#35 Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety & Panic Attacks (Jason newland)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is relaxation for stress, anxiety and panic attacks. Or relaxation hypnosis for stress, anxiety and panic attacks.

Now this is episode 35 and there has been quite a time between the 34th and this the 35th episode. So I originally made this podcast or made this hypnosis course, a 34 day course, back in 2017 and I uploaded it as a podcast in November 2018, about six months ago or seven months ago. And it's become more and more popular, getting more and more daily downloads.

So I had a similar thing with my sleep hypnosis weekly podcast, which was originally a seven week course, which was around the same time as this one and that became popular. Podcast since November. So I decided to make some new episodes, some new recordings weekly on that one, just to see whether or not that's what people wanted.

And it was and it's grown even more over the last six or seven weeks. And I've been watching this podcast grow and thinking, shall I make some more sessions for this? And I'm sorry if this is a little bit of a boring introduction, but I'm good at being boring. It's a relaxation session.

It's not supposed to be exciting. And though the part of your mind responsible for feeling karma, the part of your mind responsible for being able to deal with situations that previously were stressful and problematic and turning that feeling and changing that response within you in a way that can transform how you feel. So I guess there is a bit of an excitation, if that's a word, an excitability, a stimulation of those parts of your mind, an activation.

I'm trying to think of some other words that have ation at the end. So what I've decided is to start making some new recordings for this podcast. And I've changed the title.

I've taken the word daily out of the title. So that I can, you know, maybe I'll do them daily. Maybe there'll be every few days.

It just takes the pressure off because in order for me to make these recordings, I also need to feel relaxed. Otherwise, it doesn't work. Imagine having a massage from someone that was really uptight and angry.

I can't imagine coming away from that massage feeling particularly calm. Calm. I actually did have a massage years ago.

I've had lots of massages over the years. I actually did a massage course at college. But I went to this massage place, it was a health spa, and the person was talking all the way through all about their problems, all about the things that were on their mind.

And, you know, other than a towel, I was practically naked. So I couldn't run off. So in the same way, when I make these recordings, when I'm talking to you, I'm feeling calm.

I'm feeling relaxed. You can hear the background sounds. Lots of birds in the garden.

And actually, just then, it sounded like a lot of seagulls. With my eyes closed, which they are, I almost felt like I was by the beach, which I'm not. So that's a good thing about closing your eyes.

You can allow your imagination to just play. And before we talk about imagination, I need to just mention, only listen to this, when you can safely close your eyes. Even if you're sitting in a chair or lying down with your eyes open.

I'm not necessarily not commanding you to close your eyes. Not that I can command you to do anything. That's up to you.

But, you know, don't listen to any of my recordings or any relaxation, hypnosis, audios by anybody, unless you can safely close your eyes. For your safety and others as well. If you're flying a plane, then stop this recording.

That's kind of where we're at with that one. So I feel like I've got a lot of kind of catching up to do. In some ways, you know, regarding the 34 episodes that I've already recorded two and a half years ago.

However, I've still been making more recordings. I've still made hundreds of recordings since that time. Just on other podcasts.

So I haven't, I've not been inactive. In fact, last year, I've made more recordings than at any other time since 2006, when I started making online hypnosis recordings. For free.

I generally do at least one, sometimes two, sometimes three recordings a day. But usually at least one. So I average probably about 10, 11, 12 recordings a week.

Sometimes more. And the way I see these recordings going is to build upon what's been already said by me in previous recordings. But I'm also aware that some people will be listening now to me for the first time.

So each episode needs to stand alone by itself, as well as connecting to previous and future sessions. So this is kind of a reintroduction, as it were, to what we're doing here. What this podcast is about, and what it will be about moving forward.

And the one thing, not the only thing, but a very important thing that I learnt when it came to panic attacks. And I'm sure I mentioned some of my own experiences in the past episodes. But in 2002, when I first really started having regular panic attacks, I, it changed my life.

