One beautiful morning a few years ago I was making myself a cup of coffee and just going about starting my day. Then, coffee half poured, a smile still on my face, my phone chimed and I got a message from my ex-husband

I used to think that stress and tension was just something I'd have to figure out how to deal with. I'd power through, find ways to decompress, take ibuprofen for the tightness in my muscles and wait until it boiled over to let off some of the pressure.

Stress is a word we hear a lot, especially in the last year. The thing that most people don’t realize is that stress isn’t about the things that stress us out. It’s not the job, or the economy, or the weather, or the relationship. Stress is our natural, automatic response to anything that our subconscious mind perceives as a potential threat.

This also has nothing to do with how well we manage stress. We are natural adapters, and we build coping strategies that help us get through just about anything life can throw our way. Behind the scenes, the body is still responding to stress in the same way.

Our subconscious minds trigger the stress response in our bodies (“fight or flight”) in response to things that are happening outside of us, like heavy traffic or a big presentation at work. It is also triggered by internal things, like illness and injury. And because our subconscious doesn’t differentiate between things that are actually happening and things we are imagining, the fight or flight response is also activated when we think about stressful things.

As soon as your brain perceives a threat, it sends signals to your adrenal glands telling them to release the hormone adrenaline. Adrenaline increases the heart rate and blood pressure, among many other things.

Your brain’s hypothalamus also sends signals to the adrenal cortex through the pituitary gland, telling it to produce the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol keeps your blood sugar and blood pressure up to help you escape from perceived danger, among other things. Long periods of raised levels of cortisol can lower your immune system and impair your memory. It can also affect your blood pressure and the risk of heart attack or stroke.

During the stress response, your heart rate goes up, your breathing gets faster and shallow, and some senses fade as others sharpen. Once the perceived threat is gone, your body settles down. When stressful situations are ongoing, it results in high blood pressure, soreness in the jaw, neck, and back, headaches, overeating, sleep disturbances, irritability, fatigue, illness, aches and pains, sugar and carb cravings, difficulty concentrating, and more.

It is in our best interest to lower our overall stress, and to change the way we respond to things that used to trigger the stress response.

Taking some time each day to do something relaxing, using breathing techniques, hypnosis, meditation, and other tools can dissolve your current stress and train your mind and body to choose relaxation instead.

Practice Relaxing

Let’s take some time this week to relax. Taking just fifteen minutes a day to practice relaxing can shift your focus, lower your blood pressure, and help restore your sense of calm and wellbeing. Just like learning any new skill, practicing relaxation regularly causes you to change your automatic response to stressful situations.

Notice Your Muscles

Take a break from whatever you’re doing. Starting at your toes and working upwards, spend a moment focusing on each part of your body, slowly tensing and then relaxing the muscles of each part of your body.

Breathe

Sit comfortably and let your eyes close down. Take a deep breath while pushing your belly out. Inhale for the count of four. Hold that breath for a count of four, exhale for a count of four, and hold for another count of four before inhaling again. Repeat this cycle four times to trigger a vagus nerve response that turns off the stress response in your body.

Take a Vacation in Your Mind

Sit back for just a moment and take a few nice deep breaths. Let your eyes close and imagine a time when you felt the most relaxed. Maybe it was a vacation, or just relaxing on a beautiful day. Imagine that moment as if you are there again, with all that you can see, all that you can hear, and how it feels being there. After a few moments you’ll feel like you’re ready to open your eyes, feeling much better.

Self Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a specific set of tools designed to help people use their own skills, abilities, and resources more effectively to take back control of the parts of their lives that felt out of control before. Hypnosis breaks down the barriers that held you in unwanted behaviors and habits, and empowers you to create new healthier behaviors in their place. A great way to begin is by using self-hypnosis. The steps below will guide you through a very basic introductory self hypnosis experience.

Remember that you don’t have to create pictures in your mind in order to be successful. Some people see things very clearly in their minds. Other people just get a vague idea of the thing they’re thinking of. As long as you can “sense” what you want to achieve, you can be successful.

Find a comfortable place where you can safely sit with your eyes closed for about 5 minutes. Turn off your phone and minimize other distractions. Take a few deep breaths. Let your eyes close or let your vision go soft and blurry. Imagine yourself in a place where you felt truly relaxed and step into that memory, seeing it through your own eyes, hearing it through your own ears, and feeling those relaxed sensations in your own body. Imagine that you are in that moment from your past again right now. Just sit quietly and let your mind wander or rest. After a few minutes you’ll feel like it’s time to open your eyes. When you do, your vision will clear and you’ll feel awake, alert, and refreshed.

