#58 Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety & Panic Attacks (Jason Newland) (18th September 2019)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety and Panic Attacks. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. And before I go further, I'd just like to thank Molly for leaving a testimonial on my website.

And today, so thank you very much, that was lovely to see. And if anybody else would like to leave a testimonial to say what you think of what I do, how it's helped, you can just go to my website jasonnewland.com and there's a testimonial page or write a testimonial. Now, I was thinking about the kind of sometimes when I do these podcasts, I mix, I kind of get a little bit of a mixture between the two.

And I was thinking about the sleep session, which might be able to move over to the anxiety, like for anxiety and stress. And so this is going to be a bit of a, I don't know if the words are metaphysical, but it's going to be a focus, a meditation on, because you know, meditation can be something where you generally focus on something. Usually, like with Buddhist meditation, it might be focusing on a single point.

But you can have a broad meditation, you can have a, I like the idea of meditation or an idea. So I'll offer some ideas. That might be useful.

One of those things is the idea that we have everything that we need already, in order to reduce that anxiety, reduce your stress levels. So where I'm going, where I'm going with this is, and a lot of it is very obvious. Anyway, so I'm not, I'm not making anything new here.

I'm also not an expert on the subject as such. But we have everything. We have oxygen.

So oxygen is there. We have it already. Apart from those individuals that have got breathing issues, then that's a different situation.

But I'm talking about the general population. The majority of the people in the world have oxygen to breathe, and are able to breathe. I say the majority and I think that's fair enough.

Of course, there's a lot of people that can't, but the population generally can. At no point do we have to worry about floating off, because we have gravity. And that might sound like a silly thing to say, like what's gravity got to do with anything? Well, try and go a minute without it.

And then you see how important it is. So these things are taken care of already for us. Things we don't need to give any thought to.

But you take one of those things away, you take away oxygen, you take away gravity, we've got sunshine. Every day of the year, regardless of whether it's cloudy, even when it's dark, the sunshine is still there. It shines through the moon.

So we've got sunshine, take that away. You take that away for a second, we're in trouble. We've got rain.

You know where I'm going with this. Basically, we've got these things that we perhaps just take for granted, or flip it over, we moan and complain about, or it's too sunny, or it's not sunny enough, or it's raining again, can't believe it's raining again. Try and go a year without rain.

We won't be able to do it. I don't think the planet could last. And I know that that would be an impossible situation, because the moisture in the earth is the same amount, and it rains, I realise that.

But that's besides the point, it's these things that we rely on, that we don't perhaps give any credit to. And I'm the same. I can't stand it when it rains sometimes.

It's annoying. But I never complain about gravity. Apart from when, you know, perhaps when I was younger, I'd kick a ball in the air and kind of wish it'd go a bit higher.

Like in the Superman film, where he kicks a football and it just goes for miles. So we have a lot of things all ready sorted for us that we don't need to think about. And I'm just thinking about the things that we worry about, those concerns and worries that cause anxiety and stress.

But then how many of those things are as important as gravity and oxygen and water? Those things that have been on your mind today, maybe before you decided to listen to this recording and absorb the changes that naturally occur. What were you worried about before? What was on your mind, niggling at you, moaning, just, you know? And as I said, I do it myself. So I'm not judging.

I'm the best moaner in the whole planet, I am. Get me started, I can moan, a proper moan. But you know, I'm trying, I'm working on it.

I worry, gosh, I almost feel like I was born to worry, like it's my special power. What a crap power to have. It is, isn't it? Worrying about stuff.

It's worked out, I saw someone work it out the other day, is the amount of things that we worry about. Like just general humans, all humans generally worry about stuff. It's not a special domain for people that have got stress or anxiety.

Generally, people seem to worry, doesn't always affect them the way, in the same way. And it might not be to the same level. But worrying about stuff, the percentage of the past that we worry about that we can't do anything about, that's done.

Can't change it. You can make amends with the people, possibly, if it's possible, to make amends with perhaps, I don't know, if you've done whatever, I don't know the situation, but it's possible from that angle, but you can't, can't change the past. The things we worry about in the future, basically, that's just us being really, really creative.

So the people that worry the most are the most creative people, I think. But it doesn't mean that all the people that are really creative worry, because that's not the case. Because some people that are really creative, they focus that creativity on building something amazing, whether it's a beautiful life for themselves, or a business, or a boat, or piece of artwork, you know, whatever.

