#41 Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety & Panic Attacks

Hello, welcome to relaxation hypnosis for anxiety, stress and panic attacks. My name is Jason Newland. Please only listen to this when you can safely close your eyes.

I thought in this recording I'd focus on previous times when you've dealt with, let's say a panic attack or extreme anxiety or stress. The reason I'm thinking about this is because it's natural to expect what has come before. You know, it's a very logical thing to expect in the future what has happened in the past.

It doesn't mean it's going to happen. It doesn't mean that it has to happen or it needs to happen or that it will happen. So that's something that could be useful to address because it's quite easy to get caught up in that way of thinking, that limited way of thinking that we're all capable of doing.

So I'm very careful to, I want to word this in a way that it doesn't sound like I'm being judgy or, you know, because we're all capable of negative thinking. We're all capable of catastrophe thinking. And I think when there's been perhaps many or too many, I think is a good way of saying it, too many experiences of anxiety, panic in the past and maybe the recent past, it makes sense to think that it's going to happen in the future.

It makes sense, very logical, makes a lot of sense to expect it to happen in the future, more of the same. But it doesn't mean that it has to. It doesn't mean that you have to think that way.

There's a thing with, I remember years ago, learning about stopping smoking and, and, you know, helping people to stop. And I kind of studied it a little bit because I wanted to stop smoking myself at the time. This is, you know, late nineties.

And the idea was that actually we all, you know, the majority of people wouldn't start smoking to the very earliest would be perhaps late teens or perhaps 15, 14, 16, you know. Of course, there's going to be the exception that has, you know, started very young, but most people wouldn't start smoking until they've been alive for maybe 15, 16, 17 years, maybe longer. So the logic behind that was, well, if you can go 17 years without smoking, you can get through the end of today without smoking.

So it's doing what we already do, and that is selective thinking, selecting bias, selecting focus on parts of the past. So if someone's going to go on a first date with somebody and they may have had a few really good dates with other people in the past, and maybe a few not so good ones. Now, what that person focuses on could have a big impact on the upcoming date.

So if I was to go on a date tonight, and all I did was focus on the, let's call them mistakes that perhaps I made, or the feeling of it not having gone well, I'd start to expect that to happen. And apart from possibly not even wanting to go on the date, and maybe pulling out and cancelling, if I did actually go on the date, I might not be the best version of myself that I would like to be for that date.

I might be a little bit oversensitive, I might be tripping over my words because, you know, trying not to say the wrong thing, instead of just relaxing and being yourself.

So with selective thinking, I could think of previous dates that were really lovely, and perhaps what I would call successful. And there's been a few of those. And then maybe I'll feel more confident in your ability to deal with the upcoming situation, because you're remembering the times when actually things went okay.

So when I had my first full, big panic attack, I say the first because I realised later that I had them in the past, but I didn't know what they were. And there was quite a big distance between them. Once I was in a club, a nightclub, and it was so busy.

It was so kind of claustrophobic, and everyone was smoking. And it was so hot. And I just, you know, I had a panic attack.

And I was struggling to breathe. And everything was just really weird. But I didn't know what it at the time.

I didn't know anything about panic attacks or anxiety. Really, I knew a little bit about stress, but I had no idea about anxiety attacks. Didn't never even heard of them.

In fact, it wasn't it wasn't really talked about back then. You know, things like PTSD. And that was kind of still called shell shock, I think.

You know, I don't think even bipolar was still called manic depressants. Yeah. So it's going back a while.

I am in fact about 300 years old. I only sound 150. So it's something about what you focus on.

So when I had the major panic attack, when I was at work in my office in 2002, November, I remember it. I started afterwards. I started to expect to have them.

And I was thinking about going to work. And that's what I was thinking about. The fact that I was what, 32 years old, been working full time since I was 15.

So it's that 17 years. Never had a panic attack at work in my life up to that point. I've been working at that place for 13 months.

