Understanding Anxiety


Anxiety Hypnotherapy

If you are experiencing anxiety, you’re probably feeling exhausted, frustrated, angry, and worn down by it, and at times wondering if it will ever really stop.


Most clients who come to see me for anxiety want the same thing: for their mind and body to feel calmer, more settled, and less reactive in situations that currently feel overwhelming.


Anxiety is not something you consciously choose. It is a learned automatic response that the mind and body can become stuck in.


Hypnotherapy and Rapid Resolution Therapy® (RRT®) work by helping the nervous system update how it responds to a perceived threat, so the automatic “alarm response” becomes less easily triggered and begins to settle.


Over time, this leads to:

  • a calmer physical response
  • less overthinking and mental spiralling
  • reduced intensity of triggers
  • a greater sense of ease and control


What is fear (versus anxiety)

When the brain senses a threat, it switches on the body’s survival response. This is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, which prioritises survival above everything else.


In real danger, this response is helpful. It gets you alert, focused, and ready to act.


This first response is fear = the body reacting to something it believes is a threat.


How the anxiety cycle builds

The fear response

At first, the body is simply reacting as it should: activating for protection when something feels threatening.


Fear of the fear response

But for many people, you don’t just notice the original worry, you also become aware of what is happening inside your body (racing heart, tightness in chest, sweating, etc). These sensations can start to feel alarming in themselves.


This is where anxiety arises: when the mind begins to fear the body’s own response to a perceived threat.


Modern life and misinterpretation

In modern life, we rarely face physical danger. Instead, the mind responds to psychological stressors like the fear of failure, the fear of judgement, uncertainty, or the fear of not coping.

It’s a kind of misfire in the system, where the mind reads modern worries as if they were life-threatening danger.


The feedback loop

Once the fear response occur (heart racing, racing thoughts, etc), the mind then starts monitoring and reacting to these sensations, which keeps the system activated.

And the more you notice them, the more intense and persistent they can feel.


The anxiety loop develops when the body’s normal stress response is treated as something dangerous in itself.


What anxiety can feel like

  • Racing heart or palpitations
  • Tightness in chest or throat
  • Feeling short of breath
  • Dizziness or light-headedness
  • Butterflies or knots in the stomach
  • Nausea or digestive changes
  • Sweating or trembling
  • Racing thoughts or overthinking
  • Feeling detached or “not quite there”
  • Difficulty concentrating
  • Sleep disturbance


These sensations are not dangerous, they are the body’s protective system doing its job in the wrong context.


Take the next step

If this feels familiar, the first step is a free discovery call. We can talk through what you've been experiencing, whether my way of working feels right for you, and how I can help you move forward from anxiety.