#77 Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety & Panic Attacks - (Jason Newland) (19th January 2020)

Hello, welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety and Panic Attacks. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

Now I'm going to focus on those times when maybe your anxiety level has risen, but you're in the middle of something. You're maybe at work, you're doing something that you can't necessarily just stop doing. The saying that there's very little that you can't stop doing, you know, if you need to, even if it comes across as being rude or, you know, you're in the middle of a conversation.

You can say, I've got to end this here because I need to go somewhere, and you go and get some space or go outside, get some air. You could literally just turn your back on them and walk away. You are allowed to do that, but of course it may not help with your relationships with those people.

And but so there's situations where maybe you feel that you're almost kind of stuck there for a while. Maybe you like being in the supermarket queue, maybe like being traveling somewhere, being at a party, being in a conversation with somebody, waiting at a bus stop, sitting at a dinner table, you know, in a restaurant or a family gathering or something like that. So what do you do in a situation like that?

How do you, what do you do? Do you run out? Do you, you know, run out and get some air? Well, that is an option.

And that's something that I think is important. It can really ease the tension when you remember that you can do whatever you want to do. You know, so if you decide, I mean, I know this is going to sound absurd, but if you decided you were going to a family dinner, and you decided to climb out a window into the garden, you can do that.

Well, I say I wouldn't fit through a window, but you know, as an example, you do have those options. You do have the option to put your knife and fork down and leave the building. If you're driving, you have the option to pull over to the side of the curb, park your car and get out.

And you also have the, you can leave the car there and walk away. You may get in trouble for it. You know, I don't know all of the road laws, but you might get a parking ticket.

Or worse, the car might get taken away. But that's an option. You have that option, which means it reduces the stress level because you don't feel trapped.

And when you don't feel trapped, and you know you've got options, it feels easier. It can almost be the difference between having a closed door and a locked door. So being in a room with a locked door, and you're in there on your own, someone's locked the door behind them as they've left.

That's not a comfortable situation, I don't think, for anybody really. But if they just close the door, completely different, different feeling, totally. Because you can leave, you can open the door, and you can walk out at any time.

So that's kind of the difference between remembering that you do have those choices. You decide what you do next, always. We all do.

And it's a weird concept because it sounds ridiculous. But at the same time, we know it's true. We decide what we do next.

But obviously, if we were rude to everybody because we didn't want to talk to them, we'd have no friends. So we decide to take the time to talk to somebody. When maybe we don't feel like it.

But there is a choice. We choose to go to work on a day that maybe we don't feel too well. We choose to do that.

And even though we justify it by saying, well, I've got no choice, got to pay the mortgage, got to feed the kids, all that stuff. Got to pay the rent, got to pay the monthly payment on the car, and all that stuff. The reality is, you don't physically have to go to work on that day.

Even if it means homelessness, as an extreme situation, which is very unlikely to happen if you have one day off work. It's still a choice. You choose that you don't want that.

But it's a choice. And I think that some of us, I include myself in this, maybe have spent too much time thinking that we don't have the choice, and we are stuck, and we are trapped. And I've expanded it to those situations that have got nothing to do with stress or anxiety.

And now I'm going to focus in on the situations where we do sometimes, perhaps, have feelings which are very uncomfortable, physically, mentally. And you're kind of in a situation where you don't want to be rude. You don't want to walk away from the person because you actually like them.

You don't want to just climb out the window during dinner, because you know that there'd be quite a lot of explaining to do. I mean, I'd have to replace the window frame because of my belly. So, there's times when we don't want to, we have the choice, but we choose not to do the things, like walking out of the office where you work.

Although I have walked out of my office where I've worked more than once in the past. I hung up on a customer once. I'd been doing a sales call, had a panic attack, and I just hung up on the call, left my desk, walked outside.

No one even noticed. But I didn't care. I wasn't thinking about that.

So, you have the option to do that. But what do you do when you don't want to do that? So, you can actually, by getting in touch with what's going on, moving out of your body, because a lot of the... It's a weird one, isn't it? Because if you think like body scanning, you scan your body. It's a way to help relax you.

Meditation is another thing. But you're also focusing on your body with that. One of the things that I really didn't want to do while I was at the height of the anxiety that I was going through, I did not want to focus on my body because my body was screaming at me to focus on it, giving me all these feelings I didn't want to experience.

I didn't feel it deserved any more of my attention. It was getting way too much of it. Which is why maybe the way meditation works is because you meditate when you're feeling okay.

And it's almost like training your body and your mind to be relaxed. So, when those feelings arise in the future, when you're focusing on your body, that body focus almost becomes more of a positive thing, almost a meditative body scan thing. So, you're noticing how you feel, but those feelings are not overtaking you the way that maybe they used to.