Never had a panic attack there until that time. So instead of thinking about all the hundreds of examples, maybe 1000s, if you go through the years of times when I've been at work, gone to work, you know, and everything has been fine. Instead of thinking about stuff, I was focusing on the one example.

But then became two examples and five and 15 examples. But I was focused on them, not all the hundreds and hundreds of examples of feeling fine. So I wasn't expecting to feel fine.

I'm not saying that it's just about how you think. And it's just about what you focus on. But it has an effect.

It really does. It always has and always will. Because what we think about affects our behavior.

What we think about affects our experience of this world. What we think about affects our life, just in a huge way. Because you know, you could have the worst night's sleep, get up in the morning, and find out, go and buy a scratch card in the shop, in the newsagents, and you win $5,000 or £5,000.

You're going to have a good day, regardless of how little sleep you've had. You're going to have a good day regardless of how the management are. Regardless, it won't matter what the weather's like.

You're going to have a good day because of the way that you're seeing the world on that day. It's raining, it won't bother you. Why would it bother you? You just won five grand, which is a nice little bit of money, which could pay for a nice holiday, pay for presents for loved ones.

It could, whatever, it's something special. It doesn't have to be money. You could get a phone call finding out that your, your grandchild's just been born.

You're going to have a good day regardless, even if you, even if you got a cold or you're physically unwell, you know, you're going to have a good day because something special and magical has happened in your life. Because it's, nothing else has changed. The world is still the same.

Everybody else is still doing their thing. But the way you're choosing to select how you see things and how you think and what you focus on changes.

And it's that old, it's usually a put down that people use about people that are perhaps positive thinking, you know, looking at the world through, was it rose colored spectacles and stuff like that, as if it's a bad thing, as if feeling happy is somehow wrong or something to be ashamed of, to actually feel good inside, to actually be in touch with what an amazing person you are and what, you know, how every day is a new opportunity to experience more of those pleasant feelings that you have experienced in the past.

Or you can choose to focus on the unpleasant ones if that is your choice. And it is, your choice. You can spend an hour and a half cooking a lovely meal for yourself.

You put it on a plate and you can walk into the living room and you have a choice, you can drop it on the floor or you can put it onto the table and eat it. It's your choice. If you drop it on the floor, there's no point feeling rubbish about it, or feeling angry or upset or blaming anyone because you chose to do it.

And that brings us to the blame part of things. So I think with anxiety, stress, panic, panic, just like most things in life, there's this, it's a human thing, basically, I guess we are taught this, it must be a taught thing. The need, there's a need to blame.

Never such a strong need to credit people, to reward people, to congratulate people, much stronger need to blame people. And again, we've all got that in us. We've all been drawn into that silliness of blame.

And I suppose when I had my first big panic attack, I kind of blamed the job, I blamed my bosses for pushing me to get the most sales in that week, which I accomplished. But then, I knew that I was responsible for what I did, I was responsible for wanting to beat the sales record, I was responsible for doing all the extra hours. So I was able to blame myself.

Instead of stepping back and realizing that actually, you're not to blame. No more than you're to blame for any other physical, or mental, or emotional illness, or disorder, or problem. Even if previous behavior has perhaps had a big impact on the current situation, what possible use could there be to be blaming yourself, to be punishing yourself? And having you punished yourself enough, isn't, you know, enough is enough.

Time to start being kind to yourself. Time to start to be selective, but in a different way. Be selective and start selecting those things that you appreciate about yourself.

Start selecting those memories of times when you felt relaxed. Select those memories where you felt calm and capable of dealing with whatever comes your way. Selecting those memories where you were able to just let go of stuff, and decided to put yourself first, put your health first.

Because your health and your mental well-being is just too important to ignore. And let's face it, you can have the best car in the world, but you spend all your time on it. You can clean it.

You can, you know, get every accessory possible. It could be the most expensive car on the planet. But if you take the wheels away, it's nothing more than just a really, I don't know, a funny-shaped greenhouse.

