#69 Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety & Panic Attacks (Jason Newland) (8th January 2020)

Hello, welcome to jasonnewland.com. And this is Jason Newland. My name is Jason Newland. This is relaxation hypnosis for stress, anxiety, and panic attacks.

And I've got a dog pacing around the room. Copying me, because I like to sometimes kind of walk around when I'm doing these recordings. Sometimes I sit down.

Well, probably 99% of the time when I make recordings, I do sit down. But, not for this recording. And sometimes, you know, when I make these ones, I like to, oh well, it just depends.

Anyway, this is the first of these that I've done in 2020. So, Happy New Year to those of you that are listening to this at the beginning of 2020. Because it is the 8th of January today.

And, I feel I'm gonna have to keep pausing this just to shut this dog up. He's trying to get into the bedroom. That's my neighbor's dog, so I'm just looking after him for a couple of hours.

And he's trying to get into the bedroom to get to Andre. And until I stood up, he was on the floor. And now for some reason, he just wants to walk around.

Basically, just copying me. He's not used to people walking around. You know, well, I don't know if that's true or not.

I don't know. I'm not with him all the time. I can't really say that he's never seen a human walking around before because that's probably not true.

Anyway, Happy New Year to you. And, if you like what I do, please go to my website and leave a review. And it's a review page where you can leave a written review, review, or a video review if you're feeling particularly photogenic.

So that'd be really great. So, the reason really, and also just to say that I've got pretty much all of my content on my website now that you can download or stream for free. So what's given me a little bit of a push to make this particular recording is a friend of mine needed to, today, this morning, needed to go somewhere and had just had some issues, you know, sort of emotional.

And, I'm not gonna go into that details because that's not my business to do so, but, I started thinking, and I was talking to him, and the stuff that I was saying to him, and the fact is, none of us generally have to do anything. So that's the point to this recording. You don't have to do anything.

Now, I know you could say, yeah, but I've got a mortgage, I've got this, I've got to pick the kids up from school. You know, there are situations where there's an emergency situation, which this doesn't count. This doesn't include emergency situations.

Because, of course, if you see someone on the street collapsing, you have to call an ambulance. It's not like you don't have to. But you don't have to.

But it's the right thing to do, obviously. But you don't have to. You don't have to pick your kids up from school.

You kind of really should. You know, it's the right thing to do, I guess. You know, you could find someone else to pick them up, or, you don't have to do it.

And this is, I think this is quite a weird concept to get our heads around. And I've spent years trying to get my head around this. To realise that actually, we don't have to do anything.

Everything we do, we choose to do. Even though it doesn't feel that way. But the more you start to feel that way, the easier things become.

The tension, the stress, reduces. Because you realise that actually, well, I've decided to do this. I've chosen to do this thing that you're doing.

So, I thought I'd do come back to attending big events like a wedding or, you know, I'll talk about those big public events. Probably because I'm not a huge fan of them myself. And I know there's a lot of people out there that don't really like to be in a room with hundreds of people, necessarily.

It's not their favourite thing. So you don't have to attend a wedding. You don't have to attend a funeral.

Even if it's the closest person in your life, it's a funeral or a wedding. You don't have to attend. There are no, the only funeral you have to attend is your own.

That's the only funeral and the only wedding you have to attend. You don't even have to attend your own wedding. But you choose to attend it because you want to.

But you have to attend a wedding if you want to be wed, obviously. And this is very simple, very simplistic, yet very, very difficult for a lot of people to get their head around because I think the natural response is, what are you talking about? You're talking complete crap. Of course I have to do this.

But if you break it down, you don't. You don't have to. You don't have to.

You choose to. Which takes away that victim mentality that we can all enjoy at times. And I say enjoy because I've loved being a victim.

Not being a victim, but playing the victim, enjoying, taking no responsibility for what I do, blaming other people. I've had a lot of fun with that over the years. Not realising that actually it was hugely painful and it wasn't really fun at all, but I chose to do it.

