There’s a strange thing about the human brain, and it’s the secret to every movie you’ve ever watched. It is simply not very good at distinguishing the real, from the imagined. Of course we know when we read a book, watch a movie or see a play that it’s all make believe, but that doesn’t stop us feeling for the characters, enjoying their successes and weeping over their losses. Consciously we understand the fiction, but the unconscious seems less able to make that distinction.
As it happens, our brains use this for a lot more than just consuming entertainment. Anxiety is rooted in this particular phenomenon. Without getting into too much detail, anxiety involves the playing out of fearful or unwanted scenarios, and becoming emotionally attached to them. Essentially, our brains create terrible fictions that our unconscious mind then interprets as real. It doesn’t matter that these terrible things aren’t, and may never, come to pass; we simply tell ourselves these stories over and over again until they become real.
I see this regularly in my nursing work. I frequently have to administer needles to children. It’s not pleasant, but it is, invariably, vital. The actual reality is these needles are usually tiny, and the damage that they inflict on the human body is miniscule. But, more often than not, the child in question will have the following narrative on repeat: ‘It’s going to hurt – I’m afraid.’ This repeated narrative then becomes real for them. Their distress mounts, and, belief being what it is, their experience of pain is significantly heightened. This then provides ‘evidence’ for the next time there’s a needle, and the cycle continues, and worsens.
I should point out that this can often apply to adults as well. My nursing work is with children, so it’s what I see, but there are plenty of adults out there with similar phobias, none of them particularly rooted in rationality or, for want of a better term, objective truth.
Fortunately, hypnosis can help with this situation. And it doesn’t need to take months of therapy. Often is can be extremely quick. One of my favourite approaches, especially for helping reduce ‘in the moment’ anxiety, is a technique known as the Rapid Anxiety Reduction Method (RARM). This is an evidence backed technique that helps flip the script on anxiety. Essentially, we help our clients to rehearse a positive outcome, and stop rehearsing the catastrophic one. And as they practice the positive situation, the mind starts to make it real. This calm, positive rehearsal then carries into the actual procedure (or event, or whatever it might be), which invariably makes for a better experience. And this, then becomes the evidence for next time.
One of the things I get told with relative frequency, after a patient has experienced an anxiety provoking procedure and found it not to be that bad really, is something along the lines of ‘I built it up too much in my head.’ And that tells me a lot, and is one of the reasons I love using RARM.
If you’re interested in learning more about RARM, and the evidence behind it, you can find it here
If you have something in your life that is making you anxious, or if you’re interested in hypnotherapy for any other reason, why not drop me a line or give me a call here
