Depression and anxiety can develop following a trauma, accident or bereavement, or from an overload of stress.
The unconscious mind, the part of the mind that holds our memories, our imagination and our habits, works to ensure that we are continuously protected from harm. It remembers to breathe continuously, to swim in water, to drive a car.
Fortunately, once it has learned a skill or habit it does not forget it. So, once you have learned to swim or drive a car you will not forget. Unfortunately, the unconscious mind remembers “bad” habits too. It remembers how to smoke a cigarette, how to drink alcohol, or how to be afraid of certain situations. And it does this because, at one time, even bad habits made you feel better!
When your unconscious mind creates stress, fear or anxiety it does so for what seems, at the time, to be a good reason. Unfortunately, it made a mistake. Maybe you did once fall downstairs – but that does not mean you should never stand at the top of a staircase again in case you should fall.
Or maybe you once did get stuck in a lift. But that is a rare occurrence and it is unlikely to happen to you again. Maybe nothing happened to you. Perhaps you were there when something happened to someone else and you noticed their fear. Perhaps an adult screamed at a mouse when you were a child. Surely, if an adult is frightened, then a child has to be frightened too – don’t they?
Even the thought of something bad happening, or of failure, can spark stress or fear. What if you go on stage and make a fool of yourself? What if you say the wrong thing? Of course, the more you ask yourself these questions the more your imagination will show you how your body would react “if”.
Your mind does not know the difference between what is really happening and what is imagined. So imagining the pain, the fear, the embarrassment means your body will actually feel it as though it were really happening. If you’ve ever woken up in the middle of the night sweating, with your heart pounding, in that state where you think that the dream was real even though you are now awake – that is the power of the unconscious imagination at work. Because you were being chased in a dream you will understand how the imagination can affect the physical body when you are awake!
So, if we explained to your unconscious mind that it had made a mistake, that it didn’t have to protect you by making you fearful, anxious or stressed, but would be better protecting you from something worse – the negative effects of the fear, anxiety and stress – would that be better?
Of course it would!
We do this using hypnosis for anxiety, your phobia or fears. We literally re-programme your unconscious mind – for good!
