anxiety
Is anxiety affecting your life? Do you need help?
Are you interested in learning a safe and natural way to feel calmer?
Did you know hypnosis is effective for anxiety?
Do you feel overwhelmed or fearful? Unable to cope?
Do you struggle to get to sleep at night or lie awake in the early hours? Feel exhausted but can’t switch your mind off?
Are you experiencing palpitations, tightness in your chest or a dry mouth? Feel lightheaded, shaky or nauseous?
Can’t think straight or focus on tasks?
If any of this sounds like you, you might be avoiding situations in case they bring on distressing symptoms, like an anxiety attack.
Maybe you’ve cut yourself off from people and are missing out on opportunities. And this leaves you feeling more isolated.
Like many women, you may have started to experience anxiety symptoms for the first time with perimenopause or menopause.
But here’s the thing: the more you avoid situations, the harder they become to face. You get caught in a vicious cycle.
I can help you break out of the loop.
Research studies have found hypnotherapy creates relaxation, reduces anxiety symptoms and helps gain a sense of control.
Hypnosis enhances CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy works with both the conscious and unconscious drivers of anxiety.
schedule 20 minutes with me
There’s no cost and no obligation.
Tell me how anxiety or overwhelm is affecting you and I’ll tell you how I can help.
Our call will be via phone or Zoom .
how will we work together?
It can help to understand that, although it may not feel like it, anxiety has your best interests at heart. It wants to keep you safe. The physical sensations you’ve been feeling result from the fight-or-flight response (the sympathetic nervous system).
This warning system kept our ancestors out of danger. If you’re chased by a hungry lion, fear is useful—the adrenaline helps you run. The problem arises when the stress response becomes chronic, and anxiety becomes your default state. Then it affects your physical and mental wellbeing.
You’ll discover that, although something in you is anxious, you are greater. You can take back control. You’re not inherently anxious or broken: you are complete and capable. Nor is anxiety something you will always have. It’s something you’re doing, albeit unconsciously. And if it’s something you’re doing, it’s something you can stop doing.
The first thing we’ll do, like in A&E, is get you calm and stable. When you’re continually on alert, it’s exhausting. And it isn’t the best state to be in to participate in coaching.
At your first session, I’ll teach you simple techniques to switch off, or considerably turn down, the anxiety response. You’ll learn proven methods that engage the ‘rest and digest’ (para-sympathetic) part of your nervous system.
We’ll begin with breathing because your breath is the most direct way to communicate calmness to your body. The beauty of these techniques is, they’re so simple to learn, you can pass them on to your friends and family, even your children.
And you’ll get a 20-minute hypnotic audio recording to listen to at home as often as you want.
You’ll begin to cultivate compassion for yourself. By learning to listen to your quiet inner voice, inner child or signals coming from your body. When you nurture and reassure the part within you that is fearful, feelings of distress melt away.
The scared part of you is often you as you experienced the world as a young child. And this part needs to hear that, whatever happens, you will be there for her. She won’t be left alone or abandoned again. Putting in this work has made a profound difference to my own sense of safety.
You’ll experience hypnosis to get in touch with how it feels to be profoundly relaxed in mind and body. Having experienced this, you’ll find it easy to slip into hypnosis whenever you want to at home. I’ll teach you easy techniques to build your own brief self-hypnosis sessions.
We’ll note any specific triggers for feelings of anxiety or overwhelm. Women who’ve come to me are often lacking security: in work, housing and/or relationships. Women in midlife may be struggling with anxiety as a symptom of perimenopause or menopause.
It’s a human need to feel safe, have food and shelter, know we’re loved, and are doing something meaningful with our lives. When these primary needs aren’t met, we notice a growing, underlying sense of unease.
We’ll gently shine a light on any unmet needs, so you can consider taking action in a particular direction. But first, we’ll establish a feeling of safety within your body with hypnosis and self-soothing techniques. so you’ll be acting from a place of greater resilience.
