This is a comprehensive guide to help recover your sense of balance and control and to deal with stress, both personal and work-related. There are two sections, Step 1: Looking After Yourself and Step 2: Looking Into Yourself.
Step 1 is advice aimed at moderate or manageable stress, where simple self-help actions are easy to take. If you feel that doing the suggestions in Step 1 would be a burden, or they feel unrealistic or impossible, then ignore them for now, and move on to Step 2. This is already an indication you may benefit greatly from professional help.
The work I do is quicker, deeper and far more effective than conventional stress management techniques (and also far beyond this guide). It looks at the hidden unconscious and emotional factors which create and maintain stressed-out feelings. I use advanced forms of brief therapy, and hypnosis and hypnotherapy where necessary.
Hypnotherapy can show people the way to take control of their lives even after endless discussion and other efforts have failed. I often achieve breakthroughs with clients who have had many sessions of counselling, and many sessions of psychotherapy, and still not healed the real causes or made real and lasting changes in their lives.
Because hypnotherapy works with the unconscious mind, it has a track record of finding inner resources of understanding, courage, and calmness which can inspiring and unexpected. To learn more, or to make an appointment, call me on 0845-351-0604.
This section contains many positive ideas to inspire you and set you off in new directions. These aren’t rules, and they aren’t meant to all apply to everybody.
Choose one or two ideas which really ring a bell, and apply them with totality.
So for example, it is not compulsory that everyone learns a musical instrument! And for some people, the response to the suggestion to make a fixed time each day without interruptions may be "In my dreams!" Again, for some people, exercise is the key; for others, relaxation. These are suggestions to inspire you. The best way is your own way.
The message here is that challenge doesn’t have to stress you. Some people thrive on it. Do these straightforward things first. THEY WORK. You will feel better and feel that the situation is more under control.
Don’t think "exercise" (boring, repetitious, the gym at school), think "activity", think “fun.” Assume that your body longs to move and be active, and ask yourself, “What would be fun?” That might be joining a gym, or it might be stretching, yoga, tree climbing, skipping, swimming, playing a sport, jogging, martial arts, or putting on some music at home and dancing on your own.
Thirty minutes walking almost every day is a good minimum to aim for, and thirty minutes vigorous exercise is ideal. All exercise is good.
If exercise might pose the slightest risk to you, use your intelligence and check with your doctor first.
>>> Reduce or eliminate junk food and try to eat as much fresh food as possible. Junk food and much processed food contains additives which affect mood and behaviour. In studies in the UK with both children and prison inmates, changing from junk food to fresh food makes participants feel calmer, less tense, and less tense and aggressive. And they got on with other people better.
>>> Reduce the amount of refined sugar you eat. Sugary snacks give a rush of sugar, which causes a rush of insulin. This sweeps the sugar out of the bloodstream and turns it into un-necessary fat, and so depletes blood sugar, leaving you feeling tired, crotchety, and needing ... another sugary snack to perk you up. Complex carbohydrates (pasta, wholemeal bread) are just a comforting as sugar.
Exercise, relaxation and good diet really work. They are a cheap, highly effective way to give your health and your body a wonderful present. Together with how you talk to yourself (see the start of Section (2), they are the basics of stress reduction.
Almost certainly you will find many items which if you think about it, are desirable but not essential. Don’t sacrifice your peace of mind on the altar of the inessential.
In any case, insomnia at all stages of the night often comes from the thoughts whirring through your brain as you go to sleep. One key with sleep is to have your head as quiet as far as possible before you touch the pillow. So make a clear, sharp boundary between problem-solving time and resting / sleeping time. Write out a "worry list" each evening, then tell yourself there is nothing you can do until the next morning, and resolutely stop thinking about your worries. Switch off, practise the Relaxation Response or listen to quiet music or have a hot bath. (Research supports a hot bath to promote sleep.). Try filling the bedroom with the scent of lavender from a little electric aromatherapy lamp (safer than a candle lamp) - research also supports lavender fragrance. If you can’t sleep, don’t toss and turn for more than 10 minutes; get up, or sit up in bed, and read a non-work book or listen to music until you feel tired. Or sit up and count sheep until you are tired. Counting sheep works. See my more comprehensive list of insomnia tips.
Not just nuns, but soldiers too. A major long-term study of American ex-servicemen by Dr Rosalind Wright of-Harvard Medical School measured the men’s anger and hostility and compared it with lung function over a 20-year period ending in 2006. Poor lung function is strongly associated with risk of serious lung disease. Angry, hostile men experienced a much more rapid decline of lung function.
