Christmas should be a time for celebrating love and giving, but for many, especially parents, Christmas can be a time of intense stress and anxiety. There may be pressure from external sources such as family members to get them the best presents and cook the best food, or from internal sources; i.e. yourself, to make sure that everyone is happy and having fun. This can result in a lot of unhealthy physical and emotional symptoms that can result in burnout and a decline in your mental health. Unfortunately, this means that Christmas is a dreaded occasion for many, but it doesn’t have to be so, hypnotherapy can help.
What Is Hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy is a type of therapy that is used to alter our state of consciousness and make us more relaxed and open. It then uses the power of positive suggestion to influence our subconscious and change our thoughts feelings and behaviours.
Hypnotherapy can be used to treat many different problems, such as bad habits, smoking, depression, anxiety and eating disorders.
How Can Hypnotherapy Help Deal with Stress?
Anxiety and stress can cause a lot of physical and psychological symptoms by activating the fight-or-flight response otherwise referred to as the sympathetic nervous response. These symptoms can include:
- Rapid heartbeat
- Sweating
- Shaking
- Panic Attacks
- Inner tension
- Intrusive thoughts
- Excessive worrying
These symptoms, while they can be helpful in dangerous situations, only serve to impede our every-day life and can seriously alter our perception of events, such as Christmas. Hypnotherapy can help deal with this stress by changing the physical response of our bodies, taking it out of the fight-or-flight response and into the parasympathetic nervous response, which calms us down and slows your heart rate. It also helps to alter our emotional response to a situation, helping to adjust our thought patterns so that we gain a new perspective of the stressful situation and can think about it more positively, without triggering another stress response.
What Actually Happens in a Hypnotherapy Session?
A hypnotherapist can help you to assess your anxiety and find the real cause of the stress, which may be slightly different to what you expected. You will then set a goal that you wish to achieve, such as how you would like to feel and how you would like to live your life if it were stress free. You and your hypnotherapist can then work towards reaching those goals using a variety of different techniques. Each hypnotherapist will be slightly different and use different techniques, but after your session you should feel less anxious and more confident, ready to tackle the holiday season.