Absolutely changed my life. And I did not know what to do with my life. I didn't know what to do about it.

And there was no, there didn't seem to be any help out there for me. But there probably was. You know, I bought books, but I did go to some therapy.

But there was probably more stuff out there than I realized. I just didn't know where it was. I didn't know where to look.

Because I didn't understand what was going on. I literally felt like my brain was dysfunctioning. Dysfunctioning.

Like there was actually something seriously wrong with my brain. And as for the word panic, panic attack, the first one I had, first major one, I was just in the office working on a telephone. I wasn't in a panic.

I wasn't particularly concerned about anything. I was just doing my job. The level of stress was pretty high.

And I was drinking a lot of coffee. And I was working long hours. And it was sales, I was in a sales job.

And it was the week where I broke the sales record. And I spent all week focusing on breaking that record and, you know, winning the prize. So it was kind of a very memorable week of my life.

But even though it was so obvious, like now looking back at it, it's so obvious that I had pushed myself too hard. And that I was just pumping caffeine and sugar into my system. And I was probably getting very wound up with the customers at times.

Frustration that comes with doing call center work can be quite a frustrating job sometimes. As it is for the customers as well, I'm sure. But I still couldn't figure out, you know, the word panic.

It didn't fit. I didn't have anyone chasing me. I wasn't running down the road with a lion chasing me.

So I couldn't get my head around that. But anxiety, yes, a stress attack, a stress response, over response. It was as if my adrenaline had just been kick started.

But on overload, I had all this energy, but not nice energy. And I know that it's different for everybody. I know that we all experience things in a different way, whether it's physical or emotional, mental, spiritual even.

We experience things differently, even when it comes to taste. Some people like peanut butter. Some people can't stand it.

Some people like a certain comedy film. Another person might sit through it and think what a pile of poo. And it can be weird to try and get your head around it sometimes.

Why don't they like it? I like it. Why don't they like it? And that's why it can be so difficult, not just for other people to understand what we're going through, what people with anxiety are going through. This also equally can be as difficult for us to understand, to comprehend what we are going through.

And why? Because it doesn't make sense sometimes. Because unlike phobias, which can seem even, saying, you know, phobias, right, is really, really extreme anxiety towards a specific thing. And some phobias seem really logical, or at least understandable.

So someone's got a phobia of a crocodile. Well, first of all, it's not something that most of us would see on a daily basis. Not something that we would need to avoid, or to prepare ourselves for.

And also, if you did see a crocodile, you'd need to ideally keep as far away from it as possible. So a lot of people could relate to that. Think, yeah, okay, that makes sense.

But then, if someone has got a phobia of butterflies, a lot of people just laugh at that. Like literally out loud laugh in the person's face, saying it's just ridiculous. How could you be scared of a little beautiful butterfly? When the reality is that that person may have the exact same response to a butterfly as they would a crocodile.

Someone that's scared of a crocodile. And although it may not make sense, it doesn't have to make sense. You don't have to know the cause of an illness in order to take the medication.

You just need to know what the illness is. Knowing the cause can help to prevent it in the future. But in the now, it's about the cure.

It's about the getting better. And you may think, well, why am I mentioning phobias and crocodiles? What have I got against butterflies? Well, I've got nothing against butterflies, or crocodiles. Mind you, have you ever tried to catch a crocodile? Mind you, butterflies are quite difficult as well, the flying.

Not that I would catch a butterfly, but, you know, when I was younger, when I was a little kid, I used to have a little butterfly net to catch it and just hold it in my hand and just let it fly away. It wasn't much on telly that day. And another thing is being able to just laugh at yourself.

Not in a cruel way, but just in a humorous way, in a light-hearted way, in a sense that this doesn't have to be quite as serious as you allowed it to be in the past. And that kind of loosens things. It loosens your mind.