Self hypnosis is a little different than using hypnosis with a professional hypnotist, so you’ll want to do this once a day for at least a week. You’ll begin seeing positive changes in the way you think and feel almost immediately.

Lowering your stress in the moment, and using tools to change the way you respond to stress can lead to better mood, increased health, and better sleep. Find the tools here that work best for you and start enjoying the benefits. 🍥

Karen Gray is a Certified Hypnotist, Registered Nurse, and Director of Green Mountain Hypnosis. 

To learn how you can use hypnosis to change your life,

Schedule your free Strategy Call today.

Most of us aren’t too fond of getting shots. For some, the fear takes over and causes severe feelings of dread and anxiety. It may even stop people from getting medical care they need.

Symptoms of needle phobia can include anxiety, panic attacks, dizziness, fainting, insomnia, high blood pressure, elevated heart rate, or feeling emotionally or physically aggressive. Even hearing or thinking about getting a shot may be enough to elicit a reaction in a person with trypanophobia. 

The causes aren’t known, but genetics, changes in brain chemistry and past traumatic experiences may play a role in needle phobias. An analysis by researchers at the University of Michigan showed that 20 to 30 percent of adults studied cited a concern about needles, ranging from mild anxiety to a phobia strong enough to keep some from seeking medical care. 

It’s not just the COVID-19 vaccine that people may avoid because of a needle phobia. A fear of needles can deter people from having other vaccinations, blood tests, contraceptive injections, surgical procedures and other necessary medical interventions.

Fear, Anxiety, or Phobia?

Anxiety, fear, and phobia are all related terms, yet they are distinct experiences. Fear is described as a reaction to a known danger, stimulus, or perceived threat. This uncomfortable reaction can be mental, emotional, or physical and can resemble the stress response of “fight or flight.”

Anxiety, on the other hand, is a nonspecific ambiguous feeling of unease. It tends to be more about the anticipation of the event, rather than any specific fear or concern. Dental anxiety can cause feelings of apprehensiveness, negative thoughts, and imagining that negative experiences will occur about an upcoming dental appointment.

Phobia is a significant fear and is usually excessive, irrational, and persistent. Phobias are present in response to either an actual threat, or the anticipation of that threat. What distinguishes a true phobia from the anxious or fearful feeling is how intense the fear is.

Intense fears and phobias stem from a variety of sources including bad experiences in the past, horror stories told by others, fear of panicking in front of people, fear of losing control or of fainting. 

Feeling Better

Fortunately, there are a lot of simple things you can do to ease anxieties and fears and feel more in control.

Breathe.

Yes, Abdominal Breathing works for this too! Deep breathing triggers the parasympathetic nervous system and causes the body and mind to relax.

Visualization.

Imagine a time when you felt really relaxed and focus on the details. In your imagination, remember as many details about that time as you can, the colors, smells, sounds, and textures. This will shift your focus away from what any fears and anxieties you may be feeling.

You Don’t Need to Watch.

Look away. This decreases the anticipation of the event. Find something in the room to focus on and notice every detail of it.

Shift Your Focus.

Focus on another part of your body, like your other arm, or your left toe. Focus all of your attention on how that other part of your body feels.

Tell Your Nurse or Physician.

Let your healthcare provider know that you are feeling anxious. They can tell you what position to put your arm in and other helpful things to make the process more comfortable.

The Hypnotic Process

Using hypnosis is an effective means to help reduce and relieve anxiety for people with fears, anxieties, and phobias. Hypnosis is a natural, super-focused state of mind. It may be more useful to think of it as a process of working around the conscious mind that allows the subconscious mind to accept new ideas and suggestions more easily.

The hypnotic process for people with a high level of fear or phobia first dissociates from the fearful state, introduces new coping strategies, anchors them into a relaxed and calm state, and sets the new expectation of how future events will play out.

Throughout the process the hypnotist is using suggestions, stories, imagination, and metaphors to untangle the fears, instill new coping strategies, and anchor in a calm, relaxed state that the client can call on anytime in the future, anywhere they like.

The hypnotist can guide the client through imagined scenarios where they can experience feeling calm and in control. Since imagination is how the subconscious mind processes information, these methods help to reprogram the expectations of what the next doctor’s visit will be like.

What Healthcare Providers Can Do

Practicing clinical hypnosis requires specialized training and certification, yet there are many other tools, such as using appropriate language cues, guided imagery and abdominal breathing, that provide enormous benefit for patients and practitioners. When patients are in a more relaxed state, they can be more compliant during treatment, have fewer complaints and complications, and heal faster.

As a professional hypnotist, I offer training to dental and medical professionals on how to use hypnotic strategies in their practices.

