1. WORDS 2017 Justine Dickinson Module 5 GUILD1A
“Discuss the relationship between stress, anxiety habits and phobias and
describe how you would treat these issues with hypnotherapy”
Stress
Definition from on line encyclopaedia: In psychology, a state of bodily or
mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existent
equilibrium.
In short, stress is our body‟s natural reaction to fear or change. Some levels
of stress are normal. They help us to achieve at a higher level when we need
to. They can also help us to make decisions that have become necessary due
the “stress” that a situation has caused. It is common for stress to come from
an outside cause like, work issues, overloaded or long hours and demanding
children. But stress has also been proven to be a learned behaviour. We can
pick up stressed behaviours from a parent, we find ourselves stressed by the
same things our parents get stressed by and find it hard to deal with the
same issues without help.
There are 6 different types of stress:
Hypostress – a type of stress that comes from being under stimulated bored
and can lead to depression
Eustress – A type of positive stress brought about by a deadline or
competition - Leads to the mind becoming stimulated to achieve.
Acute stress - A type of stress that starts to physically affect the body.
Episodic stress – A longer term stress that can have serious health impacts,
such as, heart attacks.
Chronic Stress – Very serious and long term stress – Has been linked to
cancer and other life threatening diseases.
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2. Traumatic stress -Usually brought on by outside seriously stressful incident-
Needs to be treated by a multi-disciplinary team.
Stress can affect many parts of our lives left unchecked, the sufferer may
find it difficult to concentrate, planning and motivation may start to
deteriorate. Sleep may become disturbed and sex drive can also decrease.
Stress can be triggered by a particular event like giving a speech or it can be
brought on by a constant situation for instance a relationship issue that
never gets dealt with. The latter of these instances can also be evidence of a
low self-esteem or confidence issue. Stress can lead to panic attacks.
Anxiety
Wikipedia definition: Anxiety (also called angst or worry) is a psychological
and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and
behavioural components.
When working with anxiety it is imperative that we find out the underlying
causes of the anxiety as an ethical therapist would be very concerned that
the symptoms may be a sign of psychosis, schizophrenia, Bipolar or mental
health issue that could not be treated with hypnosis alone. It is critical
during the initial consultation that we discover whether the patient is
suffering from neurosis rather than any of the previous conditions
mentioned.
Anxiety can be a positive thing. It helps us react in a survival way when faced
with danger. It can help us to fight or flight (run away). The problems start
when our belief system takes over. Our subconscious can misinterpret a
memory or an incident as always being a threat. For instance we get bitten
by a dog when we are young; we then always find all dogs a threat. This is
our subconscious triggering a response to a situation that has happened and
could be a threat in the future but is unlikely to always happen, but our
response is always the same. The subconscious cannot be a little bit
threatened, It only sees things in black and white. This can become life
affecting if we allow it to go too far. Eg avoiding parks, crossing the street
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3. when we see a dog or letting it stop us going out at all. Unchecked anxiety
can lead to phobia. Anxiety is a self-perpetuating syndrome; you have
anxiety either about something or just generally, you allow yourself either to
not face the thing that you are anxious about or if you feel generally anxious
you change your life to try not to feel anxious and this is turn makes you
more anxious. It is a vicious circle. Anxiety can also lead to panic attacks.
The physical symptoms of anxiety are increased muscular tension that can
cause discomfort and headaches. Breathing rapidly may make you feel light-
headed and shaky, and give you pins and needles. Rising blood pressure can
make you more aware of a pounding heart. Changes to the blood supply
affecting the digestive system may also cause nausea and sickness. The
effects on your nervous system may manifest themselves in an urgent need
to visit the toilet, and butterfly feelings in the stomach. Some of these
symptoms could also be signs of potentially serious illnesses so as an ethical
therapist I would conduct a thorough investigation to identify the cause of
the symptoms during my initial consultation. It is always helpful during the
treatment of anxiety to discover the ISE “The initial sensitising event.” This
would help the therapy to be successful although from personal experience,
I have suffered general anxiety disorder. I found that the relaxation and
information I gained from therapy enough to be free from anxiety. I didn‟t
ever pinpoint the cause of the ISE, although I can see that the ISE would help
finalize treatment as the cause would be known and would be helpful to
identify the cause of an issue to help deal with it once and for all and move
on without the questions how and why it happened in the first place and
therefore reassured it would not come back.
Phobia
Dictionary definition: 1. A persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a
specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the
awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous. 2. A strong fear, dislike,
or aversion.
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4. It is impossible to list every phobia because they can develop around any
object or situation: from fear of cotton wool to a fear of vomiting. In practice
they can be roughly categorised into two groups:
specific (simple) phobias
These are phobias about one thing; for example, spiders or flying. They
often develop in childhood or adolescence, and for many people they will
lessen as they get older. It is difficult to group specific phobias into
categories.
If you have a specific phobia about something which you do not come into
contact with in everyday life then it might be easier to cope with than a
phobia about something which you have to face often. However, this is not
always the case. If you have a very severe phobia it can cause fear and
anxiety even when the object or situation is not present.
