Anxiety is a normal reaction to a stressor. It is helpful, in that it alerts you to difficulty and prompts your attention. When anxiety becomes excessive, it is as if someone turned the volume up on the healthy feelings of alarm. Troublesome anxiety can erode your confidence and lead to persistent feelings of fear, worry, and dread, and can cause emotional, cognitive, and somatic symptoms that interfere with your daily functioning. Heart palpitations, shortness of breath, headaches, feelings of restlessness, irritability, and chronic thoughts of disaster can drive your life and rob you of your freedom and joy.
A phobia develops from a persistent fear of a specific object or situation and is a form of anxiety. Your fear may be founded in an experience or may be fueled by your imagination of what could happen. You may go to great lengths to avoid encountering your phobia. You might take the stairs up 10 flights to avoid the use of an elevator or simply might not attend a meeting on the 10th floor of a building. Typically, your imagined fear is disproportionate to the actual danger posed and often you recognize it as irrational, but are unable to overcome the fear. In some instances, phobia can become very debilitating and cause significant complications to your social or occupational life.
Post Traumatic Stress is extreme and chronic anxiety experienced after a traumatic event. It is characterized by dramatic anxiety that remains persistent and presents with depressive features. You may experience flashbacks or nightmares, find yourself avoiding things associated with the trauma, and have increased excitability that causes sleep disturbances, increased anger, difficulty with concentration and hyper-vigilance. These symptoms can include a feeling of dissociation and can complicate your ability to be present in your life today. When you bring strong emotion to any experience, it’s memory is highly imprinted in neurological brain patterns. In the instance of a trauma, an overactive adrenaline response contributes to hyper-responsive patterns of fear that persist long past the traumatic event.
Hypnotherapy can be a very effective in the treatment of anxiety, phobias, and post-traumatic stress. In the case of phobias and post-traumatic stress work, hypnotherapy can adjust the distressing stimuli associated with the negative experience to reduce symptoms or eliminate them. In the case of general anxiety, Attention to Living Therapy, assisted by hypnotherapy, can provide for effective self-soothing that reduces the anxiety and allows you the room to make sense of what happened and understand what that means to you and about you. This work is very effective in 3 to 6 sessions. With intensity of feelings adjusted, you can begin the work of assimilating the traumatic experience and begin confidently practicing behaviors that lead to a joyful and peaceful life.
Whether loss is sudden or expected, its tragedy shatters your ordered world and thrusts you into chaos. You may feel that your world is forever changed. You may experience a heightened sense of vulnerability and an increase in anxiety. The world, it seems, is no longer a safe place.
Trying to make sense of and understand loss can be overwhelming. The most difficult challenge for you when facing a loss is preservation of your own identity. Loss can take many forms, from losing someone you love, to divorce, to loss of job or home, to a “normal” shift in life stage. When the task of mourning your loss becomes unbearable and is debilitating beyond your comfort level, you may benefit from seeking outside support. You may feel intense anger, guilt, and ambivalence regarding your loss. This can be further complicated if your loss involved a troubled relationship. Feelings can linger and lead to unproductive depression, anger, and anxiety. Similarly, "letting go" can be counterproductive if your grief has not transformed into something useful. Each situation is unique and requires care and consideration to best determine how to transform your grief.
Understanding your emotions and your beliefs about loss can help you restore your peace of mind. Whether your grief is uncomplicated, prolonged or exaggerated, Tami or Carson can help you construct a new sense of meaning in your life and find joy and peace.
addictions, anxiety, grief, fear of performance, and pain transformed
Meet in-person in the Boulder, Longmont, Denver Colorado area, or virtually from anywhere for psychotherapy, coaching and hypnosis for anxiety, addictions, performance and pain.