But there's a lot of creativity that goes into worrying. So that's something that I think you need to start grasping, that you are a very creative person. You're very intelligent, you're very creative, which means you've got a lot of skills there.

In fact, you may be one of the most creative people that you know. You may be the most creative person on the planet. I don't know.

But one thing is, it's impossible to have anxiety or panic, and all that stuff without being really, really creative. Because to think about all those different scenarios, that, first of all, are never going to happen. But to be that creative, you're basically like a film director.

Or a writer, you could write, can you imagine, I sometimes thought, if I was able to put onto paper, some of the horrible thoughts I've had in the past, the different scenarios that I thought might happen, it would equal anything that Stephen King's written. Just from the, just the nastiness of it. Yeah, I don't want to focus on that stuff.

I want to kind of move away from it. So I don't want to sit there writing it down. Because, yeah, I don't think that'd really be helpful for me.

But it does show that creativity, that imagination that you have, to be able to think up all of these ridiculous scenarios. And some of them will be just so ridiculous. That would, you know, you're not even going to see it in a movie, it's so far fetched.

But actually, if you did see it in a movie, it might be entertaining. Because it would be original. So if you're writing a movie, or if you're writing a book, then this ability to think up the most obscure, outlandish, ridiculous scenarios would be an absolute blessing.

If you're going to write a book, or if you're going to make a movie, television show, cartoon, whatever, if you're going to be able to put it, use that imagination, and use what comes up from your imagination. If you were able to transfer onto a canvas in the form of art, or poetry, or a song, write a song, use those things from us, you know, there's lots of ways that you could express it.

Which means that it's no longer a worry, it's a piece of art, which is very different because then out there, it's almost, I mentioned yesterday about the fast phobia cure, it's something about looking at an event from a different angle, from outside of the event, you know, removed from it, looks different, feels different.

And when you see it from that different angle, you're no longer emotionally connected to it. And it changes how you feel about that event, so that it no longer troubles you the way it did. And then the phobia or the anxiety connected to it before disappears.

In the same way, if you paint something, or put it onto a canvas, it's no longer in your head. It's on the canvas. I mean, you look at it a few different ways.

First of all, it's on the canvas, you don't need it to be in your head anymore. Which is why people take photographs of, I don't know, maybe a birthday cake that was made for them or the wedding cake or something like that. So they can look at the photographs and they don't have to remember, or they don't have to rely on their memory.

So they can just look back and say, oh, that was a lovely cake. I can't believe I ate it all by myself. That's what I'd probably be thinking.

I'm gonna have an ice cream cake if I ever get married. I am and I'm just gonna dive into it. I am seriously, I'll have a big massive ice cream cake and literally dive into it.

And then start chucking bits of cake at everyone. Again, it's just a fantasy. Doesn't mean it's real.

Doesn't mean it's happened. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen. So if I take that literally, it's like, okay, I'm gonna have a wedding.

And then I'll have a cake and I'll end up chucking cake at everyone. Oh no, but then all those people that might give me their dry cleaning bills and someone might get angry and want to punch me and that'll ruin my wife, my new wife might be upset. Plus, I've got this tuxedo that I've got to give back to the shop that I got it from, that I hired it from.

And I don't know, it's just like all those scenarios, giving myself stress over some stupid, ridiculous, humorous to me idea of what I'm going to do on my wedding day. That hasn't even happened. Not to anyone that I want to get married to.

To the likelihood of this ever happening, although now that I've thought the idea, I do actually want to do it. But for me, I wouldn't care about all the other stuff. I'll probably think about it afterwards, it'd be more of a regret situation.

Or perhaps I shouldn't have done that. But at the time, I'd probably really enjoy it. Big ice cream cake, cause chaos.

It's a wedding. As far as I'm concerned, if you've got 300 people at your wedding, you're getting into debt by 20 grand. They deserve to be covered in ice cream.

But that's me, that's me being silly. So we've got everything outside that we need. Gravity, oxygen, water.

I haven't got to think about those things. We're very lucky. I notice some parts of the world where water isn't as abundant as it is in most places.

Or say most places, a lot of the Western world. There are some countries that have problems with water and stuff. So this isn't, you know, I have to generalize when I make these recordings.

Otherwise, I spend two hours just explaining one point and trying to encompass everybody from different situations. It's not just what's going on outside. What's going on inside your body? Your heart's pumping.

