Before I talk about how hypnotherapy for anxiety works, I’ll define what I mean by anxiety.
Why am I doing this? Because often people talk about stress and anxiety interchangeably.
Stress is a direct, short-term response to an external trigger. For example, deadlines, conflicts, taking a penalty kick. The feeling fades once the issue is resolved.
On the other hand anxiety is an internal, persistent, and excessive fear or worry. It doesn’t need a specific, immediate trigger.
So while stress is often situational, anxiety can feel uncontrollable and interfere with daily functioning.
The impact? Stress usually allows you to keep functioning. Anxiety can be paralysing, leading to avoidance, panic attacks, and impairment of daily life.
Although stress and anxiety share the same symptoms, both physical and mental
Both trigger your body's "fight or flight" response, leading to similar symptoms like insomnia, muscle tension, headaches, rapid breathing, and difficulty concentrating.
Hypnotherapy for anxiety. Types of anxiety it can help.
Before I describe what hypnotherapy is, below is a list of the anxieties hypnotherapy helps ‘dial down’.
Generalised Anxiety. This is also called Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). In every day language your always ‘in a stew’. You have persistent, excessive, and uncontrollable worry about everyday issues such as your health, money, family, work for at least 6 months. You’re restless, always tired, your muscles are tense, and your sleep is erratic to non-existent.
Social anxiety. This is an intense, persistent fear of being watched, judged, or embarrassed in social situations. It goes beyond shyness. You’re overwhelmed by everyday contact - like speaking to strangers, eating in public, or performing—and often leads to avoidance that disrupts daily life, work, or school
Impending doom. This is a feeling of an intense, overwhelming, and irrational sensation that a catastrophic, life-threatening, or tragic event is about to happen - even without immediate danger. It’s linked to panic attacks and in extreme cases heart attacks.
Spiralling thoughts. Often referred to as rumination or catastrophic thinking. Basically you’re in a cycle of escalating negative thoughts. Nagging doubts, tiredness and uncertainty builds and builds to uncontrollable worry. Left untreated it can lead to depression.
Unease fatigue. This can be a pattern of thinking you’ve let grow and grow. The unease is usually a combination of restlessness and a general sense that "something is wrong" with fatigue: exhaustion, lack of energy, or burnout. It’s sometimes called a “malaise”.
Overthinking. You obsessively replay past events or worrying about future, uncontrollable scenarios. It’s not problem-solving because it lacks action. It can burn you out and cripple your decision-making ability. It is even more of a danger in highly intelligent people - you build even more scenarios that are even more damaging.
Panic attacks. This is a type of fear response. You’re body is making an exaggerated response to something. And they’re different for everyone. danger, stress or excitement. Panic attacks happen at different times for everyone. You might notice that particular places, situations or activities seem to be the trigger panic attacks. For example, they might happen when you think about your health worries, you’ve had too much caffeine or alcohol consumption, you have an underlying physical condition like asthma or heart issues.
Rumination. Similar to overthinking. You obsessively, repetitively, and passively dwelling on negative feelings, past mistakes, or distressing situations without finding solutions. You go over the same scenario again and again. It’s NOT reflection because it focuses on problems rather than solutions. What you’re doing is keeping the body in a state of high alert, burning yourself out.
Impact on Health: Sustains the body’s stress response, increases inflammation, impairs emotional processing, and can trigger deeper depression or anxiety disorders.
Phobias. These are intense, irrational, and disabling fears of specific objects, situations, or activities that pose little actual danger. You triggers severe physical symptoms like panic attacks, sweating, and rapid heartbeat. Below are what bothers most people. And these are the most common phobias I treat:
The fear of heights (acrophobia).
This affects 23% of Britons, according to a YouGov RealTime survey.
The fear of spiders (arachnophobia) affecting 21% of Britons.
The fear of public speaking (glossophobia) affecting 15% of Britons.
The fear of snakes (ophidiophobia)
The fear of enclosed spaces (claustrophobia).
The fear of going to the dentist (dentophobia)
The fear of flying (aerophobia)
The fear of needles (trypanophobia)
The fear of dogs (cynophobia)
The fear of vomit (emetophobia).
Fear. This is very much linked to phobias. Your fear is a fundamental, survival-oriented emotion. It’s been triggered by the perception (a thought and idea that doesn’t even have to be real) of an immediate physical or psychological danger. It doesn’t have to be real, but it’s leaving you in a state - heart racing, sweating, crying, panicking.
Worry. In psychology, worry is defined as a chain of relatively uncontrollable, negatively-laden thoughts and images. You’re choosing to focus on potential future threats or dangers. It often starts with "What if…" You’re trying to problem-solve for uncertain or negative outcomes. It’s similar to rumination and overthinking.