And there’s a lot more research like this, showing that even when things like smoking, genetic factors, income and educational level are taken into account, people live longer when they have a loving, positive, optimistic attitude to life.
Like all the main advice in this booklet, laughter is validated by medical research. It is a powerful mind-body healing technique. It reduces stress hormones, balances testosterone levels, releases beneficial endorphins and markedly reduces pain. University of Maryland cardiologists have found that people with heart disease are 40% less likely to laugh in a variety of situations. And conversely, laughter improves blood flow. Dr Michael Miller of the University of Maryland Medical Centre one group of subjects a comedy film and found a difference in blood flow of more than 55% compared to a control group who watched a war film.
Indeed Dr Lee Berk of Loma Linda University found that it is beneficial simply to anticipate watching a funny movie. Dr Berk explains that laughter diminishes the secretion of the body’s stress hormones, cortisol and epinephrine, while enhancing immune response. "In addition, mirthful -laughter boosts secretion of growth hormone, an enhancer of these same key immune responses. Subjects expecting to watch a funny movie had 27% more beta-endorphins and 87% more human growth hormone in their blood compared with a control group. The physiological effects of a single one-hour session viewing a humorous video last up to 12 to 24 hours in some individuals.”
The effects of laughter are so clear that a number of hospitals in the USA, including the University of Maryland Medical Centre and UCLA use "laughter clinics" to help heal pain, inflammation, stress and heart disease. Dr Berk puts it like this: “It may sound corny but we in the health care medical sciences need to get serious about happiness and the lifestyle that produces it, relative to mind, body and spirit. Why do you think Reader’s Digest has claimed that laughter is the best medicine for so many years?”
But if you want professional help, then in my view individualised, multi-session hypnosis wins hands down. While hypnosis is an enormously powerful tool, single-session one-hour quitting methods are short, standardised and one-size fits all. There is a very high risk of relapse. From the research, you need to do an individualised approach, preferably involving awareness exercises done while you smoke. I offer a programme which I am very proud of, with leading-edge aspects found in very few quitting packages.
This section goes beyond stress management tips to a more personal and emotional level.
Remember that quotation at the top of the page? - "It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it."
That’s true. To a very large extent, it is not the events in our life which are the problem, it is how we think about them. Teaching, for example, is one of the most stressed professions. Research has shown that the teachers who feel the most stressed are the ones who talk to themselves in the most "pressuring and awfulising" way – saying to themselves all the time “this is awful, I can’t stand this, I don’t know why anyone becomes a teacher ….” When they change that habit, their stress level drops dramatically.
There are many ways you can have a different attitude to what life throws at you. In the next paragraphs are about how we talk to ourselves.
If you feel your solutions lie in this area, then you are very likely to benefit from individual consultations. The work I do is quicker, deeper and far more effective than conventional stress management, and includes hypnosis, advanced forms of brief therapy, and hypno-analysis where necessary.
Hypnotherapy can show people the way to take control of their lives even after endless discussion and other efforts have failed. I often achieve breakthroughs with clients who have had many sessions of counselling, and many sessions of psychotherapy, and still not healed the real causes or made real and lasting changes in their lives.
Because hypnotherapy works with the unconscious mind, it has a track record of finding inner resources of understanding, courage, and calmness which can inspiring and unexpected. To learn more, or to make an appointment, call me on 0845-351-0604.
Start to pay attention to the voice in your head as you talk to yourself. It’s always there and we don’t pay much attention to it. Even less do we think to change it! But we can and it is a very powerful way to change you life. In fact there is a whole therapy, Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) devoted to just this. I use extensively equivalent methods to CBT for working with self-talk and changing core beliefs. (What's good and what's bad about standalone CBT? See here for a guided tour of therapy methods from my viewpoint.)
As in CBT, the examples here offers you suggestions for what else you could think. The work I do in my individual sessions is deeper, more effective and in my view more respectful, because using hypnosis I help people to find their own positive resources within their unconscious minds, which they often never dreamed they had.
For a couple of days, write down all the things you say to yourself. Normally, you believe your own thoughts. But this time, play a game that they all come from some depressing, pessimistic radio station - let’s call it Radio Ga-Ga, after the song by Queen. And you could switch it off and listen to Radio Positivity or Radio Wisdom instead.