You've got to do nothing for that to happen. You have to eat regularly, and drink water or some kind of liquid regularly and do some kind of exercise. But it does it on its own.

You can't, you know, mentally control your heart. Happens on its own. Your lungs breathe the oxygen, and it just happens.

And if you think you've got any control over that, try holding your breath. Eventually, you're going to have to breathe. Don't have a choice in it.

Your kidneys, your lung, you know, your liver, all those bits. I'm not going to get all anatomical because I don't know that much about all that stuff. I do know that so much of it is automatic.

In fact, you could say all of it is automatic, as far as the brain, the mind, you know, all the like, all the internal stuff, the arteries, the veins, the stomach. It's all happening inside, naturally and automatically. Of course, what we put into our body makes a difference.

So the food, the drink, vitamins, the exercise we do makes a difference on the organs inside. Having enough calcium makes a difference for the bones and the skeletal system and whatever. And what you read has a difference on your mind, which has a difference on your brain, because the brain's got a lot of plasticity.

The brain's continuously growing and changing. And that's something that experts didn't know in the past. They didn't realize that we're always changing.

We're not set, we're not stuck, as stuck as we think we are. How you felt yesterday doesn't have to be how you feel today. And how you feel today doesn't have to be how you feel tomorrow.

And it's reminding yourself of that, reminding yourself that actually, there isn't that much to think about compared to what there would be if we had to run all this by ourselves. Imagine if we had to take mental control over our heart, our lungs, our kidneys, liver, spleen, spinal cord, all of those connections, we had to consciously be focusing on each one for it to work. We wouldn't be able to do anything else.

We would literally, all we could do is just sit there and just focus on all those and make sure they're working properly. We'd have no time to worry or stress about anything. But we also wouldn't have any time to do anything.

Because if you've got to focus on that, you won't be able to talk to anyone, won't be able to watch television, all we could do is focus on that. So how lucky are we that we don't have to? How fortunate are we that all that stuff just happens automatically, just like oxygen and the rain, the weather, the sun. How lucky we are that we've got gravity so we don't have to walk around with like huge, massive, heavy boots.

And of course, no gravity, no oxygen. Got none of that stuff to worry about. They're big things.

And that's not putting down the big things that people are worried about. Because you know, there's always going to be something that happens. Everyone has things in their life that are really huge at some time in their life, which is unpleasant.

It's just part of being here. So that's never going to change, something's always going to come along. And that's just part of being human.

It's not pleasant, but why worry about it before it happens? You know, if you've got elderly parents, let's say I had my gran, my grandmother died five years ago, and she was 94 or 95, something like that. I knew that I was going to lose her. And she wasn't very well.

I knew that. I knew it for a long time. But I didn't worry about it until she got a bit ill.

Before that, I didn't worry about it. So when she was 90, I didn't really think about it. Because logically, I knew not many people to get to that age.

Not many people get to 90. And still well, she did and she was. So I did take it for granted.

Like I take off oxygen, gravity, my body or working, heart beating. I took it for granted because I was able to. And perhaps I should have been more grateful.

Perhaps that would have should, it's not always a good word, is it? But I feel I gave my gratitude, I visited her. And I was grateful, actually, I might not have shown it, I might not have expressed it perhaps as much as I could have done. But I was grateful that she was here.

So really, in a sense, you can show your gratitude of the oxygen by breathing. I'm especially grateful to oxygen when I've run for a bus. That's when I really feel grateful for that oxygen being there.

Although sometimes it is people watching, I kind of wish that gravity wasn't so I could just float away quickly. But I do the bus with as well, wouldn't it? No, actually, I don't know, it depends how heavy the bus is. There's a level, isn't there, where gravity is gone, where things stay down if they're heavy enough, I suppose.

I don't know. See, I don't know enough about it. But we take it for granted.

And we worry about things that maybe are slightly less important than breathing, or our bodies working correctly, the stomach digesting the food, being able to, you know, heart pumping, feeling relatively well, being able to maybe able to walk, being able to have our hands, we can pick things up, being able to see or hear. I know not everybody has all of those abilities, for whatever reason. But you can still, you know, we've still got something.

Everybody generally has, most people have something that they can use to enjoy life with, whether it's their eyes, their ears, whether it's physically. So when we've got all this stuff already, you know, happening automatically, that we don't need to worry about. Because you ask anybody that's got a medical, anybody that has problem breathing, that that's somebody that has got something to worry about, because that's taken up a lot of their time and their thoughts.

