For anyone in Stafford or surrounding area who needs to learn to relax and calm their anxiety, hypnotherapy can be a good way to start. Anxiety can have many origins. Often we think it is genetic but that is often far from the case. There is what can seem a surprising link between anxiety and anger. If you think about it, we are often afraid of anger – ours and others – so keeping it down, under control can cause anxiety.

But also, if our anger (or any of our emotions for that matter) has not been embraced by others, and I am talking those important others in our earliest years (our parents or caretakers), anxiety can be a response. When I say ’embraced’ I mean two things mainly. That we are lovingly, physically held and embraced, for example a child having a temper tantrum. And that we are embraced in a more symbolic way, through accepting kind words. In this way, our powerful (negative) emotions are contained (or limited, to give it its psychological term), we learn that they can be contained, and not overwhelm us and we learn that all of us is acceptable. Thus we learn to accept ourselves, and trust all the responses that come from our depths.

If we don’t have this, we grow up with a need to repress or control parts of our self that we fear may not be ‘controllable’. Whilst I am not going into the detail of this important concept in this piece, I think that when I say it is important that we learn to love and accept ourselves – truly, madly deeply – most people will understand this on some level. By doing this work on ourselves, we can live with more freedom, spontaneity, creativity and energy.

This self hypnosis practice – based on the concept of learning to really love yourself – can be a good start: listen to the Loving Yourself practice here.