You can grow some tomatoes in it, or a sheltered park bench. And your health is the wheels. Without the wheels, the car's going nowhere.

Without your health, we can't go anywhere without our health. We need to be able to relax. And in order to relax, you need to stop the blame.

And that includes blaming others. Plus, of course, stopping blaming yourself. And some people may say, I don't really blame myself.

In that case, between now and the next recording, start listening to what you say to yourself. Start noticing what you visualize, what you imagine. You know, when you're maybe sitting down on a bus, or maybe you're watching telly, but you start zoning out and starting to think about going to work tomorrow, or going to school, or college, or going to a social event where there's going to be people.

And just notice how you are imagining that future situation to be. And I like the idea of the rose-colored spectacles. Maybe use it in an analogy of a relaxation spectacles.

So relaxing spectacles, looking through the lens of relaxation. So when you think about the future, and it could be any event, make sure you've got those spectacles on in your mind, and look through that lens. And maybe it can have a color, maybe light blue, whatever the color of relaxation may be to you.

It doesn't have to have a color. It might have a sound. It doesn't have to have a sound.

But it's a frame of mind. It's choosing, selecting, and when you think about that thing that hasn't happened yet, so basically you can have anything happen for something that hasn't happened yet. If you've got a wedding to go to, and you're imagining the wedding that maybe this weekend coming, and perhaps you're not a big fan of being in crowds or being at big social events.

I'm not, personally. So you're thinking about this thing coming up at the weekend, as an example. You can imagine absolutely anything happening.

So you can choose. You can choose the most horrible thing, or you can choose the most beautiful thing. You can choose the most absurd thing.

You can choose something that makes you feel good. Now, like in this moment, thinking about this future event, you can imagine the bride and groom or whatever, or the priest or whoever's like, you know, getting married. Imagine them with like flower pots on top of their heads.

Let's imagine this, people made of marshmallows dancing with each other. It's something silly, something absurd, something that you could say, well, that would never happen. But the same could be said about anything.

If you're going to imagine something, why not choose what you imagine? Because that's something that you do have control over 100%. Some people say, well, I can't control what happens in the moment. I can't control what happens on the event.

Regardless of whether that's true or not, you can control how you imagine the event to occur. 100%, you can choose how you imagine that. You can add your own music.

You can make it funny. You can make it silly. You can turn it into a ballet.

You can pretty much do whatever you want to do. Because it's your imagination. This is your mind.

And what you imagine affects how you feel about the event coming up. And how you feel about the event coming up will affect how you feel at the event, at that wedding. So if you imagine everything being really good, you imagine yourself feeling really relaxed.

You feel good. You feel relaxed in the moment. It feels nice.

And the more you imagine that, when the wedding actually comes, you're going to experience things differently to the way you would have done if you'd have been imagining it being a nightmare. It doesn't mean that imagining it being a nightmare will mean it will be a nightmare. Of course not.

But the way you expect, the things you expect to happen, the actual things might not happen, but your feelings may happen. And that expectation of something happening can have a big effect on our well-being, on our levels of relaxation. It can increase with that imagining things working out really well.

Because if I said to you, I'd like you to just imagine the ideal safe space, the ideal place where you feel safe. And it could be like a your own den, your own playroom or office, or it could just be a home, or it could be a garden or your shed. It could be whatever it is.

It's your space and you can have anything in it that you want, anything that you dream of. Now, I can't guess what you would have, and nor do I need to, because it's none of my business. It's your imagination and you can have anything you want in that safe space, a place where you can relax, feel calm and feel, just really feel happy.

Because you're going to have stuff there that you like to be around. So it might be games, it might be, if you're into carpentry, it might be, you know, carpentry tools. It might, if you're into tropical fish, it might be full of tropical fish, whatever it might be.

If you're a musician, you might have a big room full of musical instruments and a top recording studio. You know, it's the imagination. There is no limit to what you can have.

And the room can be a small room, or it can be a thousand, thousand, hundred thousand acres. It doesn't matter, it's your imagination. You know what I can guarantee you won't be in there.

