Overcoming worries
Worrying can be helpful when it spurs you to take action and solve a problem. But if you're preoccupied with 'what ifs' and worst-case scenarios, worry becomes a problem. Unrelenting doubts and fears can be paralyzing. They can sap your emotional energy, send your anxiety levels soaring, and interfere with your daily life. But chronic worrying is a mental habit that can be broken. You can train your brain to stay calm and look at life from a more positive perspective.
Why is it so hard to stop worrying?
Constant worrying takes a heavy toll. It keeps you up at night and makes you tense and edgy during the day. You hate feeling like a nervous wreck. So why is it so difficult to stop worrying?
For most chronic worriers, the anxious thoughts are fueled by the beliefs,both negative and positive they hold about worrying.
On the negative side, you may believe that your constant worrying is harmful, that it's going to drive you crazy or affect your physical health. Or you may worry that you're going to lose all control over your worrying that it will take over and never stop.
On the positive side, you may believe that your worrying helps you avoid bad things, prevents problems, prepares you for the worst, or leads to solutions.
Negative beliefs, or worrying about worrying, add to your anxiety and keep worry going. But positive beliefs about worrying can be just as damaging. Itís tough to break the worry habit if you believe that your worrying protects you. In order to stop worry and anxiety for good, you must give up your belief that worrying serves a positive purpose. Once you realize that worrying is the problem, not the solution, you can regain control of your worried mind.
The problem with chronic worrying is that, instead of being a useful aid to avoiding what's worth avoiding; like rash investments, harmful relationships, or drink driving; it becomes a barrier, preventing us from doing the things that really would be worth doing.
Worrying has other consequences. Your imagination directly affects not only your psychology, how you think and feel, but also your physiology. Imagine your favourite food and your mouth will water. Thatís an example of how your imagination can immediately affect your salivary glands.
In hypnosis people can imagine what it would be like if their arm was encased in ice and the ensuing feeling of numbness can be pervasive enough for them to even undergo an operation without anaesthetic. You can imagine being in a beautiful place and your breathing may slow down, blood pressure decrease and muscles relax the more you picture it fully. Your imagination has hypnotic effects on your mind and body.
To stop misusing our imagination to deluge ourselves with worry, there are three main options we can take to overcome this:
* Examine the worries and see if we can actually solve them. For example, if I worry I'm getting too fat, I can either just fret about it or I can use that worrying to generate motivation to get me eating and exercising more healthily, so I'm now actively problem solving the worry.
* Challenge the worry. If I'm worried that no one will like me at a party, I can challenge that idea. How realistic is my fear? By the law of averages some people will like me, a few may not, some will be indifferent or the party spirit may make everyone well disposed toward everyone! Now I've presented a few alternative possibilities to myself that aren't negative. This is something worriers often forget to do.
* Change how feel about the worry. If I'm worried that my house is a bit scruffy, I can solve that worry, and switch it off, by cleaning or decorating. But if my worries are more vague and not something that can be tackled directly in the here and now, it's more helpful to change how I feel about the situation. Perhaps I worry that I upset someone years ago, someone I no longer see and so it's harder to practically solve that worry.
'Trying not to think about it' as we all know, does not work. It's much more useful to practise thinking about it whilst feeling okay. That does work! Relaxing while having worrying thoughts completely changes the effect those thoughts have on you.
Remember too that worry is stimulating physically. It raises blood pressure and fills your system with adrenalin and the stress hormone cortisol. This happens because worrying signals that there is a threat out there (a real one, not just something we imagined). So our bodies get pumped up to run or fight. This is why worrying can prevent you from sleeping.
Through hypnosis I can readily change how someone thinks and eliminate worries altogether. For a confidential chat please call 07845 291437 or e-mail [email protected]
Why is it so hard to stop worrying?
Constant worrying takes a heavy toll. It keeps you up at night and makes you tense and edgy during the day. You hate feeling like a nervous wreck. So why is it so difficult to stop worrying?
For most chronic worriers, the anxious thoughts are fueled by the beliefs,both negative and positive they hold about worrying.
On the negative side, you may believe that your constant worrying is harmful, that it's going to drive you crazy or affect your physical health. Or you may worry that you're going to lose all control over your worrying that it will take over and never stop.
On the positive side, you may believe that your worrying helps you avoid bad things, prevents problems, prepares you for the worst, or leads to solutions.
Negative beliefs, or worrying about worrying, add to your anxiety and keep worry going. But positive beliefs about worrying can be just as damaging. Itís tough to break the worry habit if you believe that your worrying protects you. In order to stop worry and anxiety for good, you must give up your belief that worrying serves a positive purpose. Once you realize that worrying is the problem, not the solution, you can regain control of your worried mind.
The problem with chronic worrying is that, instead of being a useful aid to avoiding what's worth avoiding; like rash investments, harmful relationships, or drink driving; it becomes a barrier, preventing us from doing the things that really would be worth doing.
Worrying has other consequences. Your imagination directly affects not only your psychology, how you think and feel, but also your physiology. Imagine your favourite food and your mouth will water. Thatís an example of how your imagination can immediately affect your salivary glands.
In hypnosis people can imagine what it would be like if their arm was encased in ice and the ensuing feeling of numbness can be pervasive enough for them to even undergo an operation without anaesthetic. You can imagine being in a beautiful place and your breathing may slow down, blood pressure decrease and muscles relax the more you picture it fully. Your imagination has hypnotic effects on your mind and body.
To stop misusing our imagination to deluge ourselves with worry, there are three main options we can take to overcome this:
* Examine the worries and see if we can actually solve them. For example, if I worry I'm getting too fat, I can either just fret about it or I can use that worrying to generate motivation to get me eating and exercising more healthily, so I'm now actively problem solving the worry.
* Challenge the worry. If I'm worried that no one will like me at a party, I can challenge that idea. How realistic is my fear? By the law of averages some people will like me, a few may not, some will be indifferent or the party spirit may make everyone well disposed toward everyone! Now I've presented a few alternative possibilities to myself that aren't negative. This is something worriers often forget to do.
* Change how feel about the worry. If I'm worried that my house is a bit scruffy, I can solve that worry, and switch it off, by cleaning or decorating. But if my worries are more vague and not something that can be tackled directly in the here and now, it's more helpful to change how I feel about the situation. Perhaps I worry that I upset someone years ago, someone I no longer see and so it's harder to practically solve that worry.
'Trying not to think about it' as we all know, does not work. It's much more useful to practise thinking about it whilst feeling okay. That does work! Relaxing while having worrying thoughts completely changes the effect those thoughts have on you.
Remember too that worry is stimulating physically. It raises blood pressure and fills your system with adrenalin and the stress hormone cortisol. This happens because worrying signals that there is a threat out there (a real one, not just something we imagined). So our bodies get pumped up to run or fight. This is why worrying can prevent you from sleeping.
Through hypnosis I can readily change how someone thinks and eliminate worries altogether. For a confidential chat please call 07845 291437 or e-mail [email protected]
