to enjoy their job again. The steps could be to speak with a trusted colleague about your tasks; to try using a different sort of calendar/to do list; to make sure you take proper breaks to reset yourself; to look at time management techniques; to look into any training that can help support your role.
As you take these steps, you’ll start to feel calmer and back in control of your life. While we can’t necessarily change the context (much as we’d love to magic up a lottery win!), we can change your mindset and give you the mental tools to build resilience against future stressors. Each session, we reflect on the steps you took in the previous week – you’ll be surprised by how much progress you’ve made, and this simply keeps building.
Most people say that while they’re working towards their goals, they also gain a different perspective. This is so important, and a great way to reduce the water level in a heavy stress bucket. Perspective is the intellectual brain putting the primitive brain in its place!
Hypnotherapy To Manage Stress With Great Minds Clinic
Do you feel that the stresses of everyday life are building up, and you’re beginning to feel that they’re out of control. Don’t keep wading through the swamp, but take some positive steps towards a calmer and more confident future. Please call me for a confidential chat, and we’ll take it from there.
