Linda Flanigan Hypnotherapy

Last week was Rollercoaster Day which celebrates the first vertical loop rollercoaster on 16th August 1898.   This brought back great memories of days spent with family when young.  We enjoyed the apprehension as we queued up, followed by the exhilaration and sometimes sheer terror of rollercoaster rides.

With my Hypnotherapist’s hat on I also begin to think about the emotional rollercoasters that we all face.

This year, for example, we’ve undergone the joy and disappointment of the Euros and the Olympics and the gripping ups and downs of our favourite tv thrillers.    On a more serious note, however, we’ve enjoyed the excitement of Covid restrictions being lifted yet the fears that it’s still a danger.  We’ve experienced  the joyful family celebrations of some and the heart-breaking sadness of those who have recently lost family and friends.

Causes and effects

These rollercoaster rides can result in exhaustion or a sense of losing control.  We might feel that this rollercoaster ride will never end, and we’ll never recover.   They can cause us to behave irrationally or let fly and upset others.    They make us feel on edge or angry.

The emotional rollercoaster can be brought on by many things.  They include everyday problems and stresses, depression or extreme tiredness, chronic illness or pain and hormonal changes.

For strategies to cope with emotional rollercoasters READ MORE

With Coronavirus restrictions about to ease, many of us are excited about getting back to some kind of normality and having the freedom to mix and socialise again.  For those of us who suffer with social anxiety, however, that fact can produce a heightened state of panic.

Which social situation do you relate to?

We can all relate to social anxiety in some way.   For example maybe you’ve felt nervous about meeting someone new or felt a bit uncomfortable when walking into a room full of strangers.   Perhaps you are currently worried about how you look after months of over-eating.  Maybe you wonder whether you’ve accomplished enough during lockdown.  Perhaps you wonder whether your friends will want to meet up again.    All of these musings can lead to negative thinking patterns which, in turn, can lead to more anxiety.

Stuck in your comfort zone?

If you suffer social anxiety you may have found being in lockdown has meant you can stay in your comfort zone and avoid facing up to your anxiety.   It may have been a kind of relief.   Now that  restrictions will soon be lifted, you will have to leave that comfort zone again.   As a result, you may be experiencing an increase in anxiety or you may even be experiencing anxiety for the first time.  Perhaps your confidence has taken a knock in lockdown?

Do you find that when faced with a social situation you get worried immediately before the event?  Perhaps you spend weeks worrying about it or maybe you spend time endlessly analysing how you acted when there?

Access the free audio recording :

Hints and tips

Here are some ways to lessen feelings of social anxiety:

• Be aware of the ‘worry story’ you are telling yourself and try to distance yourself from it.
• Acknowledge and then dump negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones.   Thoughts are just thoughts … you can choose whether to pay attention to them or move on to other more positive thoughts.
• Write down the good things, things that you are grateful for and things you are looking forward to.  Writing it down allows you to focus better on the more positive ideas.
• Do something that makes you feel good for at least an hour every day.
• Plan a daily scheduled ‘worry window’ – a regular time slot that you can set aside  to manage any negative thoughts and feelings and if you find yourself thinking negative thoughts at other times tell yourself you’ll deal with them during your worry window.
• Start out small, having more small talk with people you come across as lockdown eases.
• Remember that not everyone is judging you – people are usually too busy thinking about themselves!   Focus instead on making the people around you feel comfortable.
• Listen to the free audio recording.  Just having 15 minutes or so out of your day to focus on yourself, instead of listening to news updates, can help you regain a sense of balance and calm.  It can also help start to break any habits you may have formed during lockdown.

It’s natural to worry, of course, and we all do to some extent.   That’s how our mind works through current or potential problems.  We are wired to look for potential danger for survival.   When we become stuck in a pattern of negative thinking, however, that survival instinct stops being useful and leads to anxiety.    A more helpful strategy is to focus on the things we can control and choose a way to respond to them.

How To Manage Uncertainty in Uncertain Times

Things have changed incredibly for us all with this current pandemic.  All the uncertainty can be difficult to cope with.

You may feel anxious or stressed right now and therefore you may be finding it difficult to rein in worrying thoughts  and you may feel insecure about your future.

But help is at hand – you CAN discover how to cope with uncertainty.

Facing Uncertainty is Scarier than Facing Unavoidable Physical Pain

A recent study shows that the uncertainty of something bad happening can be more stressful than the knowledge of something bad happening.

Uncertainty Stirs Up Our Basic Survival Impulse

If we can’t defuse a perceived threat, we become occupied with the unhelpful activity of worrying.

We wrestle with the particular issue to find solutions to the threat, but there aren’t any.

Instead of making us feel better – it makes us feel worse!

We are naturally wired to ‘catastrophise’ i.e. we think about a circumstance as being worse than it actually is.   This leads to worry, which ends in anxiety.

Our modern brains struggle to differentiate between real threat and supposed threat.   This leads to our primitive brains taking over and triggering our primitive, fight or flight, survival instinct.

It asks questions:

What’s going to happen?
Is my business going to collapse?
Supposing I lose my job?
Could I fall ill from the virus?
How can I cope?

A lack of answers can lead to all sorts of emotions such as:

–  Anger
–  Resentment
–  Frustration
–  Depression

What Can we do to Allay Uncertainty?

 There are a number of things we can do to reduce the effects of uncertainty:

Awareness is your secret weapon:

• Be more consciously aware of your feelings and emotions
• Notice the “worry narrative” you are telling yourself – try to distance yourself from it
• Focus on breathing – take long slow breaths – breathe out for longer than you breathe in
• Recognise the need to conquer your basic instinct for fight-or-flight
• Accept uncertainty rather than trying to battle against it

Stand up to Anxiety with Some Mood-Boosters

• Get some exercise or movement
• Do some meditating, self-hypnosis
• Find a purpose – volunteer or doing something for someone, achieve something
• Find something pleasant or fun to do

Just 15 minutes a day, focusing on yourself, will help you regain a sense of balance.

The more you practice all these strategies, the better you will become!

For further information and details of how to download my FREE Anxiety Release recording click here Anxiety Release

Spring is here at last!

The flowers are appearing and everything seems so much brighter.

We start spring-cleaning our homes and looking forward to the longer, lighter days.

How about a spring-clean for the mind then? How about clearing out all those negative, fearful thoughts so that you can accept things and spring into action?

Are you one of those people who is constantly worrying about life’s ‘What ifs’, clogging up your mind with junk thoughts?

What if it all goes wrong?
What if I say the wrong thing?
What if something terrible happens?
What if I don’t know anyone? etc.

These kinds of thoughts tend to wear us down and keep us in a cycle of worry which at best does nothing for us and at worst can make us ill.  So the next time you are aware of yourself having a negative What if? thought, recognise and accept that it’s a waste of your time and energy, that it’s not helping you in any way and just clear it away, thus letting go of the junk in your mind.

If you’d like help to spring clean your mind and move on then contact me at linda@lfhypnotherapy.co.uk