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Stress is certainly a 21st century buzzword – but what is stress exactly?
On a purely physical level, stress is simply the release of adrenaline (epinephrine) into the body. This is actually something which evolved to keep us alive – the fight-or-flight response, a survival mechanism which we inherited from our distant ancestors. When the brain perceives a threat, adrenaline instantly surges into the system. This sets the heart and lungs pumping and tenses the muscles, priming you to fight for your life, or run away as fast as you can before something eats you!
This is a very useful thing to have in a world full of sabre-toothed tigers and other predators. However, the instinct is still with us today, even though most of don’t face genuine life-or-death threats on a daily basis. Problems arise because this natural survival response is triggered when it isn’t needed, often in response to imaginary threats. So although a demanding job won’t literally kill you, like a sabre-toothed tiger would, the brain feels threatened by it just the same, and activates the fight-or-flight response.
Stress isn’t necessarily good or bad – it’s just a question of degree. Think about a stress scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most stressed and flooded with adrenaline that you can possibly imagine being. This would be a very good level of stress to have if you’re running away from a wild animal. It’s not such a good level of stress to have if you’re going for a job interview. That might be a 3. Generally speaking, we might say that 4 is probably the highest point on that scale that you’d need for everyday life.
So when we talk about stress, we’re really talking about using too much stress for the situation at hand. The effects of this can be pretty damaging over time. As stress is a survival mechanism, one of the things it does is switch off or suppress all of those things that aren’t immediately necessary for survival – digestion, the immune system, the libido, even the ability to think clearly. In the short term, the body is able to cope with this. However, if high levels of stress persist over time, then these vital natural functions remain suppressed. This is why severely stressed people suffer more infections and illnesses, are prone to stomach problems and IBS, and often say that they can’t think straight. That’s literally true.
So how can hypnosis help with stress? First of all, it’s a relaxing experience by itself. Taking just a few minutes each day to practice self-hypnosis will reduce the impact of an overworked stress response. One very quick way to do this is by paying attention to your breathing. Just as we have a fight-or-flight mechanism, so we have a natural relaxation mechanism – the parasympathetic nervous system – and this can be activated by simply breathing out for longer than we breathe in. You can try breathing in for a count of 7 and out for a count of 11, or in for 5 and out for 9, whichever feels most comfortable to you.
Secondly, because stress has more to do with our reaction to events than the events themselves, we can use hypnosis to train ourselves to react in a more helpful way. Here’s a hypnosis tip for stress developed by the therapist David Botsford, which uses the stress scale we mentioned earlier.
Relax into trance using one of the self-hypnosis methods described on this site.
- In your mind’s eye, get a sense of a time when you’ve been more than usually busy. Perhaps a busy day at work, when there was a lot to get done, and when you found you had the right amount of energy and concentration to cope with what was demanded of you. Make it as vivid as you possibly can, with sounds and feelings.
- When you have a good strong sense of that unusually busy day, visualize the number 4 superimposed on it, like a projection on a movie screen.
- Clear that screen in your mind, and next get a sense of an averagely busy day. Perhaps a normal day at work, with the normal amount of things to get done, a time when you coped easily and well with what was required of you. Again, make it as vivid as you possibly can. This time, superimpose the number 3 on that scene.
- Next, get a sense of a time when you felt relaxed and attentive and involved with something, perhaps a conversation with family or friends. This time, superimpose the number 2.
- Next, get a sense of a time when you were so completely relaxed that you didn’t have to do anything at all – perhaps lying by a pool on a hot summer’s day. Superimpose the number 1.
- In your mind, practise moving up and down the scale from 1 to 4 and back again, feeling the levels of energy move from complete relaxation to more than usually busy. If there’s a situation in your life that makes you feel stressed, get a sense of where on that stress scale you feel it lies. What happens when you bring the level down to 4 or 3, or even a 2?
If you practise this exercise regularly, you’ll be able to bring just the right amount of energy and the appropriate level of stress to any situation.
Something which many people find stressful is study and learning. To help with this, in the next article we’ll be giving you some Hypnosis Tips For Study Improvement
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