Or to put it another way, think of reading a newspaper whose political views you approve of. As you read the articles, most people lap up the opinions uncritically. But if you read a paper you disagree with, you probably bridle at every word. So the trick is to imagine that you are reading your thoughts in a newspaper - one that you disagree with. And you treat all that self-talk very, very sceptically.
In general, listen for yourself saying ANYTHING which:
Instead say: I could do it, or I will or I would like to or I want to or (be honest) I don’t want to do it. Or "I firmly but flexibly prefer it if he / she does ..." Doesn’t that feel easier and less pressured?
So note down what you are saying to yourself. And just don’t believe it!
CBT and conventional stress management offers alternative ways of thinking either suggested by the therapist, or constructed from boilerplates. I’ve given one of the few good boilerplate examples above, eg “firmly but flexibly prefer” instead of must or ought.
I work differently. The miracle of hypnosis is that it allows inner wisdom which is all your own to bubble up from your subconscious mind. My work gives you control of your life. It enables you to find your own wisdom, solutions which are your very own and which fit you perfectly.
Stressful language can be surprisingly addictive. You have to choose inner wisdom, by an act of will to use the new language whenever you can. Hypnosis is ideal for re-programming the mind in this way, and makes it far easier.
Might you enjoy stress? Of course, consciously, no, no, no, no, no. But wait. Stop and look, honestly and sensitively. If you couldn't have your stress, if it wasn't allowed, what might you lose? Would there be a tiny grain of regret or disappointment or frustration? Try asking yourself: "How do I create stress?” or “How do I create a result I don't want?" Even better, ask a couple of friends to tell you!
Stress can be useful in many hidden ways:
>>> stress may get someone sympathy. Some people learn as kids that the only way to get good attention is to be in pain and trouble
>>> some people get off on the buzz, the high, the intensity of adrenaline rush
>>> stress may let someone avoid truths and decisions they don't want to face
>>> or many people feel may feel that if you they stress hard enough, they can get an impossible amount of work done or protect themselves from failure or ward off some awful danger. At the back of the mind they feel “Just a bit more stress, and everything will be fine."
All in all, that stressed out feeling can feel both unpleasant yet surprisingly "right." Take heart - it's not needed. You may have to choose to let it go.
Do you feel guilty if you put your needs first? Take courage, do it. It's your right. Start to say "No." "No" is very, very liberating. If you are asked at work to do something which you don't have time for, say so. Give the consequences back to the person making the request: "I can start the Health and Safety audit (say) if you like, but then I won't finish the corporation tax, which do you want me to do?" If you feel guilty and wrong to say "No" or put yourself first, or can't begin to imagine how to, then professional help might make a big difference to your life.
Are you a control freak? (Don’t know? – ask someone!) It guarantees frustration and discontent. Begin to ease off.
Learn to get what you legitimately need by the "broken record" method - asking for what you want over and over and over again, very calmly and sweetly. A phrase which can come in useful is "I'm sorry, but that doesn't work for me." (Important! If you don't get your way, be prepared to give up equally sweetly.)
Turn "needs" into "preferences". Experiment for one day with the attitude that all that you NEED in life is enough food, warm shelter, and a loving heart. And it is difficult to prevent life giving you those. Look at the things you think you need over and above that. How real are they? Do you really need them to love, to live, to laugh, to have fun?
Conversely, what you really do need - make sure you get it. Ask yourself point-blank "Am I getting my needs met? For affection, friendship, exercise, good food, fun, physical and emotional nourishment?" And if not, do something about it.
Find someone understanding to talk to. But not someone who will only agree with you or will collude in putting others down. You want someone sympathetic who can expand your perspectives.
If you're always angry, remember anger covers up painful feelings. Look for the pain underneath. If someone else is angry with you, why respond in kind? Be at the driving wheel of your life and just say "I choose to be calm."
In conflicts, value yourself; be assertive. But look for an outcome which is a happy ending for both of you. Let the other person win something too.
If things get too much, walk away for a few minutes.
Appreciate people. Whenever you honestly can, thank them, compliment them, help them out, forgive their shortcomings or grumpiness, be gracious, recognise their contributions. It's loving and it feel good. And what's more, if you help reduce their stress, they will help reduce yours.
Learn to LISTEN. Other people's view of the world can be as right as yours. Put yourself in the other person's shoes. Check you've understood: "If I've got what you're saying right, you mean .....?" When you've understood, only then reply.
Take charge. Assert yourself. Look at everything you can do to take charge, to makes things better, to get what you need. Bet on yourself as a winner, not a loser. You deserve the best for yourself. Even getting control of one small area can be a big relief. If that takes you beyond your limits, great! Go beyond your limits, let the situation challenge and stretch you. YOU are wonderful, YOU are a child of the universe, YOU have potentialities you have only begun to guess at.
