The Stock Market, The “Bail Out”, and The crazy political situation might be causing you some stress.
I know I am a little stressed about the economy right now. Is this tinge of stress and anxiety I am feeling a bad thing?
New Anxiety Study
According to a 2008 study, published in the Journal, “Psychological Science”*, adults who experienced a bit more anxiety while potentially losing money in a financial game were better able than the low anxiety group to avoid financial loss in a separate game months later.
So anxiety does have a function!
It turns out there is a region in your brain called the anterior insula, which plays the role of predicting harm (causing anxiety) and also learning how to avoid it.
Psychologists at Stanford University scanned the anterior insula of healthy adults while they anticipated losing money. Those who had a higher activation of the insula when exposed to threat, were better able to avoid financial losses in a separate game months later.
So when people tell you to “just relax” in a situation where the logical reaction might be to be a bit stressed, you can know that you are actually learning at a deep level how to not make the same mistake twice.
The Flip Side of Anxiety
On the flip side, people whose insula reactions are too high can experience a myriad of stress related diseases. This suggests there is an optimal stress and anxiety response.
According to a 2007 report put out by the Mayo clinic**, chronic stress and anxiety can cause ill health effects such as digestive difficulties that range from stomach aches to diarrhea, anxiety, irritability, insomnia and depression.
How do You Balance The Good and The Bad Effects of Stress?
One important strategy for stress reduction that the report mentions is to be able to identify the cause of stress and determine whether it is external or internal.
Then concentrate on dealing with stressors that can be changed and let go of stressors where you have no control.
This is a big point and one that is missed with a lot of the stress and anxiety programs and CDs I see advertised on the internet. There are a myriad of programs that teach you how to relax in the moment. CDs with relaxing music, guided imagery, etc…
These are great and better than nothing. However, they don’t deal with the core issues of effectively managing stress and anxiety.
The fact is (just look at the beginning of this post) that stress in and of itself is a healthy response. It is how you deal with it that is the difference between you excelling or becoming a stress case!
Effective stress management requires that you deal with stressors head on and do not avoid these situations. This is what causes stress to compound - leading to general anxiety disorders and bad health effects.
Hypnosis and Stress
Hypnosis has a long history as an effective stress reduction technique, but when we were looking for a therapist to create a program for us, we wanted to ensure that the sessions did not just teach you how to relax, but that they also taught effective stress management behavior at a deep level.
After a long process, we found Dr. Randy Gilchrist who is both an expert in addictions and stress management, with and without hypnosis. What this means is that Dr. Gilchrist has years of experience helping people develop effective stress management strategies from all walks of life.
Based on the feedback we have been getting, the program is helping people go beyond just coping with stress. It is helping people confront stressful situations and learning to actually use stress as motivation.
This change not only makes a person more effective in just about everything they do, it has huge health benefits.
A Special Offer
Anyway - because of the economy we figure this is a good time for you to experience the program.
And for the next seven days, we are going to give you a coupon where you can get 20% off.
Just enter the coupon code, “stress” (no quotes) after you click to cart. Then you can choose the installment option and start for less than $19.
http://www.hypnosisnetwork.com/hypnosis/stress_anxiety.php
I hope you have enjoyed the information and please do comment.
*Association for Psychological Science (2008, April 5). A Little Anxiety Is Sometimes A Good Thing, Study Shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved
**Mayo Clinic (2007, October 8). Manage Long-Term Stress To Avoid Ill Health Effects.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Good post Michael. I used to be someone who just glossed over things that caused me to feel anxiety and I think I had my head in the clouds as a result. I think I could have avoided many problematic situations but I was always trying to feel good about my mistakes instead of learning to avoid making them. This research you’ve revealed reminded me of that.
By the way did you ever find that copywriter you were looking for?
(We spoke for a bit at the AWAI conference last Fall and at Kern’s Mass Control event briefly. In April you still hadn’t found your guy.)
For some people stress is easily cured with a Tylenol pill, a good night sleep and the notion of “tommorow will just be another day” will cut it.I was one of those when I was 18-20 years of age. Still millions of adults still carry the same thought.
Hypnosis works tremendously, at leats to the degree to get you to understand “where’s the problem” and “what could I do” to improve on the problem. In my experience, what we do next is the difference between a alleviating our situation or having a permanent cure at least for the specific situation.
Seeing a stressful situation as a nightmare wouldn’t help for sure, why not challenge ourselves to solve?
Thanks for the article mate.
Regards,
Boricua
I believe one of the main problems we encounter when growing up is the way we’re taught to visualize. I recall one of the main questions that counselors would ask is, “where do you see yourself 5 or 10 years from now?” What’s weird is those same counselors never taught anyone how to visualize the future.
More importantly, those counselors never taught us how to picture overcoming adversity in our lives. Adversity presents us with the stepping stones on the path to success. the problem with stress is that it can push us off those potentially successful paths when we don’t know how to conquer adversity at each of those stepping stones.
I believe it’s completely negligent for teachers and counselors to instantly assume that their students know how to deal with stress and adversity in such a way that they can picture what their lives are like 5 and 10 years down the road. Teach kids how to visualize their success at each bump along the road first. Then talk about the far future.
