The Quiet Mind: The Self-Hypnosis Approach to Conquering Anxiety

Discover how to access your subconscious and reprogram anxious thought patterns into self-possessed resilience

What does the word HYPNOSIS make you think of?

There is a very good chance that you immediately think of swinging watches. Or stage shows featuring people clucking like chickens. Or maybe charlatans gaining access to their victims’ bank accounts and stealing all their savings. Maybe the word makes you think of the brainwashing of prisoners and even people committing crimes instigated by a hypnotist.

I am a medical hypnotherapist. I trained in medical hypnotherapy at Birbeck College in London. I got a Medical Hypnotherapy Diploma for my trouble. I practised clinical hypnotherapy as a general practitioner. Today, I teach my clients self-hypnosis – how to use the infinite power of their minds for stress and anxiety management. If you are anxious about the future, self-hypnosis can certainly help you feel calmer and more in control of your destiny. It can do more than that, though.

Hypnosis can be used to reduce your anxiety about the future in two ways.

• Firstly, you can use hypnosis to relax and let go of any deep-seated tension. This will help to prevent the psychological, physical and social health problems that chronic stress can cause.
• Secondly, hypnosis can help you make lifestyle changes that will help you cope more effectively with anxiety. For example, you can hypnotise yourself to exercise regularly, eat healthily, to stop smoking, etc. This you can do by adding suggestions to a hypnotic script. I usually recommend that my clients record a script in their own voice. When you listen to a recording, your intensely focused state of mind will make you unusually responsive to suggestions. If you add your own personal stress management affirmations to the recording, you are feeding your affirmations right into your subconscious mind which has no direct contact with reality and assumes that everything you say is true.

Before we go any further, let’s get a few definitions straight.

What is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis is a natural state of absorbed concentration combined with heightened awareness. People experience this state naturally throughout each and every day. Common examples might include daydreaming, or totally immersion in a book or in a favourite hobby. Hypnosis is simply a state of mind, in much the same way that happiness is a state of mind.

During hypnosis, your brain waves change and become alpha waves. These waves are similar to the waves recorded just before someone falls asleep. Your brain’s waking state is a beta brain wave. Just as you are going to sleep it changes to alpha and then to delta and theta in deep sleep. The alpha state is a dreamy, pleasant state. During this time the mind is open to suggestion and creating a rich sensory experience. The more real the experience becomes in the subconscious mind during this state, the more effect it will have on your waking behaviour.

One common misconception is that hypnosis is some form of magic or supernatural power, this is simply not true. Hypnosis is a perfectly normal and natural state of mind that almost anyone can enter at will. The British Medical Association approved hypnotherapy as a valid medical treatment in 1955. The American Medical Association followed in 1958.

Now let’s address a few of your objections.

Will I know what is going on, or will I be asleep?

You certainly will not be asleep or unconscious. As a matter of fact, during hypnosis, you are even more aware of what is going on around you than you would ordinarily be.

Is Hypnosis dangerous?

Hypnosis is a normal state of mind, one which most people go in and out of every day. When you are watching an intriguing film, driving down a long monotonous road, listening to captivating music, you are under hypnosis. During a hypnosis session, you would immediately leave the room if it caught fire, even if seconds before you felt as if your limbs were too heavy to move.

Since hypnosis can help make us sharper and more aware mentally, it actually may help keep us safe, by making us more aware of our surroundings.

Can Hypnosis make me do something against my will?

Absolutely not. This is probably the biggest myth of all. Stage hypnotists seem to make people do strange things while hypnotised, but the truth is that these people would not do anything if they did not want to. Stage hypnotists choose their subjects carefully so that they will have willing participants. You will never do anything or accept any suggestion that violates your values.

What if I don’t wake up?

No one has ever got stuck in a state of hypnosis. It simply can not happen. Just as you decide to go into hypnosis, you decide to come out of it. When you realise that you can no longer hear your own recorded voice, you return to the present. If you are listening to a recording and the power fails, you will wake up naturally. Your subconscious mind would detect that there is no voice guiding you and bring you back to conscious awareness.

Will I forget everything during the session?

It occasionally happens that you can not remember what happened during a session. Usually, you are aware of everything around you, and remember most, if not all, that happened during the session.

What if I can not go deeply enough?

A light hypnotic state is often sufficient to accomplish what you want to achieve. Most people can achieve a trance deep enough to take suggestions on board.

Can anyone be hypnotised?

Yes, in fact, the ability to be hypnotised is a learnt trait. You can teach your mind to go into trance and get better and better at it as you practice self-hypnosis. Everyone can be hypnotised provided that they want to be.

The only people who can’t be hypnotised are those who can’t understand the instructions, those who are completely inebriated through alcohol or drugs or those who don’t want to be hypnotised. Everyone else can be hypnotised, but the depth and response do differ from person to person.

Auto-Suggestion

To train your brain to benefit from self-hypnosis, I suggest that you record a self-hypnosis script. You are more likely to accept suggestions if they are given in your own voice. Your subconscious does not ask questions. It does not know truth from falsehood. It merely acts upon whatever information it receives.

Your Self-Hypnosis Script

Start reading the script slowly, in a soft voice. Pause often between sentences and even between words. Your voice and the pace of your speech must suggest relaxation. Speak in a slow monotone.

When recording, be aware of:

• Your tone of voice – you should sound calm and confident.
• Your talking speed – talk slowly.
• The inflexion of your voice – don’t drone on, put some colour in your voice.
• The emotion in your voice – smile while you are reading.

(Just in case someone else ends up listening to your recording at a time when it is not advisable, ALWAYS include this introduction at the start of the recording. “This recording is of a hypnotic nature and should not be used while driving a car or operating machinery.”)