I chose to be or play the victim. But on the other side, I was a victim at one point in my life. So a lot of people, the idea is, I'm not putting down the concept of being a victim because millions of people have been the victim of something.

Whether it's crime or various different things. But afterwards, you're a survivor of that. That situation.

No longer a victim, but a survivor. And I like that word because I know it's perhaps sometimes overused in some aspects. It's very true.

Someone that's a victim of crime survives a crime. Hope, you know, if you're still alive, you've survived. And if someone's in a car crash, they either die or they survive.

That's the two outcomes. Regardless of injuries or long-term problems, there's two outcomes. So if you survive, you're no longer a victim.

You're a survivor. And again, that's really, you could say, well, that's easy for you to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's not that easy to say because it's part of me that doesn't want to prescribe to this. There's part of me that wants to live my life and blame. Blame what happened when I was younger for how I am now.

Blame having bipolar for my life, for my whatever. Of course I want to do that. Blame this, blame that.

But this recording isn't really about blaming. It's not really about victim being a victim as opposed to a survivor. But I think getting a hold of that idea of being a survivor, because that's used a lot in sort of abuse issues.

But I think it could be used for other things as well. So being bullied at school, at home, at work, to have overcome that, you've survived it. A medical emergency, you've survived it.

Everybody listening to this has survived something. So we're all survivors. And everybody's gone through something.

And that's another mindset to, I think that could be useful for all of us maybe is to try and remember that, because we ain't special as far as being the only ones to have suffered. Everybody, every single person you ever meet or I ever meet has suffered in some way or other. It's just some people, you just wouldn't think they had the way they talk or the way they act.

Or they don't perhaps, they don't let on. Some people come across as being perfectly happy. And they might even mock, some people even mock others for not being able to deal with stuff.

And it comes across like, well, they've never experienced anything bad. So that's why they're mocking someone with stress or anxiety or depression or some kind of medical illness or disability. Or they're mocking them because they don't understand what it's like to experience that.

It's not necessarily true. That person may be mocking someone for having stress. But they might be going home and drinking a bottle of vodka every night in order to deal with their own stress.

See, we don't know what other people are doing or what's going on inside their head. Or their life, but their head, people, we don't know. And I think it's quite a good thing.

I don't think I wanna know, necessarily. Or sometimes, but not all the time. So getting back to you don't have to do anything.

There's certain automatic things that we have no choice in. Breathing is one of those things. You ever try and hold your breath, you realize that breathing is something that is automatic.

It's not, you know, your heart pumping, the blood going through your veins, your lungs, all the different internal organs, the hair growth, the skin, all that stuff's automatic. It's not that we don't have any control over it because we can. But, I mean, obviously there's drugs we can take that can control various parts of our body.

You know, like people that have thyroid issues, they can take medication that changes the function of the thyroid. Bipolar, I take medication that changes my brain. So there is things that can be done.

Also things like hypnosis, counseling, psychotherapy, meditation, Reiki, yoga, exercise, physical exercise, reading a book, studying, just volunteering. It's just anything you do affects how we are. So we can affect the way we feel.

We can affect the wellness of our body and our mind. So, you know, it can be affected, but it is an automatic system. But it can be changed.

What we do is up to us. What we physically do, what our actions is up to us. But I want to tell that dog to shut up, but I'm not going to.

Because he's annoying me, because all he's doing is going like that. Instead of just laying on the floor and going to sleep, which is what I want him to do, he's not doing that. Although he's just now laid down on the floor, which is weird.

So it's also not being able to control other people, which is, I think, one of the biggest problems that we have as humans. Because we have no control over what other people do. And it's frustrating to have to put up with it.

Other people's behavior, the things that they say. It can be difficult at times. So we control what we do, but we can't control what other people do.

We control what we say. We cannot control what other people say. Okay.

So literally, you decide whatever you do next. Whatever it is you do next, you choose. It's not automatic.

You choose to do it. And I do realize there are automatic stuff, behaviors, driving a car. You're not thinking about every single thing you do.