Until recently, powerful misconceptions about the nature of addiction labeled those afflicted as immoral or lacking in will power. Those beliefs prompted a cultural response to addiction as a moral failing rather than a health problem, and this led to an emphasis on punitive, rather than preventative and therapeutic action. Today, thanks to groundbreaking discoveries about the brain, our views and our responses to addictions have changed dramatically. The current neuro-science research shows that you can and do continue to change the way you think and behave throughout all of your life. We now know that addiction is a disease that affects both brain and body, and realize that successful treatment must address mind, body, and spirit for healthy and lasting change. Education in mind, body, and spirit function alongside dynamic therapy can be very effective in addictions treatment. Attention to LivingTherapy can assist you in breaking habits, staying motivated, and placing new behavior patterns into the place of the old and useless ones. While you may feel out of control in many areas of your life, addressing the immediate psychological and emotional issues involved will provide you with relief and plenty of space for change. As soon as you come to the decision that your behavior is problematic and you are willing to change it, Attention to LivingTherapy can support your desired outcomes. After eliminating self-sabotaging behavior and developing new beliefs that support boundaries and the internal identification of someone who no longer defines themself by addiction. Live with independence and freedom.
pain and freedom
Whether you are in the sports arena, taking an exam, on the stage, in business, or living life, you want to be the very best you can be. We know that there are two aspects to performance:
1. The performance itself and
2. The impact it has upon you.
When the motivation to achieve is internal and not dependent upon external stimuli, then the chances for increased performance are magnified. When the focus of our satisfaction changes from enjoying the experience of being ‘in the flow’ or ‘at one’ with that experience to experiencing awareness of responses from outside our self, our ability to remain focused on the task at hand is diminished. 'Performance anxiety’ occurs once the experience of being ‘in the flow’ is interrupted and the awareness of your performance shifts to self-judgment, or judgments by others. When this happens, you have a greater tendency to fall off task and condemn yourself just at the crucial moment for delivering your greatest potential.
Successful people tell you that enhancing performance is all about a state of mind. Controlling your emotions, focusing on your desired outcome, and believing that you can do it are keys to performance. Hypnotherapyis an excellent tool for improving performance. It accesses your creative, unconscious mind and utilizes it to alter your habitual patterns of behavior to ensure that you perform to your true potential. Because the subconscious mind does not distinguish between what is real and what is imagined, hypnosis is an excellent method for helping a person integrate new patterns of behavior.
Whether your performance is challenged in front of an audience, attending a job interview, or simply by raising your hand, the same principles apply. Relaxation, concentration, and confidence will provide you the opportunity to stay focused on what you are doing instead of how you are doing. When you devote your full attention, you increase your ability to do your very best and walk away proud of your accomplishment.
grief and Joy
fear and performance
Pain is our greatest motivator for change. There is good reason for its highly motivating sensation; it is a symptom that something is wrong in the mind and or the body. If the primary cause of the pain is physical, hypnotherapy can reduce the sensation to a tolerable level. The residual sensation is useful in that it reminds you that there is a physical condition, which needs tending or monitoring. Pain is a good reminder not to over do.
A good example is the professional football player who injures his knee causing intolerable pain. With the use of steroids the pain is eliminated and he can play pain-free, as if he was never injured. However, despite his ability to play pain-free, without proper intervention the damaged knee could be rendered irreparable. The same risk is involved in eliminating the physical pain hypnotically. For this reason, physical pain management always requires a physician's referral.
Pain may also result from mental or emotional distress. In this instance, by processing the experience and the feelings associated with your suffering, you can begin to accept the reality of the event that lead to your distress, and begin the necessary work of transforming your pain. Recognition of your feelings is the first step in healing pain. Understanding the beliefs that support your feelings is the second step. Together, this realized information will provide for insight that allows you to practice forgiveness. Forgiveness of self and others is often key in pain reduction.
Once you understand your feelings and are willing to transform your pain, then education, psychological processing, and supportive suggestions can help you find new understanding. With the weight of the world lifted from your shoulder you can
reduce your suffering and find pleasure and freedom again.
addictions and independence
ANXIETY, PHOBIA, POST TRAUMATIC STRESS and CONFIDENCE
...are just a few of life's curve balls. Life is full of obstacles and opportunities. Each is unique to your circumstances and your journey. And most importantly, each obstacle is a perfect opportunity for your growth and development. In the midst of what you see as problematic, it can be difficult to recognize the opportunities. Attention to Living Therapy will provide you a new way of thinking that will assist you in managing and negotiating life's obstacles. You will find that this new way of thinking provides you opportunities that you hadn't previously noticed and affords you the confidence and desire to live your life in the drivers seat. Begin living life freely again with a psychotherapist and a coach both trained in hypnosis for anxiety offering in person and online hypnosis sessions.