Irritability. You’re in an emotional state with a low threshold for annoyance, reduced frustration tolerance, and a likelihood to experience and express anger or rage. You feel over sensitive to things and this can prompt outbursts of sullenness, or impatience, or aggressive behaviour.
Nausea. Your thoughts are making you sick. Either just the sensation or actually physically vomit. Most commonly it’s one of three types of response. (1). Anticipation - an example would be cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, where the sight, smell, or even thought of the treatment triggers a feeling of sickness before the treatment actually begins. (2). Conditioned Taste Aversion where a specific food or smell is associated with a previous, intense illness can be triggered when you meet those conditions again. (3). Disgust can trigger nausea. This is a protective mechanism to avoid a potentially harmful situations.
Trouble sleeping. You’re taking all your anxieties to bed with you. You feel tired by day, moody and can’t think properly. You can’t fall asleep, stay asleep and you wake too early.
Self doubt. You’ve created a state of uncertainty about the truth of anything. It could be your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, opinions, decisions, self-views, or any “truth” you hold in your mind. You have a sense that you are not stable. You doubt your competence,
Nervousness. You can’t feel calm. You feel uneasy, scared, or apprehensive. Most often linked to your confidence.
Overwhelmed. This is when you’re in a state where life’s demands—tasks, emotions, or trigger —unfold faster than your nervous system and thoughts can manage to process. You feel "flooded" leading to a, reduced capacity to think rationally, a feeling of paralysis, or a desire to withdraw.
Hypervigilence. You’re on permanent high alert. You’re over sensitive to what’s around you and see everything as a potential threat. In other words you’re in an overactive survival mechanism. Your brain’s ‘on guard’ and it’s difficult to relax.
Performance anxiety. It’s similar to social anxiety that I talked about earlier. You have and intense fear, worry, or dread about your ability. It could be a social setting, in a play, giving a musical recital, playing sport in an arena. This "stage fright" can mean you can’t think straight, your heart races, you tremble, your mind may go blank. And it’s all triggered by the fear of negative evaluation, humiliation, or failure while being observed.
Panic attacks. These are abrupt, intense, and overwhelming surges of fear - and there may be absolutely no threat around you. You’ve triggered your “fight-or-flight” response when you don’t need to. Your brain has misinterpreted a harmless bodily sensations (like a racing heart) as catastrophic danger, creating a cycle of fear and physical distress.
What Is hypnotherapy for anxiety?
Firstly, I’ll explain what hypnotherapy is and isn’t.
Hypnotherapy is a deep stat of relaxation that YOU have created and want. I am only the facilitator. It’s. Away of me ‘talking’ to your subconscious to land a message deep into your thinking for the better.
It isn’t a trance and it isn’t mind control. You can get up and walk away when ever you like.
Hypnotherapy is seen by the scientific community as very safe - and backed by plenty of big data derived from neuroimaging, large-scale meta-analyses, and physiological monitoring—that validates its effectiveness as a scientific, evidence-based intervention for pain, anxiety, and other conditions. Studies have found a positive correlation between high hypnotisability and higher levels of Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the brain's natural tranquiliser - this is how you calm yourself down.
How Hypnotherapy Helps Anxiety
Hypnotherapy targets the root cause of anxiety by ‘rewiring’ your negative thought patterns.
In other words I calm your the nervous system through suggestion and this breaks your fight-or-flight cycle creating a calmer version of you.
In other words you find it easier to live with yourself.
What to Expect.
During a hypnotherapy session I’m simply teaching you how to relax and receive a message that acts a healing mechanism - the ‘therapy’ bit of hypnotherapy. I’m changing the message
And one of the questions I’m most often asked is, “How Many Sessions Do You Need?” That’s hard to say. But most clients feel a difference after four or five sessions.
What does being “Under Hypnosis” feel like?
Good question. It’s different for everyone. But hypnosis generally feels like a state of deep relaxation, calm, and focused attention, similar to daydreaming, meditation, or the moments just before falling asleep.
You are typically aware of your surroundings but feel ‘detached’, comfortable, and less concerned with the outside world, often feeling physically heavy or light.
What I’m aiming for, and I make no secret of this is to narrow your focus onto my voice or a specific thought, with all your distractions fading into the background.
This, then, helps heighten your Imagination so you have the ability to vividly visualise scenes.
It is important to note that you cannot be made to do anything against your will. There’s no mind control or trance.
Hypnotherapy for Anxiety. What are the benefits and outcomes?
What we’re working on is using hypnotherapy to give you lasting relief from anxiety.
Thoughts may still come into your head, but you can simply let them pass you by.
Scenarios stay the same - the audience you have to eprom to, the aeroplanes you have to fly in - but there’s hardly any meaning. Your mind and body is no longer on high alert.
And this positive change can stay with you for life.
Where you’ll find me. Jame Thomas. Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist.
If you think I can help please feel free to contact me on jamethomas@thegentlemind.co.uk or call 07787563099.
