This week is International Stress Awareness Week (ISAW, November 4th – 8th). The week was created to raise awareness about stress prevention. Did you know that stress not only makes us feel awful emotionally, it can also cause chronic health conditions including heart disease, diabetes, depression and asthma?
We all know what stress feels like. All of us have had days where the pressure mounts and we find ourselves constantly feeling the time crunch, or knowing that we have an ever mounting list of things that need to be done. Perhaps you notice that your heart is beating just a bit faster, your breath feels just that bit more difficult. The daily stresses we face every day are ongoing and chronic, very different from the stresses that we faced in the past.
These ongoing stresses use up our resources and affect our coping skills, so the theme of the ISAW of ‘RESILIENCE – the power to succeed’ is especially pertinent. As many as 74% of people said that they had felt so stressed that they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope in the last year in a YouGov poll conducted in January.
We need to cultivate skills to help us effectively deal with stressors. The National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) recognises that it is important to learn techniques to manage stresses, before you feel like life is getting on top of you. Attending some sessions with a hypnotherapist can help you achieve a different perspective, changing the way you think about different events in your life which can help you to manage stressors more effectively.
Because stress comes from many different areas of life you will work with your chosen therapist to find techniques to help you mitigate those stresses. For some people this will involve relaxation techniques including self-hypnosis; other people will benefit from learning short and long term goal planning.
After a session the person being treated usually feels more relaxed, calm and confident. Often change is subtle, as the hypnotherapist will be working with the subconscious mind, and a very positive shift in feeling and reaction to certain previously stressful situations can be noticed. After working with a hypnotherapist you can expect to feel calmer and more confident, more resilient and better able to cope with whatever stress life throws at you.
You can find a hypnotherapist near you by using the NCH directory.