The REAL Truth About Anxiety, IBS and Why Therapy is Way Better Than Medication!
Did you know that Anxiety (which is currently the number one issue I deal with in my Practice) is NOT something you have to deal with? And it’s also something that you DON’T need medication for?
Now of course if you’re on medication, then I’m not for one minute suggesting that you should just come off it! No – definitely don’t do that please as you would need to do that gradually.
But here’s the thing.
Anxiety is simply an “alarm” in your system telling you that something from the present moment is triggering something that happened in the past that in that one moment in the past might have been a bit scary or made you feel unsafe.
How we deal with our Emotions
Many of our emotions we feel in our body first. Think about love – it feels light and you may feel it in the heart or tummy, sadness feels heavy and can be felt in the chest, the heart or tummy, fear is often felt on the surface of the skin first, and then may go to a heavy feeling in the tummy.
So when we feel this feeling in our body – it is then our mind’s job to make sense of those feelings in order to know what to do and how to react. So it searches frantically through the huge database of the brain to find out when you last felt like this.
Your mind literally stores EVERYTHING – every feeling, every emotion, every event, every experience.
But what it finds when it searches through the database is layers upon layers of different examples and experiences of when you felt unsafe or scared in any one moment and so the natural response for your brain to make is that this feeling is not safe and unless YOU tell your brain otherwise, then it is going to invoke the fight/flight response.
Why Anxiety Flares Up Quickly
But if you suffer from Anxiety and you start to feel the feeling develop in the body then you will know how it goes…..
You may instinctively feel “Oh no…here we go again, why does this keep happening to me, I don’t want to feel like this” and you immediately try to push the feeling away which causes “resistance”. Anyone who knows physics, will know that resistance causes friction and energy.
And what you give energy to…..GROWS.
And of course what this does, is to further exacerbate the problem and alert the mind that this feeling is still present in the body and so it assumes this is now a real problem because clearly the perceived “threat” is not gone.
So then your mind starts to alert you to what “could” happen and you start thinking those ‘what if……what if……’ thoughts that then starts a negative downward spiral of thoughts
And as the minds’ main job is to keep you safe, then it will invoke full on “Fight/Flight” response – or to give its’ correct term the ‘sympathetic nervous system’ response in order to allow you to run or fight. So this includes the heart ferociously pumping more blood to the limbs to allow you to run and then the main hormone responses that include cortisol, adrenaline and a few others to pump around the body.
If the negative thought looping pattern isn’t curbed then a full on panic attack may follow.
But NONE of this needs to happen.
And the point I want to get across to you today is that NONE of this needs to happen when you understand what is driving the thoughts and feelings in the body, in other words the root cause of the anxiety.
And this is exactly what I do in my Practice. Using a very light hypnosis and a beautiful but powerful way to access your subconscious mind I am able to guide my clients to find the root cause of their anxiety.
And the biggest surprise to most of my clients is that it is almost always an event or experience or a feeling that happened somewhere between the ages of 0-7 years old.
Almost always.
And there’s very good reason for that.
A crucial part of our brain (the Neo Cortex) which allows us to critically analyse things is not yet developed – this comes in around 8 years old. So between the ages of 0-7 the brain is in a slower brainwave (similar to hypnosis) which is when our “programming” happens directly into our subconscious mind and we absorb everything going on around us at the time without questioning it.
We make thoughts and beliefs about ourselves relating to what is going on around us without being able to analyse things properly – many of these beliefs and thoughts will often stay with us for LIFE!!!
But imagine the things that scared you as a child……
That ONE moment when you couldn’t find Mum or Dad and you were scared.
Dark shadows in a room that look scary
Mum or Dad shouting at you
Criticisms and judgements
A friend rejecting you
A teacher embarrassing you
…..the list goes on and on.
And at that early age when our subconscious mind is being programmed – all of this gets stored.
And if it relates to a primal core human need, for example:
- to feel safe
- to feel loved and connected
- to feel like we fit in, are accepted as we are and not feel rejected, judged or criticised
Then this will be taken very seriously indeed by our mind as this is a potential threat to life.
How these early experiences affect us later in life
But of course much later on in life when we feel triggered when someone criticises us at work, or when a partner fails to message you back straight away, then it triggers the early feeling of rejection, or not fitting in or not having your needs met in the past. But it could literally be ANY feeling that feels similar to that very first one which is why it’s very hard to make sense of in your logical (conscious) mind because the feeling and memory is stored in your SUB-CONSCIOUS mind.
And you won’t know why, because you can’t remember being or feeling that scared little child who just needed to be hugged by a parent in that very moment because they were feeling immobilised by fear….for whatever reason, the hug didn’t happen to calm your nervous system. In this moment, it became a “trauma” that wasn’t processed properly and is therefore stored in the body and created a marker in the central nervous system.
And the more this happens, the more it will keep triggering the marker and any past events that feel similar.
Until you get to the root cause and understand what is driving these feelings.
Anxiety can affect us in SO many ways:
Emotionally:
- Excessive worry (overthinking, hypervigilance, controlling behaviour)
- Fear of failure
- Self doubt
- Avoidance of certain situations
- Constant need for reassurance
- Lack of confidence and self esteem
- Fear of having Anxiety, panic attacks, dissociation
Physically:
- Sleep disturbance
- Headaches/migraines, tension in the body
- Fatigue
- IBS and other gastro intestinal problems
- Increased heart rate, sweating
The Link Between Gut and Mind in Anxiety
When your body is in the fight/flight response EVERYTHING else will become hard work for you. Think about it…..your mind genuinely believes your life is at threat and is therefore working very hard to keep you on high alert to keep you alive.
When you are in this state your brain will shut off any bodily function that is not required for dealing with a threat to life. So the main systems closed off would be the digestive system and the reproductive system.
And this is why that with almost EVERY anxiety case I deal with there is ALWAYS a gut biome imbalance too as the body struggles to digest food properly with limited resources.
Getting to the root cause of the Anxiety, releasing and completing the “trauma” cycle and implanting some new suggestions directly into the subconscious mind is in my opinion the absolute best way of being free from Anxiety for good.
Mindset work doesn’t deal with the trauma in the body and energy work doesn’t deal with the chatter of the mind. It needs BOTH in order to be free.
If you’d like to discuss your requirements then please send me a DM or you can watch my free 4 x video series on how to be free of Anxiety by clicking HERE.
In the meantime check out this testimonial from a young City Banker who was experiencing high stress, anxiety and irritable bowel syndrome at just 23 years old!!
“…Due to a friend’s recommendation I contacted Nicky to help with my IBS and anxiety. I never would have tried this Therapy without the direct recommendation from a friend, because I am very wary of so-called cures on the internet!
However, I can honestly say this is the best money I have ever spent on my recovery and management. I know the reason and the root cause of the Anxiety, I am significantly less stressed and now drop off to sleep immediately. The most surprising result has been that I am now very aware of the thoughts I am having and the messages I am telling myself – I can catch and reframe any unconducive thoughts easily. My IBS symptoms have improved and for the first time in 2 years I have re-introduced a little dairy in to my diet without any issues. Absolutely an essential treatment for anyone who is suffering from stress-induced illnesses.”
Want a FREE no obligation chat about Anxiety? – Schedule a call here ==> Click Here
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