#45 Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety & Panic Attacks

Hello and welcome to stressanxietyhypnosis.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety and Panic Attacks. A very long title. So, please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

Now, today's recording is actually a request. Somebody sent me a message on Facebook saying that they enjoy my recordings. And could I make a recording for, I have to remember what I'm doing now, what is it, for a hypochondria or, it's kind of hypochondria in a sense of the anxiety and the panic that comes with thinking that you may be ill.

So, I kind of got a few things to say about this. Admittedly, I don't have, you know, any information about the person that sent the message as far as what they were hoping for me to discuss in this recording. Because although these sessions aren't, it's not formatted in a hypnosis kind of format that you may get elsewhere.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that you won't find it. Probably anyone in the world that does it the way I do it. And it doesn't mean that I'm special or anything.

It's just, I just do it differently. So, I don't do the hypnosis as a formal trance or deepener or, I mean, sometimes I do. But generally, I kind of think of it like this.

You got your unconscious mind, you got your conscious mind. And I would say that the conscious mind, when the conscious mind is listening, so is the unconscious mind at the same time. The unconscious mind is not ignoring it.

Just like your conscious mind is not ignoring what I'm saying. But consciously, you may drift off. You may have your eyes closed, which I do suggest, only in a sense of, so you don't listen to me when you're driving or doing something that you need your attention for.

But even if you're consciously drifting a bit, your mind is still listening and it's still absorbing. Because if we weren't able to have changes occur by consciously listening, if we just relied on being in some kind of hypnotic trance where you're just practically zapped out, then self-help audios, self-help videos, self-development books would be of no use to people. But self-development books really are useful.

Life-changing, in fact. Or any book could be. It only takes one sentence that resonates with you.

You know, whether the subject is relationships or this subject that we're talking about now, just that one sentence, that one paragraph, that that one idea. My voice is going croaky for some reason. Hopefully, it'll start to go back now.

Good. So, that's kind of my description of what I do. So, I talk about things.

I talk about ideas. And you can just listen and maybe something will resonate within you. Something will change.

Within you. I also try to discuss my own personal experiences with this subject as well. Also, from experience, I've been doing this a long time now, making recordings, is from the feedback that I've received over the last 13 and a half years of making these recordings, people say that just listening to me actually is relaxing.

Without me even needing to mention the word relax. And I suppose part of that would be the fact that I'm not shouting, because that would be really unrelaxing. But just talking softly, discussing gently, in a gentle way, the subject matter of panic, stress, anxiety, talking about this subject, which is a very broad subject, and it's very personal for each individual.

I believe needs to be discussed gently. Because I don't necessarily think that we're, I say we, but I'm going to say this anyway, it might, maybe I'm wrong. I don't think that we are always as gentle with ourselves as we could benefit from being.

And what by that I mean, just internally, the things we say to ourselves, the way we respond to ourselves, the way we perhaps respond to the outside world. Perhaps the things we think and the things we expect, and our way of observing the world. So we're not always particularly kind to ourselves.

Which I would advise, I would suggest, changing that would actually change your life. By being more gentle with yourself, it would change your life. It's not just the words that you say, it's not just the sentences that you tell yourself, the things that you say to yourself, not just the criticism, the self-criticism.

It's also maybe the tone of it, the tone, the energy behind it, the... Because you can get the feeling, your internal response to when you talk to yourself. And I don't mean like having a big full-blown conversation. I only do that with Andre the Ferret.

He never talks back. It does squeak a little bit sometimes. But the tone of how you speak to yourself internally, that self-voice, that self-criticism that I think we all have to some degree.

And even, and I've been thinking about this lately, even, which is something I do myself, even if it's cloaked in humour, my question there is, does that make it okay? If it's cloaked in humour, does that make it okay? So I put myself down, you know, not just internally, but outwardly to other people. I make fun of my weight. I make fun of my big juicy belly that I've got.

And the other day someone said that to me and I didn't like it. I was walking in the park and a couple of people I know were there and I said, went to say hello and one of them said, oh, have you got Andre under your coat? I said, no. And he kept repeating it.

So basically I understood what he meant straight away, but he was just trying to say that my belly looked like I had Andre, my little boy Andre the Ferret underneath my jacket. And I didn't enjoy it, I'll be honest with you. And that was done with humour or attempted humour.