So, that's one thing you can do to prepare for future events is by relaxing when you're feeling okay. Or relax when you're feeling relaxed. Don't only relax when you're stressed.

Relax when you're feeling relaxed. It's like preparing your food. I was talking to a friend and he doesn't prepare his food when he's hungry.

He prepares his food knowing that he's going to be hungry at a certain point. There's an old saying, don't go shopping when you're hungry because you'll end up buying possibly way more than you need and also possibly the wrong foods because you're going to want a snack as soon as you get out of the supermarket. So, preparation.

Preparing to feel more relaxed in future situations of heightened stress. It's kind of like a practical thing, like filling your freezer up full of food and your fridge and your cupboards. Preparing, maybe knowing that next week you've got snow forecast.

So, getting to the supermarket will be a little bit of a chore. So, you get a little bit extra in just to cover, you know. Make sure that you've got plenty of food to get you through the next two weeks just in case it does snow.

It's almost a practical thing. Preparing to feel relaxed. Preparing or rehearsing is another way to prepare.

To know that actually when you're in a situation and you have those stressful feelings, that maybe it's okay to have that, you know. If you think about someone that's had gastroenteritis and I had that last year. It was horrible.

But after I recovered, it took about a week, 10 days or something to recover from that. For the next few weeks, any time I got a stomach ache or had a very kind of, you know, a similar kind of feeling to what I previously had with that illness, I was thinking, oh no, it's come back. When it hadn't come back and I sat with it, I sat with the feeling.

And it wasn't just a bit of wind. I mean, I'm basically a fart machine anyway. And it was just wind.

It wasn't anything that needed my attention. But I gave it my attention anyway. I gave my attention.

But just enough for me to feel calmer. Because I could feel my tension rising as I started to worry, what's happening here? Because I didn't want to go through that again. I might have to go through it again, but I've only ever had it once in my life.

And that was enough. And my washing machine and my toilet, neither of those want me to have to go through that again. I was on the naughty step with my toilet for about a week.

I had to buy flowers, chocolates. So it's almost like rehearsing in your mind. But with an attitude.

I don't mean like a teenager attitude or everyone. I don't mean that. With an attitude of positivity.

But also reality as well. Because most of the time we're okay. Most of the time, we're okay.

Most of the time, even at the height of anxiety, the majority, the percentage, if you broke it up into percentage, the higher percentage would be when we were okay. We might not be like hugely relaxed and which is hopefully where I can come in to help with that. But I was surprised.

An example of this is I had a sleep machine attached to me a couple of years back, because I have sleep apnea. And I don't know why that's funny. But anyway, I had this machine put on me to test what my breathing was like when I was asleep.

And at the end of the night, when I woke up the next day, and I took the machine in the next day to the hospital, and I said, I got no sleep. A bloody machine. I couldn't sleep with it on.

Couldn't sleep. Didn't get any sleep. So I had all these things attached to me and everything.

A thing on my thumb, I think it was to check my pulse rate the whole time. And then they did, they put it into the computer and you know, got the results. And they said, Well, actually, you did you slept six hours.

I said, What? And they said, Yeah, you can tell that from your pulse. And from, you know, you're, you slept for six hours. You woke up loads of times.

To be fair, I stopped breathing quite a few times during that period. But I was asleep for six hours. So I did go to bed for about nine hours.

So I was awake for about three hours. But in my mind, I was awake all night, and maybe drifted off the last half an hour. That was what was in my head.

But the reality is, and what was that? Two, three, six, nine. So two thirds of that time, I was asleep. So the majority, by quite a lot, I was asleep.

That was the reality. And once I realized that reality, once I kind of had it in front of me, the stats were there. You know, can't really argue with science.

You can, but it's a bit silly, I guess. And I started to think differently about the sleeping. I started to think, Well, why am I, why am I worrying about this? Why am I concerned about if I'm going to get to sleep? Because clearly I do get to sleep.

I'm spending most of the time asleep, even though in my head, while I'm laying down, I'm thinking that I'm not going to get to sleep. But actually, the reality is, I am going to fall asleep. And I'm going to spend the majority of my time while I'm lying down on the bed, being asleep.

Just like we spend the majority of our time feeling relatively okay. On a stress perspective, I'm not talking about someone in the forethrows of illness. I'm talking about a general day to day stress levels, you know.

It's not always high. In the same way, people with chronic pain, it's not always painful. People with depression, they're not always depressed.

They think they are, but they're not. And that's where it's so hard to point that out to people because they'll say, No, I'm always depressed. And then you find out, you can spend, as a counsellor, I'd spend an hour with someone.