Complex phobias
Complex phobias tend to be more disruptive and disabling than specific
phobias and often develop after adolescence. Two of the most common
complex phobias are social phobia and agoraphobia.
Social phobia: If you have social phobia (sometimes called social anxiety)
then you will feel very anxious when you have to be around people. You
might worry that they are going to be critical of you, and that you will do
something embarrassing. For some people, social phobia can be connected
to one specific activity, such as public speaking, but it can be much more
severe. It can become incredibly debilitating and a seemingly impossible
challenge to engage in everyday activities, like shopping, eating out or
meeting friends. Panic attacks also come into the context of social phobias.
Agrophobia:Agoraphobia is a very complex phobia usually manifesting itself
as a collection of inter-linked conditions.
For example many agoraphobics also fear being left alone (monophobia),
dislike being in any situation where they feel trapped (exhibiting
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5. claustrophobia type tendencies) and fear travelling away from their „safe‟
place, usually the home. Some agoraphobics find they can travel more easily
if they have a trusted friend or family member accompanying them, however
this can quickly lead to dependency on their carer.
The severity of agoraphobia varies enormously between sufferers from those
who are housebound, even room-bound, to those who can travel specific
distances within a defined boundary. It is not a fear of open spaces as many
people think.
Habits
A habit is something we do unconsciously. Some habits are good and
necessary, we get in a routine about how we get ready for bed, cleaning
teeth, washing, putting on cream etc. When we leave the house we check the
oven is off, hair straighteners are off, we have keys, phone and purse. These
routines become a habit. Some bad habits may be smoking when stressed;
during pre-menstrual tension eating chocolate for comfort and nail-biting
when we feel nervous or bored. Habits are created as a way of dealing with
avoidance, creating comfort or generating a feeling of joy. Some habits are
formed as a baby as in thumb sucking. This is a perfectly normal behaviour
as a baby and child but becomes more and more unacceptable as we become
older. To change a habit we have to firstly become aware of it and it is no
longer effective for us and secondly we must make the decision and take
ultimate responsibility to change it. The challenge with habits is to find the
underlying need that is being served by the habit and then to find more
constructive and useful way of serving the need. Eg identifying that during
pre-menstrual tension, there is a need for more calories and replace
chocolate with less fatty and sugary foods therefore breaking the habit.
Treatment strategies
An ethical therapist will take into consideration even the most apparently
simple and shallow issue to ensure that there is not a deep rooted and more
sinister problem other than neurosis. The common factors with all the issues
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6. discussed in this essay are that they all need proper investigation into the ISE
“initial sensitising event” for a truly meaningful and deep therapeutic result.
Also if unchecked all the issues may result in panic attacks occurring which
can be utterly debilitating or other serious health implications like heart
attacks or even cancer.
When dealing with stress and anxiety the use of metaphors can be helpful.
The induction should always be a very relaxing one as this in itself is part of
the treatment. People suffering with stress and anxiety often have tense
muscles and stomach discomfort so some reference to these issues can be
helpful. The metaphors that can be useful are writing the worry‟s on a
blackboard and erasing them or as in “Hypnotherapy a practical handbook”
the client is asked during hypnosis to imagine writing their worries on pieces
of paper and then throwing them in a stream and watching them drift away.
These types of metaphoric imagery need to be repeated many times but are
a pleasant gentle way of effectively facing worries in a detached fashion.
When approached by a client to deal with an unhelpful habit it is helpful to
bring into the conscious mind what has been an unconscious action. It can
be useful to identify what the triggers are for indulging the habit. With
smokers it may be helpful to identify where and when and why they smoke
to identify and bring into the conscious mind the triggers for smoking. For
example if the client smokes when they are stressed, then the challenge is to
identify those situations and then replace the smoking with a more helpful
reaction to stress.
When dealing with phobias; the cause can be recent, orit could have been an
event over a year ago that has caused the initial anxiety, the client didn‟t
deal with the anxiety, the anxiety increased the client started to change their
lifestyle with avoidance tactics and the clients issue has then developed into
a phobia. The identification of the ISE is imperative for effective treatment. It
is also worth pointing out that that a phobia can be learned and may not
result from a direct personal experience. Once the ISE has been discovered
the script would have to confront the situation. As with all the issues
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7. discussed in this essay the client may be in an agitated state and therefore
the script would have to be of a relaxing nature, using a PMR first, a rapid
induction would not work well with an anxious or agitated client. Depending
on the severity of the phobia a metaphor that detached the client from face
on dealing with the issue could be very helpful. Asking the client to imagine
a cinema screen and asking the client to imagine watching the situation from
the projector room for example would be a gentle and non-threatening way
of exposing the client to a phobia without upsetting them so much the
therapy cannot take place.
Conclusion
In summary all the conditions mentioned in this essay can lead to one
another. Someone who is stressed, unchecked, can then suffer anxiety when
unchecked that issue can manifest as a phobia and so on. Someone with an
unhelpful habit, unchecked can become stressed that may lead to anxiety
and then onto panic disorder. There is a close relationship between all these
issues and indeed the same event can develop into any of the other issues,
therefore illustrating the need to identify what happened in the first place
and what impact the situation is having on the client.
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