And I do wonder maybe how useful that is if we say stuff to ourselves like that, even in humour. And I'm a big fan of humour. I'm a big fan of, you know, looking at things in a more light, a light way, looking at things in a humorous way to maybe reduce the stress and anxiety of the event.

So it's a great way to do things, but is it cloaking putting yourself down? Is it hiding the fact that maybe you're not being very kind to yourself? So that's one thing that I kind of was thinking about. So on the subject of hypochondria, and there's various different angles to look at this from. It's kind of in a sense of anxiety, panic.

You got hypochondria, I mean, the whole, the meaning of the word is to imagine that a person imagines that they're ill when they're not. But if you have extreme anxiety, that is an illness. Extreme stress is an illness.

It's not permanent. It may be temporary, it may be really temporary. You know, it might just be for the occasion, just for one occasion, but it might be very debilitating.

So, when I was going through the extreme times of anxiety and panic, I think most of my time was spent thinking about panic attacks. That was what I was thinking about. Worrying about when the next one was going to happen.

Worrying about where it was going to happen. So did that make me a hypochondriac? Being worried about something that was going to happen? Although it didn't have to happen, because worrying about it and expecting it to happen made it much more likely to happen. Comes back to that sentence, we become what we think about.

So, is that hypochondria? Because a lot of people that would be labelled hypochondriacs, maybe they need to be labelled, or not labelled, but maybe they need to be if they're going to have a diagnosis, or get some help, get help with that stress and that anxiety. Because maybe with someone labelled as a hypochondriac, their anxiety and panic is focused on the worry of being ill, or the feeling that they are, or have got various different illnesses.

And it's a very, it's a very famous thing.

I say famous, but it's well known in the nursing world and doctor world. Not doctor who, but you know, doctors. And I've dated a few nurses over the years.

And for some reason, I don't know why, it's just happened. And when you become a nurse, or as an example, it might be other professions as well, but when you become a nurse, you learn about lots of different illnesses, diseases, conditions, you know. It's like a big amount of knowledge presented to your brain.

And it seems to be a natural process that not all, but some trainee nurses and trainee doctors would start to think that they had these illnesses, these diseases. So in a sense, learning about all these different conditions caused temporary hypochondria. And then they just move out of it.

You know, they move on with the next thing. But it seems to be like a standard thing that quite a few nurses go through. That's what I've been told.

So, as it's temporary, and I would say that hypochondria is temporary. Some would say everything is temporary, which technically it is. It means that it will pass.

As every panic attack has passed, no panic attack lasts. Sometimes feels like it's lasting forever, but it never does. Eventually, it subsides because it's impossible to keep any feeling going.

Continuously. No feeling, whether it's pain or pleasure, can continue constantly the whole time at the same level for just continuously forever. It can't.

I've broken a few bones over the years and the difference between... You know when you've broken a bone, basically, it's because the initial pain stays. And I don't mean stays forever, but it's still there. So if you fall, you hurt your hand, let's say.

I fell out of the bath a couple of years back and I broke my wrist. Now, I knew it was broken because the initial pain didn't subside. And when that happens, that's a good clue.

There's a very good chance that it's fractured or broken. And you need to get to the hospital, to the emergency ward and get it checked out. But you know what? Even when I was in the hospital emergency, waiting to be seen, the pain did subside.

Not down to the level that it would do if it was bruised, but it did fluctuate. And trust me, I had nothing else to focus on. Because a broken bone gives you definitely... It gives you a good focus.

Not good focus, but it gives you something to definitely focus on. But it was just my wrist, so it was bearable. Had it been my leg or something, it might be a different matter, but because of my wrist.

And I could... If it'd been like a... It's never a straight line, it's always up and down. It's above the line, down below the line, above, below. It's changing, just in a way as stress levels always changing.

Sometimes they go a bit too high and you can feel it, but then it subsides again. It's always changing, different levels, depending on, I guess, environment, depending on your health. It depends on what you've had to eat.

Because if you've had too many cups of coffee, your adrenaline might be going a bit too much. Your heart might be beating a bit more than normal. So it might be a little bit spiky, a little bit more, but it still never stays at one position.

