Stress And Anxiety - Natural Ways To Overcome Them So You Can Relax
More than ever before scientific surveys are attesting the primary role stress can have in causing and aggravating a lot of psychological and somatic disorders. A headline in a 1983 issue of Time Magazine described stress as "The Epidemic of the Eighties." The article also declared that stress is a main health problem. Indeed one has to admit that today's world has become a lot more complicated and stressful over the past two decades since that article was written.
Many surveys show that most adults feel that they are subject to a great deal of stress. Researchers in this domain estimate that between 75 and 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are related to stress.
Most adults claim that their job is the primary reason of their stress. The levels of stress have also increased in children as well as the elderly population because of several reasons including: Peer pressures that often push people to everything from cigarette smoking to drug and alcohol abuse; the wearing away of family and religious values and ties; increased crime rates; fear for personal safety; as well as social isolation and loneliness.
Stress is a factor of conditions such as diabetes, ulcers, low back and neck pain, hypertension, strokes and heart attacks. This is due to the increased sympathetic nervous system activity and the release of cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones. Chronic stress is co-morbid with defective immune system resistance. Stress can cause anxiety, depression, and its different impacts on the body's organs.
The following definition for "stress" can be found in the American Heritage Dictionary:
"To subject to physical or mental pressure, tension, or strain"
The following is the definition of "tension" from the same dictionary:
"Mental, emotional, or nervous strain"
The word "anxiety" is defined as follows:
"A state of uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties"
And the following definition is given for "depression":
"The condition of feeling sad or despondent"
It defines "clinical depression" as follows:
"A psychiatric disorder characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, loss of appetite, anhedonia, feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness, and thoughts of death."
We can be sure of one thing, our thoughts are the main cause of our feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. We could also say that, what we think about, and our attitudes and the way we view our experiences strongly influence our feelings. That way, if we can learn how to alter our thoughts, attitudes, and points of view, we can get rid of our stress, anxiety, and depression and replace them with a more positive state of being.
Since the beginning of time, people have looked for methods that would allow them to release stress. The pharmaceutical industry seems to have a drug for everything. For that the industry has designed a large array of sedatives from Valium to Xanax. If you choose to utilize drugs for relief, please be sure to read the fine print and learn about the side effects, which commonly are, among others, addiction and dependency. Indeed these types of drugs aim at treating the symptoms, instead of the cause. So when one stops taking them, the symptoms can return.
A better method to eliminate tension, stress, anxiety, and depression is to treat the root cause, which as I wrote previously, is usually our thought processes. Now, here is some good news. The very essence of hypnosis is relaxation. The AMA recognized hypnosis in 1958 as an effective way to treat stress and stress related symptoms. Moreover unlike drugs, there are no undesirable side effects.
Hypnosis is the Alpha level of consciousness. It is the daydream like temporary psychological state that we experience as we're about to fall asleep in the evening. And we experience it again when we awaken in the morning. There are lots of different ways to guide ourselves into this state of tranquility, from step-by-step relaxation to visual imagery to listening to hypnosis CD's.
Once we enter the hypnotic state, we are able to communicate with our unconscious mind, which is the seat of our emotions. And it becomes easier to admit new points of view and ideas which can help us to eliminate anxiety, or even avoid it completely.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP, which is a new sort of hypnosis, offers various excellent techniques for getting rid of stress. Perhaps the technique that works best is called the "swish" pattern - or the "flash" pattern. After using the "swish" pattern, your unconscious will automatically use bad, stress producing mental images, to create relaxing mental images. Put differently, what usually makes you feel stress will automatically cause relaxation!
TO SUM THINGS UP
Our thoughts can cause depression, anxiety and tension. So by changing our attitude and the way we resent our situation and what we've experienced, we can eliminate these feelings at the source. Hypnosis and NLP are natural tools that we can use to help us change our attitude and point of view to swiftly eliminate the main cause of these negative feelings.
Alan B. Densky is an NGH certified hypnotherapist. He offers a complete line of anxiety management hypnotherapy CDs, and advanced stress reduction CDs through his Neuro-VISION hypnosis website. You can visit his self hypnosis blog, and download a free MP3.
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