Hypnotherapy for Anxiety Disorders Explained

Many pharmaceutical and natural remedies for anxiety disorders are available in the market. Apart from medication, another method to cure anxiety depression is hypnotherapy for anxiety. Hypnotherapy for anxiety disorders, as the name suggests is the treatment of anxiety patients using hypnosis. Hypnosis is the process of one individual controlling another’s mind by asking the subject to concentrate on an object, causing the mind to fall into a semiconscious state.

Hypnotherapy for anxiety has applications in many fields apart from acting as an anxiety cure. When a hypnotist performs hypnotherapy for anxiety, she attempts to locate and understand the anxiety that the patient feels. She then tries to perceive the cause behind the anxiety and develops ways to alleviate the anxiety from the patients’ mind. When the patient is affected by an anxiety disorder, it is common to see an agitated behavior. The hypnotist attempts to calm the patients’ emotions by taking control of the patients’ mind and instructing it to stay calm.

During hypnotherapy for anxiety, the patient is moved into a trance and the depth of the trance is dependent on the evaluation of the hypnotist. In some cases, a light to medium trance may be sufficient to calm the patient and direct suggestions to rationalize their anxieties may work. In these cases, the direct suggestion under hypnosis is accepted by the patients and they shed their anxiety disorders. In cases where the level of anxiety disorder is high, such that anxiety depression has set in, a very strong trance is required in order to cure the patient.

Normally, single sessions of hypnotherapy for anxiety are never sufficient to completely cure anxiety disorders. When the level of the disorder is high, the hypnotist may have to resort to multiple sessions spread over prolonged durations where she will have to attempt to address the causes of the anxiety, rather than counsel the hypnotized patient about its irrationality. In cases of strong affliction, direct suggestion may cause the patient to break out of the trance. In these cases, techniques such as progressive relaxation, counting, counting accompanied by imagery, pure imagery and autogenic training may be adopted. These techniques reduce the amount of stress placed on the trance achieved by the hypnotist while attempting to remove the unease associated with the patient’s anxiety disorder.

Autogenic training is a method by which the patients can induce hypnosis upon themselves. This can help them calm down when faced with a situation that would normally increase their anxiety. In this technique, the patient’s body sensations when in a trance are duplicated and the hypnosis is made to work in reverse.

Hypnotherapy for anxiety deals with both physical and mental relaxation of the patient and is a delicate art. If attempted by inexperienced people, it could have serious repercussions for both the patient and the hypnotist. It is a highly effective cure for anxiety disorders but should be used only with professional advice. Hypnotherapy is usually used in conjunction with other cures for anxiety such as medication, Yoga etc.