Hypnosis or hypnotherapy for stress, can serve as a powerful tool to change the way people use their minds. Hypnosis has been found extremely helpful for alleviating stress and anxiety.
Hypnosis refers to the artful manipulation of a person’s attention, context and language to be able to establish a temporary belief which can influence a person’s behavior and perception. This practice is rooted in a belief that an individual’s mind can be manipulated by suggestion, the kind that is powerful enough to affect one’s body.
The practice of hypnosis still stirs up debate among some professionals from the more mainstream fields of health and medicine. But, there have been studies conducted to prove its potency in helping people ease their pain and cope with the debilitating effects of stress.
Brain Scan Reveals How Hypnosis Works
Hypnosis has been proven by research conducted in Stanford University which employs the latest and state-of the art imaging tools to be able to capture what goes on inside the brain during and after hypnosis. A specialized MRI brain scan revealed decreased activity in two areas of the brain under hypnosis – the one responsible for visual processing and the other one involved in handling conflicts.
Experts say that the decreased activity in these two areas explains why a hypnotized brain becomes more accepting to suggestions. It’s been shown that hypnotic suggestions are powerful ways to influence brain activity which in turn can also influence an individual’s behavior.
How Hypnosis Helps to Combat Stress
Stress and anxiety are emotional health problems and hypnosis dives into the sub-conscious mind. Hypnosis actually gets to the root of the problem, which is a great place to start!
Through the power of suggestion, the mind can tell the body how it should respond to stress. If the mind can tell the body to relax and stay calm during a stressful episode, the body will immediately obey.
Hypnosis is also used to find out what the trigger’s for the stress or anxiety problem is. Once the mind is in a deep, relaxed state and all negative thoughts have dissipated, the brain no longer has room for stress to be in it.
Some people like to try self-hypnosis, while others use the help of a trained hypnotherapist. People that have become adept at using self-hypnosis find it easier to reduce their level of anxiety when stressful situations are imminent. It is also through hypnosis that they have learned how to spot situations that trigger a stressful response.
Stress and anxiety are two conditions that are not entirely different from each other. Anxiety is often a product of long term exposure to stress while stress is one of the major components of an anxiety disorder. There are many ways in which anxiety and stress seem to contribute to each other.
Our instinctive reactions, which are responsible for releasing our stress hormones, are governed by our subconscious minds. Any reaction to a stimulus, real or imagined, that results in negative or even heightened feelings, may be perceived by the subconscious as a ‘threat’.
Our subconscious minds, which operate on feelings, reacts the same way to any perceived threat, whether it be a verbal one or a physical in origin. Experiencing some stress or challenges can be actually beneficial as it can help us to exert more effort, physically and mentally.
The problem arises when the stress responses are repeatedly triggered and there is no corresponding ‘fight or flight’ reaction to utilize and dissipate the released stress hormones. If this happens the body and mind remain in a state of agitation and this is when we feel anxiety and stress.
If this scenario is recurring and ongoing, the stress can become chronic and when stress and anxiety reaches the chronic stage an individual can expect to suffer from its deleterious consequences. So, while incidences of stress can be beneficial, when they occur repeatedly with no resolution the results can also become long-lasting and harmful to a person’s overall health.
How Stress Impacts the Brain
In order to understand how stress changes the brain, we must first understand how our body’s limbic system functions. The limbic system consists of the hippocampus, cingulate cortex and amygdala. Experts refer to the limbic system as the “anxiety” switch. This is where the emotions and drives are regulated. A human’s desire for food, desire to be the best, to be loved, to be appreciated and to be special are all being controlled by the limbic system. It is also the reservoir of other emotions such as fear, pain, anger, happiness and pleasure.
When an individual experiences an incident or behavior that thwarts their effort to achieve pleasure or fulfill their desire, the limbic system also works to help prevent them from experiencing pain or sadness, then and in the future.
It does so by repressing negative feelings relating to the current incident while encouraging the individual to repeat those acts that promote pleasurable feelings and to avoid those that incur emotional pain. People who are successful in coping with their negative feelings are those whose limbic system is functioning at its best. It enables them to react to stress well.
When Stress Harms the Limbic System
However, there are often times when a person’s limbic system is compromised, which will more likely to happen if the body is constantly barraged with highly stressful events. Once the limbic system is compromised, a misfiring of neurotransmitters in the brain can occur.
In turn, inappropriate responses to stressful events will manifest as a result of distorted reactions and damaged sensory perceptions that are taking place inside the brain. Unfortunately, if these distorted patterns of responses become chronic, the person’s endocrine, immunological and neurological systems will also experience some abnormalities. In short, anxiety or depression will now start to develop.
Ongoing studies indicate that stress develops into anxiety due to the following reasons:
Inability to cope well
The inability to deal with life’s pressing issues can cause stress. Prolonged exposure to these adverse situations may lead to the development of a chronic condition if one has poor coping mechanisms. If left unchecked, chronic stress may later develop into an anxiety disorder.
If a person continually relies on alcohol to be able to get through tough situations, they will eventually diminish their ability to properly cope with stress. This is because alcohol only serves to numb the reactions to stress and if this becomes habitual the mind will become dependent on this process of numbing. This will then make a person more inclined to lose their natural ability to cope with stress, thereby paving the way for the onset of anxiety disorder.
Hormonal issues
When an individual is battling with highly stressful issues in life for an extended period of time, there is an increasing risk that their mind and body will experience changes that could adversely impact the proper functioning of neurotransmitter hormones. In other words, the body will become less capable of producing the required brain chemicals and other hormones, at the right time and in the right amounts. When this occurs, physical and mental problems that contribute to the development of anxiety disorder will become more prominent.
Negative thoughts
Experiencing constant bouts of stress will often lead to negative thoughts which ruminate in the mind day and night and increase a person’s risk of suffering from anxiety disorder.
Experts agree that persistent stressful thoughts can cause significant changes in a person’s brain chemistry and overall health, even if not accompanied by external events. Unfortunately, these changes can also further diminish the ability to cope with traumatic events and other stressful issues in the future.
Traumatic events
PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder is a condition experienced by a person who has experienced a traumatic event or events that caused extreme stress. The experienced is too much for them to contain or overcome at the time of the incidents. The profound impact of this stress and its subsequent triggers was powerful enough to trigger the development of an extreme anxiety disorder.