Here is the script – begin the recording here:

And now you can relax completely….. and feel all the cares of the day draining away…First, slowly… slowly relax your toes, and then your feet, your calves, your knees, your thighs, your hips, your belly and your chest. Gradually move on to release all the tension in your shoulders, your back, your neck and your jaw. Finally, totally loosen the muscles of your face and scalp…

Now, you are going to use your imagination… but if you find you can’t imagine all the things I’m referring to, it really doesn’t matter. You might even find your mind wandering restlessly, and my voice fading into the background. That doesn’t matter either. The sound of my voice will continue to relax you and it really doesn’t matter if you don’t hear a word I say, because very soon now, you are going to be more relaxed than you have ever been before… imagine yourself standing on top of a lush green hill, staring into the distance… you can feel the warmth of the sun on your face and shoulders and you can see the long grass of the fragrant meadow moving slightly in the gentlest of breezes….

When you look down, you notice a safe, narrow, winding path that disappears into a small wood.. and beyond the wood, you can see the sea… the sunlight is glistening on the waves in the bay… so that the whole ocean seems to shimmer and sparkle… You begin to make your way down the hill, slowly and leisurely, taking your time to admire the view and smell the wildflowers, with the ferns and grasses brushing gently against your legs as you pass… and you just catch the faint taste of salt borne on the breeze…

…and become aware of the distant sound of the ocean crashing on the rocks… and you marvel at the profound sense of calm and contentment that sweeps over you, as you move on down and down towards the wood… moving so easily, so effortlessly, you feel almost as though you’re floating on a cloud… and in no time at all you find yourself wandering into the shade of the trees… It’s pleasantly cool in the wood and the fresh scent of the pine trees relaxes you still further… as you move easily into the protective, sheltering depth of the wood, you become lazier and lazier with each step you take…

….until, quite suddenly… you feel the warmth of the sun on your head and shoulders again and you find yourself on a beautiful deserted beach… a beautiful golden shoreline sweeping away in a gentle curve in front of you… you can feel the sand warm between your toes as you stroll languidly across the endless beach to the water’s edge…. you enjoy the change to a moist, firm coolness beneath your feet as you wander along the shore, leaving an idle trail of footprints in the sand behind you… every so often a larger wave sends water foaming around your legs…

… all these things seem to create a sense of timelessness for some unknown reason… and you find yourself a comfortable spot, a sandy hollow maybe, to just sit and gaze out across the rolling sea to the horizon… trickling warm, golden sand idly through your fingers… there’s a faint haze which makes it difficult for you to see exactly where the sky stops and the ocean starts… and as you try to gaze out over the sea, you see a small white cloud appear from nowhere on the horizon… it comes towards the beach quite quickly, growing larger as it approaches, until it’s immediately overhead… the fluffiest, whitest, marshmallow cloud you can ever remember having seen…

And somehow you know, by instinct, that you can let all your worries, all your cares, all your fears, just drift up towards this large white cloud… you can actually see them drifting away from you in a long slow spiral… maybe like smoke slowly rising… just spiralling away from you towards this pure white cloud… the cloud absorbs all your worries, swallowing up all your fears and anxieties and just as the last part of that spiral of your worries and cares disappears inside it…

The sun bursts through!… dispelling and dissolving each and every one of your worries, every one of your fears and anxieties… leaving you totally relaxed and perfectly at ease with yourself, without a single care in the world… and now, you settle yourself down into a comfortable position and just drift off into a deep and relaxing sleep… and while you sleep, you have a dream…

You dream that you are walking down a long central corridor, with empty rooms on each side….stretching away from you in a long gentle curve… so long that you can’t actually see the end of it… you know that this corridor is your subconscious mind… the part of your mind that knows just what to do and just and how to do it… and as you begin to move along this corridor, becoming even more relaxed, you realise that time and space are beginning to lose their meaning…

You suddenly realise, with a surge of pleasure… that what you once saw as threats are merely stepping stones to greater peace of mind… it suddenly dawns on you that what you once accepted as the limits of your ability, of your skills and talents, are nothing more than stepping stones to even greater achievements… because you are a calm and confident person with a sensible approach to stress. Whenever you notice worrying thoughts about the future seep into your mind…you tell yourself, ”I can handle this…I can cope with this…I am in control and I can deal with this situation.”

Now your mind is prepared and receptive to everything I am going to say to you… and everything I say will be accepted and acted upon by your subconscious… it will influence the way you think, the way you feel and how you behave over the coming days, and weeks, and months…

This is where you insert your chose affirmations

Example:

My mind is calm, I am at peace. I relax into the present moment knowing that nothing else needs my attention right now. My future is promising, purposeful and prosperous.

Every time you use self-hypnosis, you will go into trance faster and deeper…You can remain for a few more moments in this comfortable relaxed state and then I am going to start counting slowly from ten to one… and as I count you will slowly become aware of your surroundings as if waking from a long, peaceful, rejuvenating sleep… you will feel refreshed and alert and content…I am going to start counting now: Ten, nine, eight….waking up….seven, six, five….becoming more and more alert… four, three, two… wide awake now…and one!   

This script is for your personal use only.

NB. Self-hypnosis is not intended to be a substitute for seeking medical advice or visiting: a medical practitioner, clinical hypnotherapist or any other relevant health or alternative health therapist. If you are receiving treatment for clinical depression, bipolar disease, schizophrenia, or any other diagnosed disorder, you must discuss using hypnotic scripts with your health practitioner before you start any hypnosis or self-hypnosis sessions.

You can download instructions on How to write a Self-Hypnosis Script here.

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