These things that we're used to, these things that we just take for granted, and I think taking it for granted is okay, actually. Because we're supposed to be able to breathe, generally. And it's normal for nearly everybody to be able to breathe.

Some people have breathing issues, either early or later in life. And then they get a sense of this thing that perhaps they used to take for granted, or get more of a perspective, and realize that actually, that's something that they're focusing on. So I remember when I broke my foot about quite a while ago, quite a few years ago.

And my walking was so difficult. I couldn't put any weight on it. But I still had to get about, I had no choice, I had to get about, it was Christmas.

So I literally and it was ice on the floor on the you know, so that made it very interesting. I wasn't thinking about next year. I wasn't thinking about last year.

I wasn't thinking about yesterday. I wasn't thinking about what people think of me. I wasn't thinking about any of those concerns that perhaps I would have normally been thinking about.

All I was focusing on was getting to my destination without falling over or slipping over. And knowing that I only had one good leg to actually maneuver around on. I'm not saying it was a pleasant experience.

But it was almost a freeing experience, because I wasn't concerned about other stuff. And when I've got an injury, I love to tell people about it, which is really a bit weird. But I broke my wrist falling out of the bath.

And it was a talking point for me, because I found it hilarious. Not at the moment when it happened, if I'm honest. But afterwards, the idea of slipping out of a bath just seemed like some kind of comedy sketch.

And then I realized that people would help me with stuff. So someone that I knew saw me carrying shopping, they give me a hand and help me carry it. So I could take advantage of people.

No, I didn't really take advantage. But it was off, it was almost quite nice to have people like, oh, I can I can help you, Jason, I can carry that shopping if you want. And it's like, oh, this is quite nice, actually.

And I carry and stuff, I couldn't carry heavy stuff. So got a food delivery, my neighbor helped me carry this stuff up the stairs. I could have carried it one bag at a time with one hand.

But he helped me pretty much got the whole lot upstairs. And I thought, I wonder how long I can keep this, this plaster on my arm for? I wonder how long I can get away with this for? But then I tell people that I was just, and I didn't really have a broken wrist, I was just making it up so I could get people to carry stuff for me.

And I was having fun with it.

And I wasn't thinking about other things. I wasn't thinking about next year or last year. You know, I remember when I was in the hospital with my wrist, and I phoned up my step mom said, Oh, I think I've broke my wrist.

And fractured it or something. She said, Why are you calling me? No, she didn't say that. She said, Oh, okay.

But I was in such a good mood. Because almost my focus was on that. I wasn't thinking about mistakes I'd made when I was 25.

I wasn't thinking about my bank balance. I wasn't thinking about relationship issues that I may have had in the past. I wasn't thinking about worrying about feeling anxious.

I wasn't, literally wasn't concerned about anything to do with my mind. Wasn't thinking about being bipolar, because in that moment, I wasn't. I had a broken wrist.

That's what I was, that was my label, a person with a broken wrist. And I quite like that label more than some of the other labels I've been given over the years. And although I was in a good mood, I was in a lot of pain.

Like, you know, anyone's had a broken bone, you know, it's very painful. But I was in a good mood, like mentally. Because there was a humour of it, of what happened.

Telling the doctor in the hospital, Yeah, I slipped out of the bath, just to see his face. And it was a little smile. And I know that slipping out of the bath isn't a funny thing.

Some people, you know, I'm not laughing at other people that have slipped out of baths. I'm laughing at myself slipping out of the bath. And I wasn't thinking about the future, wasn't thinking about the past.

I wasn't concerned about oxygen, wasn't concerned about gravity. Although, at the time, a little lapse of gravity would have been quite nice. Just enough for me to just float, float down to the ground gently.

That would have been quite nice. Or just to have some kind of superhero flying powers, just for one second would have been nice. So that's what I've been thinking about the natural forces in the world, including inside our own body, that don't need our attention.

That don't need worrying about, don't need anxiety, although anxiety and stress can have a very negative effect to the body, causing illness. Of course, I imagine everybody knows that. So what could you focus on? What can you focus on that's different, that's separate, what can you focus on that takes you out of that, that mind thing where you, you know, the worrying, the concern, the anxiety, the, let's say, for panic to occur, we have to practice it in our mind.

Generally, we have to practice, practice feeling anxious. There's a lot of practice there. We don't realize we're doing it.