The thing you won't have in that room, that safe space, is something that you don't like. If you don't like crocodiles, you're not going to have a crocodile running around. If there's a specific person that you don't like, you wouldn't allow them in there.

If you've got no interest in cats, you wouldn't have a cat in there. If, you know, if you don't like peanut butter, you wouldn't have a big cupboard full of peanut butter in there. Why would you? I mean, practically, you wouldn't do it, but it's your imagination even more so.

It'll only be things that you want, that you love, that you like, that you enjoy. They're the only things that you imagine. So take that situation and just add it to everything that you imagine.

And you start to realize that, of course, imagining a situation in the future, being rubbish and stressful and anxiety producing, is going to feel crap. Even when you imagine it, before it's even happened. This might be something a year away, an event a year away from now, it might be something that may not ever happen.

But you're going to feel rubbish imagining a negative outcome. So it's your imagination. Why would you do that to yourself? You're on your own, in your mind, there's no one else there, it's your mind.

You own your thoughts, you own your imagination. It's like when you're watching television. You may be in a relationship, you may have a family, you may have a shared house, and perhaps you don't have the remote control all the time.

So you may sit through programs you don't particularly want to watch. You're sure you're not going to do that when you're on your own though, are you? If you're sitting through a program, let's say it's a James Bond film, you've seen it before, 20 years ago, and the person's watching it with you, goes to bed, or goes out to work, or whatever. Are you going to continue to sit watching it, when you know every single thing that happens, and you've seen it probably 14 times before?

Or are you going to turn a TV over to something that you want to watch, so that you can feel the way that you want to feel? Now I would definitely turn a television over to a different channel.

It's not about James Bond films, it's just the idea is that we tolerate certain things when we have to. Watching a program that we don't want to watch because the person we love is watching it, and they like it. But once they're gone, and they've gone to bed, or they've gone to do something else, you don't have to watch it anymore.

You have control with that remote control. You have way more control with your imagination. Because with your imagination, you can transform your life by imagining future events to be really nice.

Imagining tomorrow to wake up feeling relaxed, to imagine going to work, maybe feeling relaxed and confident. Imagine getting to work, still feeling calm and relaxed. Imagine enjoying seeing your work colleagues.

Imagine doing the various tasks that your job entails, and feeling relaxed. Imagine enjoying it. Imagine appreciating, maybe having a job.

Imagine appreciating the good aspects, the positive, useful aspects. Even if it's just getting paid. Imagine feeling relaxed on your way home.

Imagine getting home and being pleased to get home. Not because the day's been so rubbish, but because you're home, and you like being at home, and you can feel relaxed, even more relaxed maybe. But in a different way, because you can take your shoes off, and you can take your socks off, and you can wear different clothes.

And if you want to dress up as Superman, or Spiderman, or Wonder Woman, you can. You probably can't do that at work, unless you're a superhero. So that's just some thoughts to think about.

Some ideas to focus your mind around. Your imagination. So what can you imagine? And if anyone's thinking, well I don't really have an imagination, and I don't visualise.

Well we all, we all have an imagination, every single one of us. And it's not about visualising, it's about thinking about, let's say, tomorrow. Doesn't have to be a visual thing, doesn't have to be like a photograph, or a movie.

It's about the feeling. It's about the feeling you have when you think about feeling relaxed, compared to the feeling that you may have had with previous imaginings before heading off to work, or before going to sleep. Imagining the day ahead, turning that, what might have been stressful expectations, into expecting to feel relaxed and calm.

Expecting to feel open, and able to deal with whatever the day presents to you. And knowing that everything's going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.

You are okay. You've felt relaxed many times in your life, and you can feel relaxed right now, and you can feel relaxed tomorrow. I'm going to leave it on that note, and I'm going to speak to you again soon.

And have a good day, have a good tomorrow, have a relaxed tomorrow. Enjoy your tomorrow. Take care.

Bye.