As far as the people who are too relaxed in a potential situation of adversity, they also suffer from the lack of ability to visualize potential outcomes. Once again, this is the fault of their upbringing.
Learn to visualize. We must ask ourselves those important questions. How do I pay my bills with this stressful economy? How do I protect my health? How do I share my knowledge and goodness with the world?
Many articles written have said that there are two types of stress — good and bad, but it still has the same physical effect on you whether good or bad. In this instance for people in a financial loss, the anxiety is actually prompting good stress to help them learn how to overcome a future financial loss and they are able to avoid physical effects. So this would make sense why hypnosis could assist in retraining our thinking to overcome the “bad” stress then turn it into “good” stress or a motivation to learn how to overcome a future financial loss and at the same time control the physical effects of stress.
People who take risks are very beneficial to society! Although they make-up a very small percentage of the population, they are crucial to a society’s structure. For example, firefighters, police officers, military… where would be be without those folks? Of course, those who require thrill will seek it if they cannot get their fill otherwise (e.g. skydiving, racing, etc.) Some are genetically programmed to need high amounts of stress. A little stress is healthy; too much, dangerous. Along with daily exercise, a stress reduction therapy should be included. Relaxation tapes already help me - I recommend them to everyone!
I have too much stress in my life! I believe that most others do, too. Whenever I go into a store or restaurant, I expect to be met with happy, pleasant people who want to please me. However, nowadays, I find that people (and I’m talking about the sales people) seem repulsed my my mere presence, and simply want me to hurry up and go. This is not a healthy attitude to have - and it certainly cust down on business! I think that it is stress that does this. People have either forgotten how to deal with it, or have never known. Whichever way, something needs to be done. Stress is not good; a lot of stress is not only bad, but bad for you. Most heart attacks are triggered by a sudden and extreme stressful moment. Being aware of this, I try to remain calm ALWAYS. It’s not easy, but it is crucial (I feel) to my very existence.
Interesting article and something I think I may have to print out and place in my office. I suffered from Anxiety for years until I learned self hypnosis. Keep up the great work and keep putting out these great articles.
Joshua Houghton
Certified Hypnotist
I’m retired, these days, and even the slightest bit of stress weighs very heavily upon me. I ran a retail shop for many, many years, and it had its share of gloom. However, it’s the moments of joy and all the happy faces I think about and remember when I need a pick-me-up. I’m not too sure about this hypnosis thing. If it does work, will it work on me? And if it does work, do I want to mess with my mind? Will somebody who has tried this and/or does this thing let me know? At my age, I need as little stress as possible… this would sure help, it sounds.
I am really stressed out! I am working two jobs, and I don’t have time for anything! Even now, I’m doing this on my break! I should be relaxing, but if I stop, I will not want to start back up! I really need something that will help me. I wanted to see if this hypnosis thing is for me. Can you listen to it in your car? I spend a lot of time going back and forth to different places, and if I could make productive use of that time, I think I’d be set. Will somebody PLEASE let me know!!! Thanks!
A Drug Free Pain Killer
Actually, we teach our students at our ACADEMY in the very first level of NLP how to handle pain in multiple cases just by refocusing the awareness. We use the metaphor of an explosion in a city. Everybody runs away from the spot, but if they don’t return soon and pick up the damaged remains to repair and build new ones, the damage will last longer.
Similarly, if you are in pain, your consciousness runs away from the spot. That deprives the point of origin of the pain from blood, vital fluids and nerve energy.
What you should do is ask the person to close his/her eyes and find the exact shape and volume of the aching area. Is it round? Is it long? Is it shaped like a football? a tortilla? a string of spaghetti? a needle?
Does it have clear limits or is it diffuse? What color is it? Already during this process the pain usually has diminished. Then you start suggesting simultaneously changes in form, and color. Basically you can go two directions. You can make the volume bigger, so the mass gets thinner and the color more translucid or transparent, or you can make it smaller and darker until you get to a microscopic size.
If you have to check the ecology of the change later, you might move the pain spot one or two inches OUTSIDE of the body so it doesn’t bother it’s owner until you check later or another day for improvement. For each change you check ask: Does it feel the same or better? (not better or worse)… You might easily guess why… All of it done with well developed hypno-talk, which produces almost miraculous cures in minutes… Try it some day… Alejandro
I don’t agree much with this.I think all types of anxiety are bad. If one is running away from a large wolf we get an adrenaline boost…just a one off emergency but if we get anxious while looking at the boss or thinking about tomorrows exam, it must be very negative towards our health.
Thanks for the article Michael.
As a practicing hypnotist I see people with different anxiety levels all the time. Normal anxiety (fear) is a healthy emotion that tells us we perceivie that we may lose something in a given situation. It may be money, self-esteem, control of our surroundings, an important relationship etc.
Unheathy anxiety is usually linked to past situations where a fearful situation was encoutered, but not resolved. Fears of injury, abandonment or rejection, losing a parent, etc from childhood which still persist below the level of consciousness can result in an elevated anxiety level in adults. Current anxiety producing situations just tap into the old fears resulting in excessive and often paralysing feelings.
Hypnosis can safely allow the client to access and resolve this type of anxiety.
John Kane
http://www.holistic-hypnosis.com
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