But by thinking about it, we're rehearsing it. By thinking about what happened in the past, the part, you know, the last time we was in the supermarket or on a train, we're rehearsing for the next time we're in the supermarket or on a train. It's just a rehearsal.

And that's no different to what someone who's really successful does. Someone going on stage in front of 30,000 fans, you know, they might be sitting backstage rehearsing, walking onto the stage, rehearsing feeling confident. Even if they're perhaps not feeling very confident at that time, but they rehearse it.

Somebody, footballers, sports people, dancers, you name it. You know, there's a whole, you know, it's sports psychology. There's a whole, whole thing.

We're teaching people that do sports, you know, to rehearse, to imagine, to, you know, to prepare and to not so much manipulate your mind, but to use your mind and use those special skills that you have, the creativity that we talked about, that amazing skill of creativity. It's using that to help yourself, to help instead of hinder. So you can use that creativity in your mind to imagine something happening tomorrow that is wonderful.

Imagine yourself getting on a train or whatever situation that you may be about to do tomorrow, for example. You can imagine feeling wonderful. You can imagine feeling relaxed.

You can use your creative mind to enjoy the day before it even arrives, to rehearse feeling good, to rehearse feeling relaxed. Because let's face it, most of the important stuff is already taken care of. Oxygen, sunshine, rain, water, gravity, your heart pumping, all your internal organs working automatically, the brain, everything is already taken care of.

Which leaves you free to just be creative and rehearse feeling good, rehearse feeling relaxed. It just takes a bit of the pressure off, doesn't it? And you realize, there isn't really that much to think about. Not really.

The really important stuff is already taken care of. Because none of that stuff that we're worried about or that we've been worried about generally is as important as oxygen. I'm not worried about oxygen being here.

It's there. I'm not worried about our liver working or our kidneys working or our stomach processing food. All those things that if they stop working, then we would have something serious to be focusing on.

And most of us are so lucky that we don't have to think about that stuff. I know there are lots of people that do, but most of us don't have to think about that stuff. Which means we can use our minds to focus on what we want.

Because the basics are taken care of. And when I use the word basics, that's an understatement, isn't it? Oxygen is not a basic thing. It's necessity.

Take it away. Try and go without it for a minute or three minutes. You can't try and go without gravity for any amount of time.

And as soon as the sun stops shining, we stop shining. So there may be basics, but they are so important and way outshadow any of our own internal worries about stuff or regrets. That all just almost disappears compared to the really important things of being able to breathe.

So maybe you can think about tomorrow and use your creative mind. If you don't come out of this with anything other than all of it, really, but just if you think that you are really, really creative. Because in order to have experienced in the past those issues that we're focusing on here, you need to have been really, really creative.

And you can use that creativity to rehearse a beautiful day tomorrow, regardless of the weather, regardless of how you physically feel, you can have a beautiful day, which will actually transform how you physically feel and emotionally feel. Because if you think back, there's been times in your life where you've daydreamed about something coming up, might be a birthday, might be a wedding, might be a holiday, might be when I for me, it would be Christmas when I was a child.

When I was like an older child, Christmas is brilliant.

And I think about it, sometimes for weeks before. There was one year I wanted a bike. And I was dreaming like I'd be laying in bed, fantasizing about having that bike and how it would transform my life because I had a paper around that took ages to do.

But with a bike, I cut the time probably by a quarter or a third, I don't know, half or something. And I just kept daydreaming about it. And I can imagine waking up Christmas morning and going down and opening the bike, not opening, you know, unwrapping the bike.

And that's exactly what happened. And it felt really, really good all that time that I was imagining. And even if the bike hadn't been there on that day, yeah, admittedly, I would have felt disappointed.

However, I still would have enjoyed the process. So when I was laying in bed, I was drifting off to sleep feeling really good, really positive and with something to look forward to. So that can be a similar activity today, maybe when you're lying in bed, thinking about tomorrow, imagining how it's going to be, and how you're going to feel, how you're going to behave, how you're going to respond to people, how it's going to be really good.

And you're going to feel really confident and relaxed and feel really safe within yourself. Knowing that you are looked after by nature, you've got oxygen, gravity, the sun, your body, your internal organs, they're all operating, you're being looked after, which means it frees your mind to rehearse feeling good, feeling relaxed and feeling happy. So I will go now, because I've rabbited on for a long time, as usual.

Thank you for listening, and please remember to be kind to yourself, because you deserve to be happy. Lots of love. Bye.