So there are automatic behaviors. I'm not gonna discount that stuff, because of course there is. If something's exceedingly boring, our brain may just switch off, and we just go on automatic.

Or perhaps doing a washing up. Or it could be various different things. But then doing those automatic things, I don't think necessarily, although I might be wrong, I've not experienced those things to cause me any problems.

It's the things that perhaps I have to think about. The things, doing the things that perhaps I don't want to do. Or do the things I do wanna do, but feel nervous about doing them.

That cause the problems. Or seem to. So I try to get my head around the idea.

A few years back, I say, I don't know how many years ago, that actually, we don't have to do anything. And I'd start from there. So if I'm laying in bed, thinking, oh, I've gotta go to work.

Don't wanna go to work. I try and remember, I correct myself, I try to correct myself where I have to go to work. Now, that is, there's sentences missing from that.

In the sense of, I have to go to work, otherwise I won't get paid. Otherwise, I may lose my job. Otherwise, I won't be able to pay the rent or the mortgage.

Or buy Christmas presents for my children, or buy food. So, you, you could change the have to to need to. I need to go to work for that stuff.

But you don't have to. And I think there's a difference between need and have to. Because need is, well for me, need would be more of a carrot.

And have to would be a stick. I think that would be the difference. Need to, a need is powerful.

It's almost a, when someone's got a need, they move towards that need. And it's a positive thing. We all have needs.

Whether it's physical comforts, social interactions. Food. To keep warm, to have shelter.

It could be various different things. You need maybe to have a car, to be able to travel. You might have a need to go on holiday once a year.

You might have a need to visit your family in another country. That's a need you have. One of my needs used to be to visit my grandmother.

It was a need, I needed to do that. And it was an emotional thing, like I'm sure it is for many, many millions of people that have that emotional need to visit a loved one. But it's not a have to.

It is a choice. So it takes away that helplessness. So I'm lying in bed, I have to get up.

I don't have to get up. If I have to get up and I might have that in my head, then I react to it negatively. Sometimes.

Sometimes I'll have the same feeling as I want to get up or I need to get up. But in the past, I've lost lots of jobs actually because I didn't get out of bed. Because all I could think about was I have to get up.

But I don't want to, but I have to, but I don't want to. And then thinking of all the horrible reasons why I didn't want to do it. Instead of thinking of the benefits of getting up and going to work.

The reality would be after an hour, I'd feel okay. Once I got there, I'd generally feel okay. But because I put that pressure on myself, the have to.

Then I would react to it. And that's what happened a lot when I was younger. So we don't have to do anything.

And that could be a cop-out. Couldn't it? That could be the excuse to do nothing. You know, say, well, that bloke on that podcast, he said, you ain't got to do nothing.

I agree, so I'm not going to do anything. Well, that's a choice. But it's no way to live doing absolutely nothing.

And you're not going to survive because there are things that we do need to do. You need to eat, you need to bathe, you need to sleep. We all need those things.

But you don't have to do those things, but we need them. So that's when we kind of get into that thinking, a different way of thinking. So when you've got an appointment, might be the psychiatrist, might be a job interview, maybe you just got to go to the shops because you've run out of food, you know? You don't have to do those things.

You don't have to go to the shop. You can sit here with no food. But it's very, very unhealthy to do that.

And your need is you need to eat. You don't have to go to the psychiatrist, the psychologist. But you have an appointment for a reason.

So you can choose to go there. So if you go, you choose to do it. If you go to the shops, it's because you've chosen to.

There is no one forcing you to do it. You've chosen to do it. Even if you've got a partner, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, parents, children even, who are saying to you, you've got to do this.

You're ultimately the one in charge of what you do. And with that comes freedom, a lot of freedom. It reduces a heck of a lot of stress.

It reduces resentment. It reduces the victim mentality because we choose to do what we do. We're not being forced to do it or we're not doing it because I'm the one in charge of it.

I'm just behaving this way because of what happened in the past. You've chosen to behave that way. Everything we do is a choice.