It's always continually going back down again and rising and going down. Like the ocean, like the, you know, the tide, the waves, constantly moving, constantly coming in, going out, coming in, going out. Even when the tide's moving inwards, it still doesn't just... The water doesn't just all come in all at one time.

It's gradual. And it's still going out. It's coming in, but it's still going out again.

It might come in further, but it's still going out. So in a way, if you think about hypochondria, first of all, I don't think it's a nice label to give yourself. Because technically, I would say that I could definitely have called myself a hypochondriac back then.

Because I really did feel that I was ill, you know, something wrong with me. There was times I thought, did I have diabetes? Did I have something wrong with my adrenal gland? Did I, you know, I ended up in the emergency ward in hospital at least twice, maybe three times, with pains in my chest, thinking I was having a heart attack. I wasn't.

And another time, I actually really thought that I was going crazy. It's not a word I normally use, especially as I got bipolar. But at that time, I hadn't been diagnosed with anything other than, well, I've been diagnosed with anxiety disorder, stress, depression, various different things.

But I literally thought that I was going out of my mind. I mean, really genuinely thought that I was losing my mind at one point. And I remember that night.

I'll always remember that night. And I began walking to the hospital about three o'clock in the morning. And it was a long walk.

In fact, I didn't even know how to get there from where I lived. But I just had to, I was just walking because I had to walk. I had to, I couldn't just sit still.

And eventually, I calmed down. Eventually, my mind calmed down. Maybe the cool air, some oxygen, you know, a bit more fresh air being outside.

It was late, so there was no cars. So I didn't, you know, it's really a bit, the air was really a bit fresher. But did that make me a hypochondriac? Or did it mean that actually, I had a condition, an anxiety condition, which pains in my chest, feeling that I was ill, was part of that.

It was part of that. And you know what? One thing I kind of noticed with anxiety and panic is it's easy to start ignoring our bodies and just dismissing everything as being anxiety, anxious anxiety. It's just panic.

But we don't know what's going on inside our body. I don't mean this in an alarming way, but just in a factual way, in a caring for yourself way. To just show yourself a bit more respect and concern, in a sense of if your body is hurting, treat yourself the same way as you would have done before you'd had anxiety.

Treat yourself the way you would if your partner or your child or your parents or someone you cared about had that same symptom, physical symptom. Instead of dismissing it as, oh, it's just anxiety, it may well be. And there's no such thing as just anxiety or just stress.

Because I've experienced, back when I was 24, probably about 10 months of physical illness, which was caused by stress. I didn't even know that that was what caused it. But I had physical, I was physically ill in my stomach.

I was bleeding. I was all kinds of stuff. And it was down to stress.

The stress can be the cause of physical complaints, physical conditions. Which is why someone with a heart condition is told to try and relax more, is told to not get stressed. Someone with hypertension, high blood pressure, someone with whatever their condition may be, pretty much any physical condition, a doctor would say try and relax more.

Which can be something that we all can benefit from, relaxing more. And it's not just listening to me or, you know, I do quite a few other different podcasts, relaxation, sleep sessions, things like that. It's also looking after yourself and treating yourself kindly.

So instead of calling yourself names like a hypochondriac or anything like that, just being gentle. I'm talking really gentle. The same way as if you went into a hospital ward, you wouldn't go in there and start shouting.

You wouldn't go and start swearing at the patients. You wouldn't start judging them. You'd be gentle.

You'd be kind. You'd be calm. And isn't that kind of the way that you can start being towards yourself now? More importantly, when perhaps we're not feeling too good, that is even more important, the time to be so gentle, so calm and loving towards yourself.

So if you don't have it already, create that bedside manner for yourself that you need for you. Because you're with yourself 24 hours a day, your entire life, and nobody else ever can compete with that. No one will ever know you the way that you know you, which means surely you need to be the kindest person to you.

You're the person who loves you more than anybody else will or can. Because you need yourself more than you ever need anybody else. So you need yourself your whole life.

You're traveling. You're on a journey. We're on a journey and we're our only companion that travels right from the start.

We'll have people come along, friends, family. But we're the only person, you're the only person that's with you every second of every day, your entire life. So we need to get on with ourselves, don't we? It seems like it's not even a should or a could or a want to.

