Hypnotherapy for Health Anxiety
Is Hypnotherapy effective at helping resolve health anxiety?
In short - yes.
Hypnotherapy is very effective at resolving health anxiety.
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Below I'll briefly dive into what hypnotherapy is, how it works, and most importantly, how and why its so effective at eliminating the symptoms of health anxiety quickly.
What is Hypnotherapy?
Hypnotherapy is a type of therapy that works with the subconscious mind. As I’m sure you know, the mind is a powerful thing. To put it in layman’s terms, the conscious mind, is the thinking mind, and the subconscious mind, is like a computer with a lot of apps installed into it.
The reason this is relevant, is because all of the thoughts you have, are filtered through the subconscious mind's lenses.
And this is relevant when you are struggling with health anxiety and just cant seem to stop feeling anxious. I've heard so many times clients say 'I know I'm not ill, but I just cant seem to stop feeling that way'
That’s because you can't resolve a problem looking at it through the lens of the problem. That would be like putting sunglasses on, and wondering why everything seems dark.
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Health anxiety happens because at one time or another, the 'health anxiety lens' was created, and was put into the back of the mind.
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This is why Health anxiety can be triggered so quickly, all it takes it to think about it and it causes anxiety. If we think of the subconscious mind like a computer, it really is like clicking on the facebook app and loading it up!
Common Misconceptions of Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy has many misconceptions. It may bring a picture to your mind of dangling a watch infront of you telling you to go to sleep and resolve all of your problems. Or it may leave you feeling like you’ll lose all control and be clucking like a chicken within 2 minutes. This is 'stage hypnotherapy'.
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Let me be clear here. During sessions with clients I'll always emphasise - You are always in control. The only reason people can begin to believe they're chickens is because they want that and are willingly giving that away.
As I’ve touched on, what hypnotherapy essentially does is work with the individuals subconscious mind. In essence, this means hypnotherapy bypasses all of the chatter of the thinking mind, and finds the root causes which are fuelling all the health anxiety thoughts and feelings.
Think of it like a thorn being stuck in your foot. It will hurt to step on it. It’s no good putting on thick socks and hoping that’ll help, because every step is still putting pressure on this thorn into irritating your skin. Hypnotherapy not only finds the thorn, it takes it out, and puts cream onto it and bandages it up, so the body & mind can heal on its own very quickly.
What does a typical hypnotherapy session look like?
Again, some hypnotherapists will use the lay down onto a bed, tell you a story and have you go into a sleep like place. That’s just a small part of hypnotherapy.
Hypnotherapy can also look like an ordinary counselling session and having a relaxed chat. If you are seeking hypnotherapy as a solution, it’s important for you to ask what the sessions will be like, as I’ve mentioned, hypnotherapy is a broad term and its important for you to find an approach which you are comfortable with.
The type of hypnotherapy sessions I conduct will feel like a relaxed chat. When I work with clients, I will ask them questions that are all directed at finding where that root cause or that thorn is.
As the session progresses, I'll ask additional questions geared towards removing that thorn. This draws up what has been placed into the subconscious mind, and brings it back into the conscious mind. This is done by challenging the narrative in a healthy, therapeutic, solution focused way.
What can hypnotherapy do for me?
What hypnotherapy offers to the individual, is the option of being able to overcome your own problems, without seamlessly changing anything other than the way you think, see, feel (or even smell and taste!) about something.
This is all because of one important principle. When you change the way you perceive something, the thing you are perceiving changes. This is because when we experience something, we don't experience what is actually there, we experience our interpretation of what our brain interprets is there (remember the lens).
When you change the way you experience a situation, the situation changes. It may seem so counter intuitive - but this is the world in which we live in.
So in the context of health anxiety, when someone begins to experience a symptom, panic, or have intrusive thoughts - this only becomes a problem when there is something more going on beneath the surface. For example, having intrusive thoughts about a worst case scenario, may be rooted into a fear of losing control, which is very common.
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Most of my clients will express a fear of losing control, its very common to feel out of control of your mind when you have so many intrusive thoughts.
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Where people get caught up, is that they begin tricking themselves into believing all of these intrusive thoughts, as if they were happening for real. Which as a result, turns into health anxiety.
Understanding Health Anxiety
Anxiety at its worst is an overwhelming feeling of panic. And it feels exhausting. This happens because your body is giving you a rush of energy, because it feels you are in danger, and its preparing you to deal with that danger.
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This leads to all the classic symptoms of anxiety - dry mouth, fast heart rate, sweating, tight chest, shaking ect.
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It really can be confusing for someone when they are unknowingly gearing themselves up to escape a life threatening situation, only to have to deal with the overwhelming feelings of anxiety. Or perceive the danger as a symptom which has been self diagnosed as something serious. This kind of thinking can lead to all kinds of backwards rationalisations, usually only solidifying this idea of health anxiety.
This happens because once the mind concludes that you feel anxious when you feel or think about health anxiety, the mind 'glues' those two things together.
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How hypnotherapy helps with Health Anxiety.
Heres a comforting truth - Anxiety is a routine. This is a good thing because once you realise this, we can shift your mindset from anxiety happening 'to you' to something 'you are doing', and this empowers you to make the changes to get you the results you desire. ​
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A good hypnotherapist will help you unravel the cause of all of the intrusive thoughts, and unwanted negative feelings you have towards health anxiety, so that you are no longer worried, phased or scared by those thoughts or feelings, and then you can manage your own health anxiety.
People with hypochondria or illness anxiety disorder, commonly have themselves in a routine of panic when they experience either a physical symptom or a health anxiety thought.
Remember what I mentioned earlier, about changing what you see by changing the way you see it. People with Hypochondria are constantly looking for a problem, and when that is the case they will find it.
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They have the sunglasses on and are worried as to why everything is dark, not knowing they have the option to take those glasses off.
