'De-stressing' Distressed Lives: Hypnosis Keeps Stress In Check

Not all stress is bad. Stress, or eustress, can motivate our personal and educational pursuits, our drive for success and our understanding of potentially hazardous situations that must be avoided.

The fact is, though, stress isn’t viewed as something positive, which is evidenced by the negative connotations associated with it when used in conversation (If someone says, “How are you?” and you reply, “I’m stressed,” it’s unlikely you’ll get a “That’s good to hear” in response). We think of stress as destructive, paralyzing and uncomfortable. And if left unchecked, stress can affect our very ability to think clearly and act rationally.

Unfortunately, stress is not like the flu—you can’t sleep or medicate it away. But there are several things you can do to keep stress in check. Hypnosis happens to be one of the best ways.

As I said, stress is all around us. So much so, that the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute for Occupational Health (NIOH) set out to discover what kind of impact stress levels had on the U.S. population and their professions. Their studies revealed that employee stress contributed most significantly to decreased productivity in the work place. Employers in the U.S., their studies found, spend $300 million annually on stress-based problems such as compensation claims, absenteeism, and high rates of employee turnover. And these high turnover rates can be linked directly to stress with 25 to 40 percent of employees who complained of job burnout attributed said burnout to stress.

And stress isn’t just a domestic problem, either. A survey conducted by Roper Starch Worldwide solicited comments from 30,000 people between the ages of 13 to 65 in 30 different countries and found, among other things, that 25 percent of all mothers who worked full-time and had children at home felt stress everyday; and a sizeable portion of men and women in executive positions reported feeling “super-stressed” (23 percent of women, 19 percent of men) in their roles.

What’s causing this stress pandemic? Of course, it can’t be pinpointed to one thing but the NIOH and the American Psychological Association believe some factors to be longer workdays, people struggling to balance work and family commitments and feelings of job insecurity.

In an article titled “Hypnosis Underpins the Medical Mix,” New Zealand-based news web site Stuff detailed one woman’s hectic work schedule that led to increased stress levels.

“I would be grumpy when I woke up in the morning,” said 44-year-old Cushla Channings in an interview with Stuff. Channings works seven days a week, 5:00a.m. to 4:30p.m.

But after one session with a hypnotherapist in the area, she feels “recharged and relaxed,” according to the article. That’s because hypnosis does exactly that: It recharges your mind by putting you in a relaxed state that’s unlike anything else. But that relaxed and recharged state can only be accomplished with the help of the patient undergoing hypnosis. The more he or she is able to relax and believe in hypnotherapist’s abilities, the easier it is for the hypnotherapist to put him or her in that natural relaxation mode hypnosis can offer. Through several sessions—maybe even one—the patient is able to change views of perceived stressors in such a manner that they are no longer stress-inducing.

From heart disease to suicide, nearly every leading cause of death in the world is linked to stress. Hypnosis has the power to change all that.

Steve G. Jones, Clinical Hypnotherapist
http://www.betterlivingwithhypnosis.com/