Anxiety And Stress - Natural Ways To Dissipate Them So You Can Find Tranquility

More than ever before scientific research is proving the essential role played by stress in causing and aggravating many physical and emotional afflictions. An article in a 1983 issue of Time Magazine described stress as "The Epidemic of the Eighties." It also said that stress is a leading health problem. And it is unquestionable that our world has become a lot more complex and stressful in the past twenty-five years since that article was published.

Several surveys show that most adults are under the impression of being subject to a lot of stress. Authorities in this domain estimate that between 75 and 90 percent of the visits to PCPs (Primary Care Physicians) are related to stress.

Most people report their stress is mainly due to their job. And stress levels have also soared in children and the elderly population because of several reasons including: Peer pressures that often push people to everything from smoking to drug and alcohol abuse; the wearing away of family and religious values and ties; growing crime rates; fear for personal safety; but also social isolation and loneliness.

Stress can be responsible for problems such as diabetes, ulcers, low back and neck pain, high blood pressure, strokes and heart attacks. This is because of the increased sympathetic nervous system activity and the release of cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones. Chronic stress is often associated with weakened immune system resistance. Stress can cause anxiety, depression, and its several impacts on one's organs.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines "stress" as follows: "To subject to physical or mental pressure, tension, or strain"

The following definition is given for "tension": "Mental, emotional, or nervous strain"

The following definition is given for "anxiety": "A state of uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties"

And the following definition is given for "depression": "The condition of feeling sad or despondent"

It defines "clinical depression" as follows: "A psychiatric disorder characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, loss of appetite, anhedonia, feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness, and thoughts of death."

We can nonetheless be sure that our mind is the primary cause of our feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. To put it into different words, what we think about, and our attitudes and the way we view our experiences create what we feel. That way, if we can manage to modify our thoughts, attitudes, and points of view, we can release our feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression and attain a better state of being.

Since the beginning of time, people have searched for methods for getting rid of stress. With the pharmaceutical industry there seems to be a pill for everything. And to that end the industry has produced a large line of anxiolytics from Valium to Xanax. If you choose to use drugs for relief, please make sure that you read the fine print and learn about the side effects, which usually include addiction and dependency. Unfortunately, these kinds of drugs aim at treating the symptoms, instead of the cause. So as soon as one stops taking them, the symptoms can come back.

A more intelligent method to release tension, stress, anxiety, and depression is to treat its actual cause, which as I said previously, is generally our thought processes. Here is good news. The heart of hypnosis is relaxation. The AMA recognized hypnosis in 1958 as an effective way to treat stress or stress related symptoms. But unlike drugs, there are categorically no negative side effects.

Hypnosis is the Alpha level of consciousness. It is the daydream like temporary psychological state which we experience as we are about to fall asleep at night. And we experience it another time as we wake up in the morning. There are a lot of different ways that we can guide ourselves into this condition of tranquility, from progressive relaxation to visual imagery to listening to hypnosis CD's.

Once we enter the hypnotic state, we are able to communicate with our unconscious mind, which is the center of our emotions. And one can more easily accept new ideas and points of view which can help us to dissipate anxiety, or even avoid it in the first place.

NLP, which is a recent sort of hypnotherapy, has many outstanding techniques for dissipating stress. Perhaps the most effective technique is called the "swish" pattern - or the "flash" pattern. When you use this technique, your unconscious will automatically use bad, stress producing mental images, to create tranquilizing mental images. In other words, your stressors will now trigger relaxation!

TO SUMMARIZE Tension, stress, anxiety, and depression can be prompted by our thoughts. So if we change our attitude and the way we feel about our situation and what we have been through, we can dissipate these feelings at the source. Hypnosis and NLP are natural tools that allow us to change our attitude and point of view to swiftly dissipate the main cause of our negative feelings.