They'd be laughing, they'd be chatting. But at the end of it, they'd be saying, Yeah, I'm always depressed. I never laugh.

Like I'd forgotten it. They'd forgotten that they actually were laughing. And the reality is, none of us are always anything.

We're not always tired. We're not always awake. We're not always hungry.

We don't always want to go to the toilet. We're not always in pain, physically or emotionally. We're not always stressed.

And I should just point out, I'm not saying depression doesn't exist, because that's ridiculous. Because I've had it many times. Just saying someone isn't always depressed 24 hours a day.

Apart from maybe in an extremely severe situation. But over, you know, over days and weeks, people have better days than others. Now I've got someone clapping in the garden for some reason, which is nice.

But this is about anxiety. This is about stress. I've just moved out of the room.

If you plan in your mind, plan in your mind to remember that actually, you can deal with the levels of stress and anxiety before they get higher. Before they get out of control, or before they feel out of control. You can feel relaxed in situations.

And also, it's okay not to feel relaxed. That's another thing I think that's quite important to remember that it's okay to feel stressed sometimes, you know. It's okay to be in pain.

It's okay to feel down. It's natural to have these feelings at times. I think it would be very, very unrealistic to expect all stress and anxiety to leave forever and ever, because then you wouldn't be a human being.

What we want is to reduce the level. And by practising and preparing, so practising in your mind the preparation that doesn't necessarily need anything other than a thought, optimism, positivity, remembering the reality that actually, it's okay to feel a bit crappy sometimes. And it will pass, because every single feeling we ever have ever passes.

All physical pain passes. Emotional pain all passes. Pleasure, it passes.

No feeling stays with you for a long period of time. We're always changing how we feel. And that's one of the benefits.

In fact, you know what? I feel one of the benefits I got from the anxiety when it first really kicked in back in 2002 was it gave me an opportunity to really get in touch with my body properly in a way that I hadn't been before. Got in touch with the changing sensations and the constant change that was occurring in the different parts of my body, levels of stress, levels of relaxation.

Even with chronic pain, one of the benefits of, it might not seem like a benefit, but if someone, I've got chronic pain in my lower back and in my shoulder, but I can get in touch with the parts of my body that feel relaxed.

And in some ways, they feel even more relaxed compared to those other parts. So when there's stress, maybe I feel I've got stress in my head, or in my shoulders, or the back of my neck, my jaw, my hands as well sometimes, I can notice how my feet are relaxed. I can notice how my stomach feels relaxed.

I can notice how my legs feel relaxed, and my chest, and my eyes. And then the rest of me starts to feel a bit more relaxed. It's almost like getting in touch with reality.

The fact that although there's stress maybe in your body, we're always going to have stress in our bodies because we need it to function. But sometimes it goes too high, obviously, and we don't need to put up with that. But the good thing about noticing the parts that feel okay is you get a reality check.

That actually it's a small percentage that feels uncomfortable. It's only a small percentage of your body. With chronic pain, I know there are chronic pain issues that go near the whole body.

But from my situation, my shoulder, my lower back, the rest of my body is pretty much fine. And my belly takes up about 80% of my body. So I don't come across as huge when I talk about my belly.

But the reality that it's not always nice to face is that it's a small percentage that we're dealing with. Compared to in our mind, it seems to be bigger. We almost like we make it bigger, which is part of the whole anxiety, panicky, emotional reaction, isn't it? We magnify something, literally looking at it through a telescope when actually it's only three foot away.

And it's not very big at all. But because we're looking through a telescope, it's massive. So when you take that telescope away, in fact, just break the telescope, let it drop to the floor, break.

Don't need it no more. Or you can look through the other end of the telescope, or binoculars, look the other end and make it small, smaller than what it was. You feel different then.

We can feel differently really quickly, which I find quite amazing, really. Think how easily it is to change the way you feel. Because no matter how you feel right now, no matter how you feel right now, whatever feelings you've got going on, not while you listen to me, I hope you feel better listening to me and you feel relaxed and calm.

But however you're feeling when you're at home, you're sitting in your chair, maybe watching telly, maybe on the laptop, whatever, whatever physical or physical or emotional or whatever emotions or feelings you're having. If you get a knock at the door, and it's two police officers at your front door, whatever feelings you had before are gone. Especially if you don't know why they're there.

They're not necessarily there for a bad reason. They might be just, I've had police knock on the door because someone would have been sleeping rough in the hallway. You know, it had nothing to do with me why they were knocking on the door.

