I have been getting a number of questions and I thank all of you who have sent them in. In the next few posts I’ll give some tips or exercises as I answer the questions I’ve received. Please keep the questions coming, see the end of this post for directions:
Question: “It seems that you believe you only can reduce stress by going to the unconscious part of the mind. Is there anyway I can reduce stress without doing self-hypnosis or trance?
Answer Part 1: Yes, I do believe that using a trance state to reprogram unconscious patterns is the most effective and lasting way to change unwanted habits and limits. Yet, you are correct that is important to use all the parts of the mind. Many times I incorporate cognitive and behavioral skills usually used on the conscious level into hypnotic exercises.
To answer your question yes there are many exercises I teach that help to bring down stress. These can be done without going into a trance state. Let’s start by talking about the stress reaction itself and then tomorrow I’ll post an exercise you can practice.
1. Stress reactions do not come out of the blue, even when it feels like they do. For many people it is the feeling of being out of control that increases the stress.
2. So the first step is to remind yourself, that whenever you feel stressed, there is a trigger. It might be so tiny it just flits through your mind, but it is there.
3. As you begin to take a moment to recognize that the stress reaction is always in response to a stimulus, you might find can be helpful to change your reaction from “why is this happening” to the question “what is this about.
4. By changing the question from “why” to “what” makes a big difference. The why question usually leads to self blame. The “what is this about” question leads to curiosity. Being curious put you back into a healthy state of mind for new learnings.
If you look at the right side of this screen you’ll see a page called worry busters, these are also skills that can be used in the “conscious” state of mind, no trance necessary.
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