Imagine if you could reduce, and in many cases significantly ease, the painful thoughts, feelings and emotions that are controlling your life right now. Would you take that up? Of course you would — no one wants to suffer endlessly, feeling so much pain and emotional strain that they just want to give up and lay in bed for days on end. That's what NLP and hypnotherapy aim to offer, and here's why.
How NLP and hypnotherapy help with anxiety and stress
Let me start by saying that the painful thoughts, feelings and emotions crippling you are not hardwired into your brain. Like every thought, feeling and emotion, they are self-taught and learned through time and experience — and if something can be taught, it can be untaught.
What we can't do is change the event itself, whether that's a break-up, or a childhood or adult traumatic experience. It happened, for whatever reason, but it doesn't define you as a person. What NLP and hypnotherapy can do is help detach you from the emotional side of the occurrence — because in most cases, it's the emotional weight attached to an event that causes the crippling fear, doubt and anxiety, not the event itself.
Think of it like this: when you look at a photo from a holiday, you get all the memories and feelings of joy that surround it. With NLP and hypnotherapy, the aim is closer to looking at someone else's photos — no emotional attachment, just an event that happened. Something you can look back on and learn from, while giving your present and future your full focus and attention.
In simple terms, we reframe your mindset. We work to ease the emotional attachment to the event using various NLP and hypnotherapy techniques, aiming to help you move forward more quickly than a purely talk-based approach alone. A traumatic experience can otherwise take years to process. NLP and hypnotherapy can often help that process move faster, though the pace differs for everyone and depends heavily on the person.
It's not a magic wand, and it's only as effective as the commitment and drive the client brings to the process. So here are a few things worth keeping in mind before choosing this kind of therapy.
Commit to change
You need to want to change these thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and want to move forward in life. If you come to this therapy without being prepared to give it your all, the results can be more limited and slower to arrive than for someone who's ready for the change to happen. In the early stages of a loss, for example, it's natural not to see much that's positive — and to want to sit with the pain, hoping time alone will heal it. Time on its own heals very little. It's what you do with your time that helps you heal. Once you decide it's time to change, commit to that change every single day, until you're where you want to be.
Let the past go
So often people tell me they've spent days, weeks or even months thinking about and analysing the past — why and how something happened. The past is gone. It can't be changed or altered, and that's a fact rather than an opinion. It's natural to look back and learn from mistakes, but it isn't so useful to spend all your energy there when that focus could be used to heal and to shape the future instead.
Talk about it
Talking is one of the best forms of release. Find someone you trust who can stay neutral and simply listen — friends, family and therapists are all good for this. Letting your emotions out is an important form of release.
Believe it's possible
No matter how much anxiety or stress you're dealing with, and no matter how long you've carried it, it can be eased, and it can be worked through, allowing you to move forward towards a brighter future. That can feel doubtful right now, but many people who have sought this kind of therapy say they've found themselves in a better place, with a clearer understanding of what they want from life.
