Anxiety a modern disease...
Phobias, panic attacks, and nerves all have anxiety at their root, and when someone comes to seek therapy it is usually because their life is being adversely affected by it in some way.

Anxiety is an everyday feeling, so why is it universally experienced as aversive and why do we all suffer from it?
The answer is that anxiety is a feeling or a state we experience when our body is preparing to either escape from danger or to stand and fight. Typically called the fight or flight response. This is the role of the sympathetic nervous system and is the body’s defense mechanism. It does things like causing the pupils to dilate, increase the heart rate and send blood to the large muscles like those in the legs and arms.

This is all done through the release of the hormones and chemicals in the body and, in a situation where there is a real danger, you would be too busy running, fighting or helping someone else, to notice how you are feeling. Once the perceived danger is over then the relevant hormones are no longer released and the body returns to normal in a few minutes.

The trouble we have is that our unconscious mind does not know the difference between real and perceived danger, thats why you find yourself sitting on the edge of your seat during a horror film, because your unconscious mind is preparing your body to escape.

Panic attacks can be triggered by a variety of things but it is our minds that makes them so debilitating, we end up fearing the fear itself and are then caught in cycles of panic that can go on and on.

General anxiety and stress are caused by the bodies same response as panic but are less intense but generally more continued.. like the stressed executive, his fear is always there, the deadline or the chance of not getting promoted.
A lot of phobias (irrational fears) have an element of reason behind them. A fear of spiders, snakes, the dark, open spaces, confined spaces, heights… they all may have been helpful to our ancestors and even occasionally to us today, but when these fears become irrational and develop into something that prevent us living our lives as we would like to, then we can question what is going on in our minds.

The way we think affects the way we feel and the way we behave. In fact they each affect each other. However, the forerunners of cognitive psychotherapy, which is a relatively new form of therapy, realised that if we change the way we think then our feelings and our behaviour will also change.
This isn’t such a new idea, in ancient Greece the philosopher Epictetus said “People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them” and in Hamlet Shakespeare said that “..there is nothing good or bad in this world, only our thinking makes it so.”

Therapy for all these problems involve changing the way we think, CBT or cognitive Behavioural Therapy seems to be the preferred way of working in the NHS, CBT can work very well with hypnotherapy as well. We can literally train ourselves to think realistically.
Often hypnotherapy work would involve elements of CBT, to train you to be more realistic in your thinking, along with suggestion therapy to literally reprogram you not to be afraid and also, where appropriate, emotional based hypnotherapy, that aims to discover and remove the very root cause of the problem.


Learn to accept your symptoms and prevent panic
In order to help you not turn your anxiety into a full blown panic attack it is useful to practice acceptance of the symptoms, many people think that they are going to die when they are getting a panic attack! This fear leads to the release of further catecholamines (the hormones responsible for the fight or flight changes happening in the body) In reality the body is just preparing to run or fight. Here are some statements that you might find useful to work with in response to common symptoms of panic. They can be worked with in self hypnosis to really hammer them home!...

For a fast, hard beating heart...
You Can Slow your Heart Rate: this is just due to the adrenaliine in your system and the natural fight or flight response. People do not die from having a fast heart rate.
“My heart could beat like this for weeks and I’d be just fine”

For imbalance...
You can feel balanced: this is a product of hyperventilation/ tension in neck and jaw
“This will pass when I relax and slow my breathing”

Difficulty breathing...
You can breathe fully and deeply: this is a product of tightness in the diaphragm, causing short quick breaths into the top of the lungs.
“Push the old air out, take a new breath. Push the old air out, take a new breath etc”

Wobbly legs...
You can feel strength in your legs: this is the blood pooling in your thighs.
“this is just my legs preparing to run, they are stronger than usual right now”

Difficulty swallowing...
You can swallow freely: this feeling is due to tension in the throat and will pass when you relax.
“I can yawn away the tension in my throat”

Feeling hot or cold...
You can feel hot or cold and thats OK: this is due to change sin blood pressure and the nervous system, preparing you for fight or flight.
“This will pass in a few minutes”

Feeling light headed...
You can feel clear headed: due to an increase of oxygen in the blood and blood pooling in the large muscles. Can be stopped by slow deep breathing with a closed mouth.
“I can just breathe deeply and slowly to clear my mind.”