And because we all have those little set things, those set ideas in our minds that almost, it's like it's a wall, that idea is a brick in a wall and it's been concreted in with cement. But that idea, it's not needed. It's, you know, the rest of the wall is kind of okay, doesn't need that brick.

That brick does not represent the rest of the wall. That's just an idea, an idea which maybe is holding you back, an idea that's getting in the way of your happiness, an idea that may be blocking your recovery, an idea that maybe just needs to relax a little bit. And when it relaxes, the cement around it relaxes.

It becomes looser to a point where that brick can be removed from the wall. The wall is still stable. It's a big wall.

You've got lots of ideas and thoughts and beliefs in that wall. Lots of really good stuff, some stuff that's not so great, some stuff that's perhaps really bad and really unhelpful, which needs also to be loosened up and removed. You may have millions of bricks in that wall.

Memories, ideas, thoughts, beliefs. So you've got infinite amount, infinite, infinite amount that you can actually remove and the wall still be solid and stable. It just means that when you do take a brick out, some air can come in, a bit of fresh air.

Get rid of some of that staleness, some of that stuck in the mudness that we all experience sometimes, sometimes, especially in our minds. We all have the ability to limit our flexibility of thinking and doing as well as we all have the ability to be creative and to think up new ways of behaving and responding to outside things, stimuli, things that people say, people's actions. We have all these resources in that wall, but that wall is made of lots of different bricks, lots of different beliefs.

And it's not about religion, it's not about morals. And morals, this is the beliefs I'm talking about is your belief about yourself, your belief about your ability, for example, to cope with a new situation that arises that may involve a group of people, it may involve traveling, it may involve confronting a situation that maybe previously you had found problematic and stressful.

But then when you change that belief about that situation, you kind of shine a different light on it, you see it differently in the same ways your bedroom at night before the lights off in the dark looks so different to the way it does in the morning when the sunlight's shining through.

It looks different, it can even feel different. Just like you can have a bath or a shower and you feel different afterwards. You're not a different person, but you may feel different and you may think, well, what's this got to do with anxiety and stress and panic attacks? What is this bloke going on about? And that's a good question.

It's all about you. It's all about how you think, it's about how you feel. But in a different way to how maybe someone else may say it to you, because the one thing I'm going to ask you to do today, the only thing I'm going to ask you to do today is this.

Give yourself a break. Go easy on yourself. In other words, be kind to yourself.

You may say that's three different things, but it's not. It's all the same thing. Stop having a go at yourself.

Stop telling yourself off. Stop telling yourself that you're not good enough or that, you know, you shouldn't feel stressed or that you shouldn't feel anxious or you shouldn't have panic attacks. Start from that thought pattern of actually no longer telling yourself off.

You don't need to be your own parent. You're not a small child. You don't need to be told off by anybody, especially not when it comes to being unwell.

And that's another thing you need to remember. Extreme anxiety, extreme stress, panic attacks, anxiety attacks. This is an illness.

It doesn't have to be a quick fix. But you know what can be quick? A little bit of love. A little bit of self-love.

That can be instant. Showing yourself a bit of kindness. That's an instant thing.

You can do that physically. It could be as simple as watching a movie you want to watch. Taking a day off work if you need to.

Doing something you enjoy. Or it could be as simple as doing absolutely nothing. Maybe you can be your own nurse.

Could you imagine if you're in a hospital bed? You just had an operation. You was unwell. What would you want? Would you want a nurse coming around moaning at you? Telling you, you know, maybe you've had an accident.

Maybe, you know, telling you, oh, you shouldn't have done that. It's your fault this happened. Why can't you be better? Why can't you heal quicker? What are you going to do in the future? What if this happens again? This has happened in the past.

Haven't you learned anything? Would you want someone to say that to you? A nurse to be on your case the whole time? Or do you want a nurse to be gentle? And kind? Considerate? Caring? Loving? Accepting? So I want to say maybe be your own nurse. Perhaps you already have been, but you've been the other one. You've been the horrible nurse.