Are you telling yourself you’re stupid or weak? Are you berating yourself for being a failure or making mistakes? If you are, this is far from helping, and we’ll nip it in the bud.
Unusual as it sounds, I like us to have some fun with this. Coaching doesn’t have to be serious to be effective. In fact, humour is a great ingredient for transformation.
How you’re thinking feeds into how you’re feeling and behaving, which in turn feeds into how you’re thinking. You get caught in a loop. I’ll guide you to become aware of the stories you’re telling yourself and notice the impact they’re having on how you feel and behave.
Once you’re aware of any negative or catastrophic thinking, you’ll learn ways to challenge it.
Anxiety often underlies not being able to drop off to sleep at night or to waking in the early hours and being unable to get back to sleep. And if you’ve not had enough sleep, things can feel overwhelming that might otherwise feel quite manageable. So, we’ll focus on the quality of your sleep if this is a problem for you.
Once you’re feeling calmer, insomnia often falls away on its own.
You’ll get a hypnotic relaxation audio that you can listen to in the evening to wind down, or at bedtime to fall asleep to. I often have to remind clients to sit up if they’re listening to it during the day. Otherwise, they tell me, they get so relaxed, they nod off before the end.
We’ll remember to check on your caffeine intake. The jitteriness that some people get from coffee, or soft drinks containing caffeine, can sometimes be mistaken for an anxiety disorder.
questions about hypnotic coaching for anxiety
If you have any questions that aren’t covered below, please get in touch.
It’s €270 for three personalised, one-to-one sessions with me.
I suggest we start with three sessions. This might be enough, depending on you and your situation. It’s not one-size-fits-all.
I don’t promise that everything will be resolved in one session, but I’ll expect you to notice beneficial changes from your first appointment. Progress will come quickest if you practise daily what you’ve been learning with me.
If, after three sessions, you’d like to continue coaching with me, you can book individual top-up sessions or another bundle of three.
We won’t consider our work done after one session, even if you experience a huge shift. I’ll want to see you again to make sure the changes are robust when tested against the realities of your daily life. To check our work stands up.
I’ll teach you the most effective techniques I know to quickly calm your mind and body. My aim is for you to become resilient and no longer in need of my support. As soon as possible.
We won’t delve at length into your past or present, as you might with a psychotherapist or counsellor. You need only tell me just enough information to give us something to work with.
Perhaps you’ve already tried talk therapy and found that, although you got insight, it didn’t sufficiently change the way you feel. I know you want to stop feeling awful. Now. Not just get why you feel that way.
I’m trained in Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy. Hypnosis can rapidly change the way you are feeling. This makes it an ideal companion to CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), which begins with your thoughts and behaviours. Both are short interventions that take a matter of weeks, not months or years.
If you have a mental health diagnosis, we’ll check with your GP or psychiatrist before we start, to ensure that hypnosis is right for you.
If you are experiencing suicide ideation or have been diagnosed with psychosis, anorexia nervosa or certain other conditions, there are professionals with more specialist expertise to support you. And it may not be appropriate for me to work with you using hypnosis.
If it transpires that hypnosis isn’t right for you once we’ve spoken, I won’t leave you hanging. If you wish, I’ll help you find the right person to support you.
what people are saying
After listening to your relaxation audio, I had the best night’s sleep I’ve had for years.
case study:
anxiety at work
Background to the Anxiety
Catherine came to me, anxious about work. She’d recently qualified as a teacher and had had an experience in the classroom that had shaken her confidence. Since then, she’d felt shaky, dizzy and nauseous every time she walked towards the classroom door.
More recently, she’d started to experience dread on Sunday evenings and couldn’t sleep the night before any class. She couldn’t enjoy teaching any more and was considering training for another career.
Interpretation and Proposed Solution
Catherine’s anxiety, when standing in front of particular students, had generalised, until thoughts of teaching any class functioned as a trigger for the same anxiety response. The two things had become wired together.
Our brains do this: they look for patterns, make predictions and do whatever necessary to protect us. Catherine got humiliated when teaching, so her brain was making sure there was no risk of that happening again: by making teaching so uncomfortable, she’d stop doing it altogether.
