Anxiety

Are you a worrier?

It’s not quite the happiest of New Years. Financial difficulties. Looming recession. The flu bug that’s going around. Wars and disasters on the TV.

Lots of challenging situations for all of us, but if you are a worrier it’s just so much worse. As if the reality of the situation wasn’t bad enough you can’t stop worrying about it.

Do these statements apply to you?

• You’re not able to calm down
• You imagine the worst
• You feel anxious far more than you should
• You just can’t stop worrying
• You feel out of control

If they do IntegrityNLP is running a short course in Hexham that will help you:

• Feel calm
• Stop worry in its tracks
• Get back control of your mind.
• Gain greater peace of mind.

The course will be held at The Bodywork Centre, 19 St Mary’s Chare, Hexham on Friday 27th March from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm.

The full cost for the full day workshop is just £69.00.

To find out more click on Coping With Worry – A Short Course

I just watched The Panic Room on BBC 3, it’s a documentary about a ‘radical’ way of treating extreme phobias. It’s radical television alright! It looked like a cross between systematic desensitisation and The Weakest Link. Put some very scared people in a locked room (101 perhaps), show them fancy graphics and videos of the objects their fears and watch them squirm to portentous music. It’s an excellent example of suffering as entertainment, but is it the best way to deal with phobias?

I don’t think it is, in fact I think it perpetuates some very unhelpful ideas about phobias and how to overcome them:

1. Phobias are difficult to resolve and require courage in facing down your fears. I don’t think so, these people aren’t suffering from a lack of courage, they have an excess of fear! Phobic reactions can be quickly reduced in a variety of ways using EFT, NLP and other techniques. If you reduce the level of irrational fear you don’t need to face it down.
2. Touching a snake followed by some hyperventilation and swearing counts doesn’t look like a complete resolution of the phobia to me. It’s one thing not to run screaming from the room if there phobic stimulus is presented. I would take a person being completely comfortable in the presence of the trigger as being proof of a successful resolution of the phobia.
3. The Panic Room setup is very elaborate, I can’t imagine these services at a NHS centre near you. Is this form treatment only available if you want to appear on television?

If you are curious about how you might easily reduce a phobia without going through all that palaver watch this short video of an EFT treatment of a rat & mouse phobia. (EFT in Action Fears & Phobias). You don’t have to suffer unnecessarily to resolve these problems.

Here are some examples of phobia and anxiety work that I’ve written about before: Fear of heights Fear of heights (video) & Fear of flying.

If you live in the North East want to sort out a phobia without all the lights, music and terror, give me a call. Or visit the AAMET website to find your local EFT therapist.

It’s always nice to hear how clients are doing. Especially when you are working with fears, you can tap away in your office on all the aspects of the fear and anxieties about whatever it is: fear of flying, or fear of medical procedures, in the hope of neutralising it all. However, until they’ve gone and done whatever it is in the real world you just don’t know for sure that it’s going to work. So it’s very rewarding to get an email like this from someone who used to suffer from fear of flying.

I used the techniques and they had a huge impact on the lowering of my fear of flying. I used the head/eye/ face tapping on the days before the flights and the more subtle tapping in the departure lounges! It really helped. Did the 11hr flight to LA pretty calmly. No major churning stomach at all. After that the two shorter flights ( still 6 or 7 hrs each!) seemed more of a breeze. I even ENJOYED ( shock horror!) the flight from the west coast to the east as I had a window seat and could see the magnificent contours and colours of the desert, followed by the Rockies, followed by endless miles of prairies before arriving in the more built up east coast .

Have actually just returned from a quick visit to Belfast and a very short 40 mins flight both ways, and felt chilled out both times..

Thank you so much Andy. You’re a star. Will keep working on the technique as and when I need it.

What I particularly like about this is the last line. ‘Will keep working on the technique as and when I need it’. That’s the spirit! In my opinion EFT is as much about training someone how to use it for themselves as to ‘treat’ someone. I love it when someone takes that on board – literally in this case.

A client of mine at a cancer support group, let’s call her Mary, has been using EFT to good effect. I worked with her a little while ago about test anxiety. This test anxiety is not about a driving test, or a maths exam, but a call back to hospital after several years remission from breast cancer to investigate a suspicious lump.

Shortly before she was due to be tested, we worked together in an EFT session reducing the fears and anxieties surrounding the test and what it might mean. She was naturally apprehensive, fear of re-occurrence is a is a big issue for people who have been through cancer, come out the other side, and have no inclination to go back.
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It’s always nice to get reports from people who’ve attended my training or therapy sessions. One of the attendees of my introductory EFT Level 1 courses sent me the following email

Hi Andy

I was on your Level 1 course, I was the one with the anxiety attacks and height phobia.

At the end of the session we worked on my anxieties and used second floor in Tesco’s as an example.

Well today was the first chance I had to go there, I worked some EFT in the morning then off we went.

I must say I came with an open mind but if am honest was a little sceptical because I`ve had this thing for so long and thought I would have it for life and would be just something I would have to deal with.

I just have one word “WOW”, I couldn`t believe the difference in me when I went up there . My partner couldn`t believe it either.

So much so that when we came down I had to go up again.

Now I’m excited about trying my next test of heights.

So I just wanted to drop you a quick email to say THANK YOU!!!!

Thanks again

Simon

It’s always nice to hear about EFT success stories and particularly good to hear about people putting what they’ve learned into practice.

You have to use these techniques to get the benefit.

I didn’t see the modestly titled ‘Watch Paul McKenna cure the nation’ on GMTV, last week, but I’ve heard quite a few comments about it. You can see some of the results of his efforts to relieve various phobias: snakes, spiders and heights here: GMTV – Cure your phobia by watching GMTV with Paul McKenna

Apart from the publicity, it occurs to me that appearing on TV gives you some great advantages: you can test the spider phobia is gone with an impressive tarantula, or that the snake phobia is resolved by presenting the ex-sufferers with a huge snake called ‘Albert’. The relief from the phobia just looks so much more impressive with these fearsome ‘props’ (I wonder if Albert is for hire?).
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An interesting article, Stress boosts Alzheimer’s proteins in the brain, in the New Scientist links stress and the risk of Alzheimers disease (in mice)

Brief periods of stress can cause a rapid rise in the brain proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study in mice.

Just three days of stress caused an abrupt 42% increase in brain proteins thought to cause the disease. The study helps to shed light on why people who experience great stress and anxiety appear more prone to this illness, experts say.

The researchers relate this to experience with people, in particluar a famous study about attitudes and longevity amongst Catholic nuns.

A previous study of nearly 800 Catholic nuns, priests and brothers found that those plagued by negative emotions, such as depression and anxiety, had about twice the risk of Alzheimer’s as those who took a more laid-back approach to life.

Holtzman says the mouse experiment adds to the growing body of evidence that reducing stress in everyday life might lower a person’s risk of Alzheimer’s disease. He also speculates that anti-anxiety drugs might one day have a role in the control of this illness.

I agree with everything he says until he mentions anti-anxiety drugs. He could just have well have said meditation, relaxation techniques or EFT. Low cost, no side-effects and much more enjoyable.