It's got to be a must. It's got to be a very strong, definite, must. Be kind and look after yourself emotionally.

Be there for yourself. And this may sound all flippy floppy to some people, but I think it really makes a lot of sense. And saying it out loud, I think it makes even more sense to me.

Because I really believe this and I want to do this more for myself. Genuinely want to spend more time being gentle and kind with me. So I'm doing this with you.

My intention is to kind of travel on this journey alongside you, even though it's from a distance and it's just my voice that you're listening to. But the intention, real intention is there. And you can hear that in my voice.

Generally, genuinely, genuinely, genuinely want to ease the suffering that that stress and anxiety and panic has brought to your life in the past. So that you don't need to experience or re-experience any of that stuff to that level ever again. And it's not about getting rid of stress altogether.

We need a degree of stress in order to function. Just a general alertness. But I think we should, you know, that's kind of the standard psychological views.

We need a certain amount of stress. I think they should rename it. I don't think it's stress.

I think stress is the right word. I think stress is, to people like me, people, you may agree with this, stress for people that have gone through extreme anxiety, panic and stress. To those people, to those of us, stress is a dirty word.

It's not a nice word. It's not a word that we perhaps think fondly of for good reason. Because maybe we can have our own word for that physical experience that is required to feel alert, to be awake, to be able to function under pressure at times.

Because the outside world continues. What we do here is we work on the inside. We work on how you feel inside, which changes how you experience the outside emotionally.

So that those things that happen outside in the environment, work, relationships, family, school, whatever it may be, they don't have the same effect that maybe they used to. They don't have that ability, that triggering ability that perhaps we used to give them credit for. It's almost like we were given permission for the environment to do whatever it wants to do and to just push our buttons whenever it wanted to.

So when you take those buttons away in the same way as if you've got a toddler in your house, you may not have children, but pretty much everybody has seen a small child when they first start running around and they will grab at everything, try and get anything that they can get hold of. So you have to, you have to sort of make your house safe. It might involve covering up plugs.

It might involve making sure that there's nothing dangerous that they can get hold of. Making sure there's no cups of hot coffee or tea at their level, which they can grab. So it's about child-proofing your house or that room.

So I know some people that have a gate so the child can't get up the stairs. Child-proofing the stairs. So maybe we can child-proof ourselves or environment-proof ourselves.

You think of the environment as being this little toddler and just grabbing and pushing the buttons that were there before, which would maybe trigger stress, trigger anxiety, trigger maybe anger and other emotions that, you know, really didn't lead to a peaceful mind. And kind of left us feeling like we were out of control and being, as if giving the power away to the environment, giving the power away to others.

Blaming other, everything else on other outside things.

Being reactive to outside situations. But then when you child-proof yourself or environment-proof yourself, you take away those buttons, cover them up, hide them, paint over them. Remove them completely.

So that outside sources, people, the environment, being on a bus, traveling, going to work, being at work, being at school, being told off by your boss, having a difficult conversation with your loved ones, whatever it might be. That those buttons can't just be pressed by outside sources. They can't be pressed by other people.

So you're child-proofing yourself, you're environment-proofing yourself. You're protecting yourself from the environment just doing whatever it wants to do. By not being reactive, by actually taking back your control and realizing that you don't have to react.

You can choose to, but that's your choice. And if you choose to react, it's no longer reacting, it's responding. Which is similar but very different.

So as far as it goes with the hypochondria, my suggestion is go easy on yourself, if that's how you feel about yourself, or if that's how you used to feel. And regardless of what level of anxiety, stress you may have experienced, if there's a physical issue, if you've got physical pain somewhere, treat yourself the way you would have treated yourself before. Do what you would have done before.

So if you would have gone to the doctor before, go to the doctor, get yourself checked out, make sure that you're okay. That's part of being kind to yourself, that's a big part of loving yourself, yourself, taking care of yourself. And giving yourself labels like hypochondriac is the opposite to being kind to yourself.

It also reduces worry, reduces stress and anxiety. And when that reduces, the way you feel physically will improve. It's kind of got no choice but to improve, because the way you think affects the way that you feel.

So I hope that this has been mildly useful, and I will speak to you again very soon. Take care, be kind to yourself, lots of love. Bye.