Our task was to break this association and replace the negative response with a resourceful one.
Replacing the Automatic Response
I guided Catherine to briefly experience the shame and distress she’d experienced that day in the classroom. An emotion needs to be present to be able to change it.
Next, I asked Catherine for a memory of a time she felt joyous and top of her game. She recalled a time she’d sung before an audience. It was clear this was resonant for her: her body swayed with the memory of the music, dancing and smiling faces.
We then scrambled the two memories, replacing her problem response with one of happiness and accomplishment.
We were metaphorically rewiring her brain. Every time we retrieve a memory, we reconstruct it. After repeating the technique a few times, Catherine discovered, to her surprise, she could no longer find the old emotions.
Testing Our Work
Catherine’s new response would be tested out in the world, the following week. I take a belt and braces approach, so I also taught her rapid techniques from my Anti-Anxiety Toolkit. She could use these if she found herself feeling the least bit anxious. And she went away with a relaxing hypnotic audio. Practising techniques and listening to the audio would reinforce the changes beyond our session.
Outcome of the Hypnotic Coaching
Catherine came back the next session, glowing with confidence and excitement. She said how good it felt to love teaching again. It had taken a bit of practising the techniques, but she’d stuck with it and the classes had gone even better than she’d hoped. She didn’t stop smiling and all her talk was of the future. With the half-hour remaining we helped her get clarity about opportunities for further study and promotions.
What Made Coaching a Success?
We worked collaboratively. Catherine showed up, absolutely ready and committed to making this change happen. She was curious and open to experimenting with techniques that were new to her. She was ‘coachable’. Although I saw a shift happen during the session, she put the practice in, in between. This ensured changes ‘stuck’ and the transformation was permanent.
anxiety
at times of transition
Sometimes, we feel like we’re bombarded with stressors from all directions.
Maybe your kids are having difficulties or leaving home; your financial situation is changing; your parents need more support; you’re changing career, or approaching retirement. Or, all of the above.
On top of that, you might be struggling with puzzling new symptoms of perimenopause or menopause.
You may feel embarrassed and not want anyone to see you’re not coping. Don’t let this stop you from getting help. Anything you tell me is confidential. I feel nothing but empathy, and won’t judge.
I’ll teach you easy techniques to feel calm. It’s crucial when under stress to attend to your own oxygen mask first.
ready to get started?
Your first step is to book a free 20-min. call with me.
Tell me a bit about how the problem is affecting you.
And I’ll let you know how I can help.
i know anxiety and overwhelm
For me, anxiety at its worst was a living hell. Unless you’ve experienced it, it’s hard to imagine.
I tried for years to block out the warning signs: digestive issues like IBS, unexplainable physical symptoms, feeling faint, worrying, depersonalisation. I coped by driving myself relentlessly, into perfectionism.
You’ve probably developed your own ways of coping: overworking, overeating, or drinking too much alcohol. It’s no use trying to get rid of unhealthy coping mechanisms without dealing with the underlying anxiety.
You may, like me, have tried hard to ignore symptoms, hoping they’ll just go away. I’ve come to see symptoms as messages from the body that something is wrong and needs attention. Like when someone knocks at your door. What do they do if you don’t answer? In all likelihood, they’ll knock harder.
And boy, did my symptoms knock harder! Until they became so debilitating, I had no choice but to listen to them. Please don’t make the same mistake.
If you feel hopeless or worry you might never get better, I know what that’s like. But be reassured: having these thoughts is part and parcel of feeling anxious; it’s not a realistic prediction of your future.
I’m a private person by nature. I’m telling you this so you can trust I’ll understand something of what you’re going through.
I also want you to glimpse that it’s possible for things to get better. I’m feeling myself again; living a life that feels full of opportunity. When I was struggling, hearing about people getting over anxiety gave me hope to hold onto.
If your stress levels are creeping up, don’t let it go any further. Don’t struggle on your own; reach out for help.
