Now more than ever, scientific surveys are proving the fundamental responsibility of stress in triggering or aggravating various psychological and physical disorders. In the June 6, 1983 issue of Time Magazine, the cover story called stress “The Epidemic of the Eighties.” The article also claimed that stress is a leading health problem.

There is very little doubt that the world has become a lot more complex and stressful in the last twenty-five years since that article was published.

Many surveys show that most adults feel that they are subject to a great deal of stress. Authorities in the field estimate that between 75 and 90 percent of the visits to primary care physicians somehow have to do with stress.

Most people report their stress is mainly due to their job. Stress levels have also soared in children and the elderly population for reasons including: Peer pressures that often push people to everything from cigarette smoking to drug and alcohol abuse; the loss of religion and family values; growing crime rates; fear for personal safety; as well as social isolation and loneliness.

Stress is a factor of problems such as diabetes, ulcers, low back and neck pain, high blood pressure, strokes and heart attacks. This is because of the augmented sympathetic nervous system activity and the release of cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones. Chronic stress is often associated with defective immune system resistance.

Stress can be responsible for anxiety, depression, and its various impacts on one’s organs. “Stress” is defined as follows by the American Heritage Dictionary: “To subject to physical or mental pressure, tension, or strain”

“Tension” is defined as follows: “Mental, emotional, or nervous strain”

It defines “anxiety” as follows: “A state of uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties”

And the following definition is given for “depression”: “The condition of feeling sad or despondent”

“Clinical depression” is defined as follows: “A psychiatric disorder characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, loss of appetite, anhedonia, feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness, and thoughts of death.”

One thing is for sure, our thoughts are the primary cause of our feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. In other words, what we think about, and our attitudes and the way we view our experiences create what we feel. So if we can learn to alter our thoughts, attitudes, and points of view, then we can get rid of our feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression and replace them with a more positive state of being.

People have always tried methods that would allow them to dissipate stress. With the pharmaceutical industry there seems to be a drug for everything. For that the industry has designed a wide line of tranquilizers from Valium to Xanax. If you choose to utilize drugs for relief, please be sure to be aware of the side-effects by reading the fine print, which often include addiction and dependency.

Indeed these types of drugs try to cure the symptoms, rather than the cause. So as soon as one stops ingesting them, the symptoms can come back.

A more appropriate way of eliminating tension, stress, anxiety, and depression is to try to cure the root cause, which as I said before, is usually our thought processes. There is the good news. Hypnosis is all about relaxing. The AMA recognized hypnosis in 1958 as an effective way to cure stress or stress related symptoms. And unlike anxiolytics, there are no bad side effects.

When you are in hypnosis, you are in the Levitra Professional Alpha level of consciousness. It’s the daydream like temporary psychological frame of mind that we pass through as we’re about to fall asleep in the evening. And we pass through it another time when we awaken again. There are a lot of different ways that we can guide ourselves into this state of tranquility, from progressive relaxation to visual imagery to listening to hypnosis CD’s.

Once in the hypnotic state, we can interact with our unconscious mind, which is the seat of our feelings. And it becomes easier to accept new points of view and ideas which can help us to reduce anxiety, or even avoid it in the first place.

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), which is a new form of hypnotherapy, has numerous really good methods for dissipating stress. Maybe the technique that works best is called the “swish” pattern – or the “flash” pattern. After using this method, your unconscious will automatically use bad, stress producing mental pictures, as triggers for relaxing mental pictures. In other words, what generally makes you feel stress will automatically cause relaxation!

TO SUMMARIZE Our thoughts can prompt depression, anxiety and tension. So if we change our attitude and point of view towards our situation and our experiences, we can reduce these feelings at the source. Hypnosis and NLP are natural tools that make it possible to change our attitude and point of view to swiftly reduce the root cause of these negative feelings.

Author Bio: Alan B. Densky is an NGH certified hypnotherapist. He offers a complete line of stress elimination NLP CDs, and advanced stress elimination CDs through his Neuro-VISION hypnosis website. You can visit his self hypnosis blog, and download a free MP3.

Category: Health
Keywords: stress,depression,tension,anxiety,hypnosis for stress relief,nlp