top of page
Search
Writer's pictureMorag Stevenson

Try this and reduce anxiety

Anxiety can seep into your thoughts, your words, how you feel, what you do, and how you think about yourself. Your thoughts, feelings and actions can aggravate and increase your anxiety or on the contrary, lessen and dispel it.


When you feel anxious, you might feel overwhelmed by thoughts and not know how to quieten your busy mind. You might feel as if you’re forgetting a lot of things. Anxiety might show as an uneasy feeling in your stomach, shallow short breaths, and an on- edgness that you can’t shake.


Sometimes the anxiety ‘switch’ turns on in the morning and you don’t know how to ‘turn it off’ again. You feel uncomfortable, ill at ease, apprehensive. Everyone has a little anxiety now and again. It’s perfectly normal and can even be beneficial, as it warns us of a potential threat and keeps us on guard. 

When anxiety persists and seems out of proportion with what is happening in your life, it becomes more problematic.


 
Let’s take a look at how anxiety works

When you’re anxious, you often hyperfocus. You look at yourself and the world through the close-up lens on your camera. You focus on what’s wrong with you, how you can’t cope, how overwhelming it is, how big and impossible to overcome the situation or problem is.

Your lens is stuck on zoom. If you can widen your perception, and broaden the lens through which your anxiety is looking you can help yourself feel better.




 

Experiment

Try this experiment to see how this micro close-up lens can distort your perception and ‘switch on’ anxiety and then how you can ‘switch it off’.


Take your hand and make a tunnel by closing your hand into a fist but leaving a 1cm hole. Look through this hole with one eye and block your other eye with the other hand. Look at a page in a book or a picture on the wall through this tunnel you’ve created. How little can you see? Yes, that’s right, only a small part of the whole picture. Yet in this small piece, you can hyperfocus on everything, every mark or spot or blemish and every thought or feeling this creates.


This is what anxiety can do to your perception. You only see a small, incomplete, disjointed part of the story and believe it’s the whole picture.


The anxious microlens can work both ways. 


You may think everyone is observing you through that microlens, minutely noting every one of your imperfections. 

Or, you turn the lens in on yourself in selfie mode and focus that laser, concentrated vision on thinking about what has gone wrong or could go wrong or is wrong with what you have done, or what you look like.


Now try the same experiment. Look at that same page of a book or picture on a wall. But this time, slowly open your hand and make the hole larger and larger until your hand is open, falls aside, and lets your vision widen and broaden beyond the page or the picture and so takes in the whole surroundings. Notice how your picture and your page become whole, it makes sense, it’s in context. The tiny space you were hyperfocused on has blended effortlessly into the rest.


Just by using your hand, you’ve done a powerful experiment that can remind you of how a shift in perception can change everything. Let's see a couple of common examples of how you can use this to switch anxiety off.

 
Example 1
A work presentation

You’re about to do a work presentation in a meeting and you’re feeling anxious. You feel hot and awkward. You think you’re not good enough, that everyone knows you’re an imposter. You know you’re going to mess up the presentation. If anyone asks a question, you won’t be able to answer anyway. It’s going to be a disaster.

Can you see your microlens in action? You are hyper-focused on yourself. 


Now, take a sheet of paper or imagine it in your mind’s eye and write the words ‘my presentation’ somewhere on the page. Then add other information. This could be other presentations that may be on the agenda for that meeting,  the people who will be there, the day it’s on. Write down past presentations you’ve done, or reasons why you’ll be good at this, or how you’ll feel afterwards, and who you know will be by your side to support you. Write down a strong statement that makes you feel good about your presentation. Write down what you think other people will be wearing. Note how your presentation can help people, and what you want people to take away from it.


Once you’re ready, use your hand as shown above to micro-focus on the word ‘my presentation’ and then wide-focus out. See the whole picture. Doing this exercise can physically help you to focus attention away from yourself and out wider onto the whole meeting. Notice how your thoughts change for the better.


 
Example 2
The mirror

You look at yourself in the mirror and you don’t like the way your hair looks. You think it looks awful. You don’t want to go out, you want to stay at home and hide.

This is the microlens in action. Your eyes and your thoughts are focused on one part of yourself, ignoring the rest.


Now take your hand once again and look at your hair through the tunnel created by your hand. Then slowly start to widen out until you can see your whole self. Look at the whole of you, your face, your body, your feet...Widen your gaze to include the room you’re in, and the objects around you. Observe how your hair is now in perspective, within the context of you as a whole person.

This is a simple yet powerful way to shift your thoughts and your feelings.



 
How can cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy help dispel anxiety?

Just as in the physical experiments above where your hand reduces and then widens your perception, cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy offers you a safe, calm, peaceful environment in which you can learn to change your 'lens'.


With the guidance of your hypnotherapist, you practice coping strategies that help rebuild your confidence and resilience. You can practice these while in hypnosis and train your mind to become more familiar with this new way of feeling, thinking and behaving when in situations that used to make you anxious and overwhelmed.


Between sessions, you can observe how your ability to cope has changed, and how you are more able to put the wide lens on to see and feel the whole picture rather than just hyperfocus. Whenever you begin to feel anxiety creeping in, you can pause and ask yourself: Which lens am I looking at this situation or at myself through?


If it’s the wrong lens, you can change it by shifting your focus wider.






2 views0 comments

Comentarios


bottom of page