The Whinge & Bin Approach to Stress Relief ??

Stress levels are high everywhere I turn at the moment. The young people I’m working with are stressed about upcoming exams, parents are stressed about their teenagers and everyone else seems to be stressed about either work, finances or both.

In this update, I’m going to look at various aspects of stress including a quick way of handling stress.

Stress can be good and bad

When we encounter a stressful situation, our body prepares to confront it or run away (the fight or flight response). This helps us respond quickly to dangerous situations but can also be useful when we have to push through - like exams or delivering a presentation.

Too much stress, however, can leave us feeling overwhelmed or unable to cope. Long term, this can affect our physical and mental health. Even in the short-term, high stress levels can prevent us from performing at our best.

What are the causes of stress?

There are some common causes of stress such as bereavement, losing a job, the cost of living or work pressures.?

The NHS recognises the following 7 areas most likely to lead to work-related stress:

• A lack of control of your workload
• High demands on your time/energy and lack of clarity about responsibilities
• Fear of redundancy or changes
• Poor line management and lack of support
• Difficult relationships with colleagues
• Bullying or harassment in the workplace
• Workplace discrimination

Any of these can be uncomfortable or difficult to deal with, but your response will be unique to you.

Why does everyone react differently to stress?

Although we all face stress of some sort, it’s not the actual event itself that causes the problem: it’s your reaction to it. This is largely determined by your experiences in earlier life and the belief you created as a result.

“The truth is that stress doesn’t come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about your circumstances.” - Andrew Bernstein

How to turn exam stress into exam success

Plenty of households will be facing the highly-stressful time of exam season.

A bit of stress about an upcoming exam or test can be helpful because it can lead to some actual revision! But too much can result in underperformance. This is something I can definitely relate to because I used to get so stressed about exams, I ended up not doing as well as I should have. It haunted me for years that my A Level grades did not reflect either my ability or hard work - it all just seemed so unfair.

Sometimes the pressure is external, for example parents wanting their child to get into a certain school or take particular subjects. Or it can be internal, with the child putting more pressure on themselves than anyone else.

It’s also common for a child who doesn’t want to be a burden to anyone to try to be the ‘perfect one’. By doing everything just right, there’s a possibility that they will keep everyone happy.

In addition to putting in the necessary work, the two key elements to exam success are clearing any negative beliefs and installing good self-esteem.

How hypnotherapy can help with stress

Hypnotherapy is the quickest way of accurately identifying the root cause of debilitating anxiety and stress. It’s often a surprise to the client what this is really about and can go back to general feelings of just not being good enough.

We can only fix a problem by finding out what caused it in the first place.

Once we’ve done that, we can change the negative beliefs created as a result of past events and install positive thought patterns instead.

A quick way of dealing with stress

Some recent research in Japan about anger would probably work just as well with stress. Nobuyuki Kawai and Yuta Kanaya (Nagoya University) found that writing down feelings of anger and then shredding them eliminated the anger almost immediately. It was much more effective if the paper was screwed up and thrown away or shredded than kept. So there’s something powerful in the act of getting rid of the feelings.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Often in my hypnotherapy sessions, I’ll get clients to visualise an old belief or negative feeling drifting away or getting them to feel it in their hand and then crushing it or throwing it.

That’s why I love these notepads from the Honest Family.?

If you or your child needs some help with stress or anxiety, just arrange a free 30 minute consultation with me here .

Until next time, be kind to yourself.

Kate?

I’m delighted to have been recognised as London Hypnotherapist of the Year again this year. When it came to the final decision, the judges wanted details of progress since I was presented with this award last year. What started out feeling like pressure ended up being a valuable exercise in recognising what I’d achieved. Never forget to celebrate your wins, no matter how big or small ??