Referral to a qualified professional hypnotist is appropriate when the level of fear, anxiety, or phobia is beyond what can be easily managed by guided relaxation and guided imagery techniques.∎

Click here for your Free Hypnosis audio program: “Stop the Cycle of Worry”

Click here for your Free “Abdominal Breathing for Anxiety and Stress Relief” tool

Karen Gray is a Certified Hypnotist, Registered Nurse, and Director of Green Mountain Hypnosis. For more information on how you can use hypnosis to change your life, 

Schedule your Free Strategy Call Today!

Conversations about face masks seem to go one of two ways. There are those who won’t wear them, and those who will. Somewhere in the middle there’s another group of people who find themselves with a pounding heart, feeling dizzy, short of breath, sweating, and racing thoughts at the thought of wearing a mask. This is known as mask anxiety, and this experience can feel overwhelming.

Mask anxiety, like most forms of anxiety, can be overcome either through self-directed interventions, by seeking professional help, or (most effectively) a combination of both.

There are some very real reasons why wearing a mask can make some people feel more anxious, and it has a lot to do with how our subconscious minds interpret the experience of having something cover our face.

Mentally, masks can trigger feelings of vulnerability, uncertainty, and fear. Physically, masks can bring on rapid heartbeat, rapid breathing, and breaking out in a sweat. There is also the perception of airflow resistance, giving the wearer the feeling of having difficulty breathing. Even though the mind and body are getting plenty of oxygen, this sensation can provoke a flight-or-fight response that can stimulate anxiety.

Coping Mechanisms You Can Use Right Now

So, since it looks like we’ll be a mask-wearing society for a while, let’s talk about some ways that you can decrease mask anxiety and feel more comfortable.

I’ve included two helpful tools in the links below. Guide to Abdominal Breathing for Anxiety and Stress Relief is an easy to use breathing pattern that uses your body’s natural rhythm to naturally and quickly decrease stress. “Stop the Worry Cycle” is a custom audio hypnosis program that lowers your current stress and changes the way you respond to anxiety triggers and stressful situations.

Reframing - Challenge negative thoughts

If you find yourself running through negative thoughts while wearing your mask, you can challenge those thoughts by reframing them into a positive idea. For example, if you notice the thought, “I can’t stand wearing this!” tell yourself, “I’m okay right now.” Similarly, if you have the thought, “This mask is making me so anxious.” you can reframe that as “I’m able to do something to lower that anxiety.” 

Focus on your breathing

Take deep breaths, using your diaphragm to breathe from your belly. Push your belly out as you take a long, slow breath in, hold it for just a moment, and exhale slowly pulling your stomach muscles back in. Abdominal breathing activates the vagus nerve and lowers your stress. Take a look at the Guide to Abdominal Breathing for Anxiety and Stress Relief in the links below for an easy and effective exercise that will lower your stress and help control anxiety. 

Practice mindfulness

Mindfulness can mean different things to different people. In this case, we are talking about being present in the moment in your surroundings to keep yourself from getting carried away by a thought.

When we become anxious our minds have a tendency to drift into the future, following some arbitrary train of thought. It’s sometimes easy then to start to think about all the scary possibilities. “What if I have a panic attack?” or “What will people think of me if I have to leave because my mask is so uncomfortable?”

As you begin to notice when you’re following some negative stream of thought, you can bring yourself back to the present by noticing what’s around you. Notice three things you can hear right now. Now notice three things that are blue (or any color really). Now notice three things that you can feel. These grounding techniques interrupt the drifting mind and allow you regain control.

Desensitize yourself

Practice makes perfect, even when it comes to reducing mask-wearing anxiety. Wear your mask at home for short periods. Even if you’re only able to wear it for a few moments at first, the more you experience safely wearing a mask, the easier you’ll find it to wear your mask for longer periods.

Make it more fun

Choose a mask style that you enjoy. Consider the pattern, the type of loops, and the colors. Some people find aromatherapy helpful when wearing a mask. You can spritz your mask with a scent you enjoy. or one that helps you to feel relaxed (as long as you don’t make the scent too overpowering).

If you find yourself struggling to wear a mask, talk to a professional. A mental health provider can use treatments like CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) that can help control anxiety over time. A qualified hypnotist can help you change the way you naturally respond to triggers so you can better manage symptoms and experience less anxiety overall. Whichever you choose, remember that you don’t have to live with anxiety and stress. There are lots of treatment options available, with or without medications.∎

“Stop The Worry Cycle” audio hypnosis program:

https://zfrmz.com/ktIXbGoAC8wYGb4Sf1qn

Guide to Abdominal Breathing for Anxiety and Stress Relief:

https://zfrmz.com/KuWL6RM1fRmcpiQlasJi