Even when it comes to extreme situations like addiction, it is a choice, even though it doesn't seem like a choice. Even someone that's addicted to heroin and their choice is go through the withdrawal symptoms, which is pretty horrific, or take some drugs and feel fine again or feel how they have got used to feeling, their version of feeling fine, still a choice. It just doesn't feel like a choice.

And it's a very hard choice, a choice that most people don't ever have to make. Although many, many people do, but the majority of people don't. Those kind of, you know, do this or you're going to feel really, really ill physically.

Physically, but we have that with the emotional side. And it could be the other way around. Do this and there's a possibility you may have extreme stress.

For example, attending a funeral or a wedding or a job interview. But when you take away the must and have to and realize that you are the one that chooses what you do next, when you go for that job interview or go to that funeral or go to the wedding or wherever it might be, you've automatically reduced the stress and the anxiety because you have chosen to do it.

You have chosen what you do next.

And I'll repeat, I know that this is a weird way of thinking. It's a weird way, weird in a sense of it goes against the grain. It really does, I know that.

And it can almost feel false. Like, of course you don't choose what you do next. You know, I'm doing this because I have to.

I don't want to be doing this. I don't want, you know, but actually, no. Doing something doesn't mean you want to do it.

Choosing to do something doesn't mean that you want to do it. That's a big difference. I've never wanted to go to a wedding in my life.

Not a lot, really, but I've gone. But I do it because it's kind of the right thing to do for me. So that's the thing, it's just doing something, choosing to do something doesn't mean that you want to do it.

Although, once you've chosen to do something, you may start to think, oh, this is okay, you know, it feels different. Because you've chosen to do it, it feels different. And you know, sometimes there's not even any actual action required to reduce your anxiety and stress when it comes to doing things that perhaps you don't want to do, or you're not looking forward to doing, or maybe that thing's a bit unpleasant.

Just having that mindset and remembering that you're choosing to do it remembering that you don't have to do anything is, well, it can be life-changing. You don't have to do anything. So you choose to do it.

I'll list some things that I don't have to do, but I choose to do. I don't have to go to the toilet in the toilet. I could do it in my pants if I wanted.

I'm not going to, but I could if I wanted to. I don't have to go into the toilet and sit down on the toilet. And that's a gross example, a really disgusting example, but it's true.

I don't have to, but I choose to. But in my mind, and in probably most of our minds, we have to do that. And we don't mind.

You know, it's kind of, I like the fact that I do it in the toilet, but I don't have to. I don't have to make this recording. I choose to do it.

I don't have to have a bath today. I mean, what is, what do we actually have to do? It's something that is completely out of our control, where we don't have any control at all. Even in an emergency, I don't have to get annoyed because there's a plane going over the house.

But I choose to, while I'm making a recording. Why can't everything be completely quiet at 11.30 in the morning? It's not fair. But I choose to get angry at that if I wanted.

I don't have to get angry over it. And that's going in a different direction as well, because that's emotions and feelings that are so much on automatic. But they don't have to be.

I mean, go to the extreme. Someone puts a gun to your head and tells you to jump up and down. You don't have to jump up and down.

You may get shot, but that's a choice you make. And then some people get all angry. Well, that's not a choice, is it? No, but it is.

It's a stupid choice if you choose not to do it. You know, it's not the best choice in the world. Someone's got a gun pointing at you to choose to do the complete opposite to what they say, depending on what they're saying, I guess.

You know, if someone's got a gun to your head and they're saying, give me your wallet, give them your wallet. That's kind of how I would, that's what I would do. But you don't have to.

But there's consequences, of course, for everything that we do or don't do. All our decisions have got consequences. So that's just kind of today's thought, is you don't have to do anything.

You don't have to do anything. So everything you do, you choose to do, even those things that are unpleasant, because it's a choice. So that's kind of the point of this.

And I know it's a difficult, it's a very bitter pill, that one. But it's true, we do choose what we do next. And it can be freeing, it really can.

So enjoy the rest of your day. And I'm going to give Andre something to eat. Thank you for listening.

Remember to be kind to yourself. Lots of love. Bye.