But sometimes the very opposite of that applies: Watch peacefully as hopes fail. There are times when you just can't juggle all the balls at once. Then, you do have to live through some dream failing, some fear becoming real. That's life. Does it really prevent you from living, loving, learning, and laughing? From finding inner peace inside yourself? When you've done all you can, there is a time to ... just .... let.... go .... Letting go may feel sad. Or it may feel like a relaxing relief. Sometimes all that's needed is to sit with those feelings. Trust me, they will pass, just like everything else. It may be that letting those feelings go, is creating the space inside you for something more wonderful than you could ever have imagined to happen.
View things differently. Sometimes the situation is actually OK, but we think it isn't. It can be as simple as a choice of how to view things. Is the glass half full, or half empty? If life has given you a lemon, why not make lemonade?
What happens if you move towards the stress instead of running away - might it turn into a challenge? Might fear turn into excitement? Could it be a great opportunity to learn something or reach deeper inside yourself? How would you have to view your situation to find something positive in it? Try saying “challenging” instead of “stressful”.
Know that life is change - in the 21st century, often BIG change. Give up wanting things to stay the same. They never will, ever again, for any of us. And some degree of alert-alarm (tense, snappy, wired) is inevitable at times. Life always will bring points where we don't know what happens next. We can choose to view that with fear or with equanimity: it just is how things are. Life will always bring change and challenges and sometimes hectic high-speed action: we can choose to view those as stressful or an exhilarating rush of adrenaline. There will be joy, there will be disappointment. It is how things are. Even positive changes can produce a kind of mourning for what is gone. Recognise that and give yourself space to adjust.
Ask a friend what they know about the way that you handle your problems successfully. Instead of criticising yourself, make a list of your positive qualities. Minimize competition. Do you compete with others? With your own high standards? At least outside of work, aim to live non-competitively. Ask yourself "Is this really important?", "Will this really matter a year from now? In a month? Tomorrow even?"
Resist the urge to judge or criticize. Irritation with someone else is simply a signal that they are different from you and think differently. It is often the case that the things that irritate us most about another person, are the things within us that we dislike or tolerate the least. Learning to be compassionate about other people's failings can often help us come to terms with and love what is most human about ourselves. Recognise that your beliefs about how people ought to be and what must happen are just that - simply your beliefs. Other people's different thoughts are just as valid to them. Let go of being right and you let go of a lot of tension. Be tolerant. Tolerance is largeness of spirit. Let go of forcing people to change so you feel better. You can request change but you can't force it. In fact the more you force it, the less they change. The only person you can ever truly change is yourself. It is amazing that when you make those changes to your own life and being, others around you have no choice but to change too.
Explain the changes you are making in your life to those around you so they don't feel left behind.
Forgive yourself for your faults and imperfections. You don't have to be perfect. Perfectionism is a great recipe for stress. Try saying to yourself over and over again: "I forgive myself for... ", and complete the sentence with any and every fault, shortcoming and inadequacy which come to mind. Keep going for a full 15 minute. If you run out of things to say, say the same thing over and over until a new thing to forgive yourself for comes to mind. Take your time, feel what you are saying. If it's hard, imagine that you were forgiving a child, or someone else you love, for something they thought was terrible but you could see was not. And apply that same gentle attitude to whatever you criticise in yourself.
Sometimes, when things get difficult or overwhelming, what's written here might seem irrelevant. Or it seems just too difficult, or you are too depressed or anxious or guilty. Or you cannot possibly make time for yourself. Or things have all piled up so much you can't ever imagine getting out from under. If you would like to take the first step to resolve stress and bring peace and lightness back into your life, give me a ring and talk to me directly.
Andrew White 0845-3510604 / 0117-968-7307.
Is your life as good as it could be? See the home page for an informal quiz on how much happiness you can gain from brief therapy, self-help personal development methods, hypnotherapy and relationship coaching
See here for fees, schedule, and money-back assurance for the first session, here for what makes the type of brief therapy and hypnosis which I do different.
It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.
Hans Selye, pioneer stress researcher and cancer survivor.
To arrange an appointment, or for more information, ring and speak to me direct. Clinics for hypnotherapy & counselling in Clifton, Bristol, Avon BS9 1JE and in Taunton, Somerset, TA2 7BZ
0845 351 0604 / 0117-968-7307
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