But when I looked through the curtain and saw two police officers there, even though I'm fairly law-abiding, I couldn't even tell you what I was thinking or feeling before I looked through that window and saw them. Which just shows that how we feel isn't really concrete. It's not really set.

You could say it's not even real in some ways. Instantly changeable. No matter how you felt today, no matter how crappy you felt or how whatever, if your partner came in, your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter, your father, whoever, your best friend, someone came in, sat down and handed you a little card.

And on it said that you'd won a million pound, a scratch card. And you know, they'd won it, they're going to share it with you. The way you felt before is going to be forgotten.

Even if you were in the throes of really bad time, and I'm not talking about seriously ill or in hospital, I'm just saying the way you were feeling will be forgotten. Your reality will change in a second. It's not about greed.

It's not about money. Or it might have something to do with it. But it's your life changes in that moment.

Because something so unexpected has happened. And even if you weren't having that money yourself, and your best friend came around and said, I've just won a million pound. And I handed you the scratch card and showed it to you.

You just be so shocked and so happy for them. And you might be jealous and it doesn't matter. But the fact is, your state will change.

Your mental and emotional and physical state will change in an instant. So that's something worth remembering. And if you don't believe me, test it out.

Get yourself a winning scratch card and win a million pounds. Take it to someone that's not feeling well, very well, or has got anxiety or whatever their condition is. And tell them you're going to share that $1 million or whatever with them.

And see how everything changes within them. The way they're sitting, their facial expression, everything, the whole demeanour will change. And when you're happy with that result, and you think, okay, good.

What Jason said was true. Our reality changes all the time. And our state changes.

Our feeling of how we feel changes, physically, emotionally, constantly changing. When you're happy with that result, you can look at your friend, take the card back and say, not really, I'm keeping all the money for myself. But at least you've done the experiment and you've won yourself a million pounds.

Or you might want to share the money. That is up to you. None of my business.

Or you can send me the money. That's a better idea. Send me all of it.

So go out, get yourself a scratch card, with the intention of experimenting to see how it changes how you feel when you win a million pounds or a million dollars. And then if you're happy, send me half of that. Or if you're just really happy that you got the result of the experiment, and it was worthwhile, just send me the whole, all of the money.

That's my idea. So it's preparing in your mind. You can rehearse the situation that's coming up.

Rehearse feeling relaxed. But when you get that idea in your head, and it sticks, the idea that we're always changing, that actually, you do have the option to do what you want to do. You choose what you do next.

You always do what you, you choose what you do next. Doesn't seem like it, doesn't feel like it. But that is true.

And the reason why we do a lot of things we do is because we have morals, and we want to live the kind of life that we want to live. You choose what you do next. It's a choice.

Once you address that, once you embrace that fact, it changes the way you feel. Because you're not a victim of circumstance. You're not being forced to do something.

You're choosing to do it. And when you choose to do something, it's so much more pleasant. It takes that pressure off.

Reduces the stress by a lot. So that's the only couple of ideas that I've got. Remembering that our feelings are always changing, regardless of what our condition is.

Always changing the way we feel. It's always changing. And you choose what you do next.

With those ideas, when they stick and they grow, like a seed grows in your mind, and you start to realize, start to notice situations when you realize that you're choosing to do this, sometimes you might think, well, actually, I am choosing to do it, but you know what? I don't want to do it. Which means you no longer let people control you. Those people that like to control, they no longer have that power.

They never did have that power, but you allowed them, or we allowed them to have that power. People that control only do it because they're allowed to. And you take back control of your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own life.

And it's okay to feel crappy sometimes. It's okay to have stress and anxiety. That is okay.

It's natural. In fact, there's times in life where you wouldn't be human if you didn't have those feelings, but it's what level you're prepared to allow them to go to. You get to choose what level they go to.

And by remembering that they're going to change anyway, it means that you're not imagining them going high or going out of control, because in your mind, you remember that actually feelings are natural. They're always going to change, and you choose what happens next. You choose what you do next.

It changes what you imagine. It kind of nips it in the bud, you know, and those seeds are sown in your mind, and they grow. And there might be something that you think about.

You might think there might be a sentence that you've heard, that I've said, and it kind of, it lingers with you. And during the day, you're reminded of it. It might be simply that you're noticing that the way you feel is changing.

You feel different before you go to the toilet to how you do after you've gone to the toilet. You feel different before you have a bath to how you do after you've had a bath. You feel different before you eat a meal than you do after you've eaten a meal.

Constantly changing how we feel. And you choose what you do next. So I want to thank you for listening.

I'm going to bring this to an end, this conversation. And I will speak to you next time. So remember to be kind to yourself, because you deserve to be happy.

Lots of love. Bye.