Symptom Focus: Anxiety - Something Inside Yourself But Outside Your Control

 


Your heart is beating alarmingly quickly, and you become aware that you are breathing more rapidly. It’s like you are struggling for air. You can feel a tightness in the chest with hot or cold flushes; feeling rooted to the spot. 

Sound familiar? These symptoms are what we commonly call an anxiety attack. Anxiety can appear in many different forms and situations, and in most cases, it is very difficult for the sufferer to explain.


What's The Difference Between Stress and Anxiety

Stress and anxiety are different. Stress is a response to external pressures. We feel agitated and unhappy and can attribute it to external things: work, relationships and financial issues. We know they cause stress (rather than anxiety) because when our external circumstances change, stress symptoms change also. 

Anxiety creates the same symptoms, but the stress comes from within a person’s mind. They feel the same nervousness, anger and agitation, but it remains even when external circumstances change. It is something inside themselves but outside their own control.

Many of us deal with stress by changing our circumstances. However, because anxiety comes from within a person’s mind, they cannot escape it, only stifle it down.

Stress and anxiety impact each other. The greater our external stresses, the more we will be troubled by our inner anxieties.


What Happens To The Bottled-Up Anxiety?

The anxiety within a person’s mind needs to find an outlet. They have to rationalise it, so (unknowingly) attach it to a symbolic representation. They feel anxiety about something in particular, for example, phobias, some physical symptoms, panic attacks, depression and many more.

The symptom acts as a ‘pressure value’ for the anxiety. It allows a person’s mind to rationalise feelings they are experiencing as anxiety.

Many causes of anxiety originate in childhood experiences, but we understand them with a child’s view of the world. We are not just affected by the things that happen to us but our interpretation of them.


How To Resolve Anxiety?

Hypnoanalysis combines psychotherapy and hypnotherapy helping a person process events from their life. Using Hypnosis makes it easier to remember events, the unhelpful interpretations made at the time and the emotions they created.

The effect of thinking through past experiences reduces the intensity of the stored emotions. Events are re-interpreted with hindsight, and the anxiety created is resolved.




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