Anxiety

Anxiety is defined as ‘non-specific fear’. When a person feels anxious they have a feeling of fearfulness, but there is nothing obviously triggering the feeling. This is because the source of the fear is actually an event, or a series of events, from the past – probably from their childhood. It is what is known as a ‘trapped emotion’. Adults have the ability to process and release their emotions without having to voice them, but children do not have the emotional capacity to do this. So if a child finds themselves in a frightening situation and they are unable to voice that fear – either because no-one will listen, or because they have been told not to talk about it – the emotion can become trapped in their subconscious.

When this happens, they will keep on feeling the fear at the slightest provocation because it can then be expressed and hopefully released. But the release doesn’t occur because emotions that are trapped in the subconscious cannot be released consciously. This ongoing situation explains why anxious people worry – they are looking into the future to see what might go wrong so that they can try to make sense of fear they are experiencing.

Fortunately there is a simple way to resolve this. When a person is hypnotised and then re-visits the event in question, it is more like re-living than remembering the event, and in this state the emotion can be expressed and released. It is a highly effective therapy, and I have successfully treated many clients who never dreamed that living without anxiety was even possible.