You've been the bitter nurse. The one that's just having a go at you. And you don't need that.

It's of no use to you. It's like telling someone that's walked in the road and got run over. Telling them, well, you should have looked.

You should have looked before you crossed. You better look in the future before you cross the road. You don't want someone following you around, telling you, you should look before you cross the road.

Because you know that. Believe me, the last person that needs to be told to look before crossing the road is someone that's just been run over. And even though it may be well-meaning, it's not useful.

It's not gentle. So can you do that today? Be gentle with yourself. Just be gentle.

Every time you notice that you're saying something to yourself, or thinking about something that might happen, that's not helpful. Maybe just be gentle. Maybe just say, that's enough of that.

We don't need that. Just be gentle. Just be kind to you.

And accept yourself. Show acceptance. This is what's happening now.

Doesn't mean it's going to happen forever. Which means there's no benefit in thinking about the future with a negative tint to it. But rehearsing anxiety and stress and panic, rehearsing that is not necessary.

And it's definitely not kind to you. And a simple exercise that could be done to prove the power of our thoughts is, if you've got 10 people, just people off the streets, you know, that have never waited in a restaurant or anything like that, and you put, gave them all a tray with glasses full of wine or water, whatever, liquid in them, and they needed to walk like a hundred yards along a pavement, very narrow pavement.

If you got five of them to imagine walking down that pavement easily, naturally, just without any problems at all, they'll walk down, they can hold the tray, sit upright, and they get to the other end, and they put the tray down on the table.

And they spill a little bit, but it doesn't matter. It's not about that. It's just, you know, it doesn't matter if they spill one.

In fact, even if one falls over, it doesn't really matter. But it should be fine. They've got a cloth they can clean up.

If it, you know, if one of the glasses, you know, spills a little bit of water onto the tray, it's fine. In fact, the whole exercise is not really that important. Just something to do, just an experiment, just to test that the trays are okay.

And, you know, maybe the new trays, just test that they work properly, that they are up to the job. And then the other five people, you focus on how narrow the path is. Focus on how heavy the tray is.

Focus on how wobbly the tray is. Focus on how full the glasses are. Focus on how important it is that the glasses all end up at the other end of the pavement, the pathway, without any spillages at all.

And just get them to imagine how bad it would be if they tripped, or if they slipped, or if the tray tipped over. And you spent half an hour with both sides, one side five, the other side of five. One thinking it's not really a big deal, and it's fine.

Just do it. And the other five thinking, what if I slip? The pavement's so narrow. What if the tray just slips over? What if I spill something? I mean, I can pretty much guess what the result of that test would be once each individual walks down that little pathway for 100 yards.

Because of what they've prepared in their mind. And the same goes for all of us when it comes to preparation for what comes next. So maybe shining that light of kindness into the future can give you a bit of a reprieve, a rest from worrying about something that doesn't exist yet.

Giving you an opportunity to enjoy that sense of generosity that you are showing towards yourself. And changes naturally occur in a kind of effortless way. It's a bit like planting a seed in a pot and you put some water in.

And then you don't have to do anything because that flower or that plant or that vegetable, whatever it may be, just grows. So by planting the seed, the seed of kindness towards yourself or just the idea, the seed can just be an idea of something changing within you. The idea of you perceiving yourself in a different, more open, generous and loving way from now onwards.

Now I'm going to bring this recording to an end. And it's kind of like a being a reintroduction to me and what my intentions are with these recordings. Because I just feel it's important to do this and to help.

And hopefully those seeds that have been planted will become very noticeable for you in a way that may surprise you. But at the same time, if you're listening to this because you've listened to me before, maybe many times before, you can expect to enjoy some benefits, enjoy more relaxation and calmness of your mind, your thoughts, and your energy, more relaxed, more kindness spreading through your body towards your body and your mind.

And you can start to notice these useful changes now.

I'm going to go. So thank you for listening. I'll speak to you next time.

Bye.