What is stress & anxiety?

Stress originates from our early primitive ancient ancestors and is our most basic instinct, known as the “fight, flight or freeze”, response, which was and still is the first reaction to a danger to keep us safe. How quickly our ancestors instinctively responded was paramount to whether they lived or died.

Nowadays, we, generally, do not need to use the fight, flight or freeze, response except in exceptional circumstances, when for example being involved in a road traffic accident or the victim of an attack or similar experience. Our brain, however, remains in a constant state of alert even while we sleep.

Can you recall a time when you were asleep and you heard a noise that woke you up and placed you in a panic as to what it was? Then, do you go to find out what it was, hide under the bed clothes pick up your phone ready to dial 999 or do you freeze?. I know when I have been alone and heard a noise, I have frozen as its a frightening experience in itself. It's as if your whole body is frozen and you cannot move only your thoughts continue as panic steps in all the time listening for other sounds.

It’s not a nice experience, is it?

Our bodies can often place us in a state of alert or ‘stress’ or ‘anxiety’ when we are subjected to a something we perceive to be a danger, although it may not be a danger as such but something we do not like or have become fearful of which results in placing our bodies in a state of alert or “fight, flight or freeze. For example many people develop fears or phobias usually in childhood and directly as a result of someone else's response. I have seen dozens of the clients with fears of spiders, mice, birds, fears of heights, flying and of people being sick (emetophobia) etc., and most were as a result of seeing one of their parents reacting badly to something. So they then take on the same fear response that they have witnessed.

These fears are so referred to as external fears and they can be overcome using a number of therapies which are tailored to your needs.

There are other stresses which we call internal stresses, which result from our own emotional responses to situations such as getting angry maybe due to the way we are treated by others which we feel is unfair or unjust, or we may become emotional seeing someone we love, being hurt. We may feel deeply hurt and/or angry finding out that our spouse has cheated on us, breached our trust and we may also feel hurt and angry that our spouse dies and leaves us on our own.

We do not choose to have these feelings but they often appear from nowhere and once they are there it becomes a very hard job to get rid of them. Its like a seed is planted and it keeps growing and growing until the stressful thoughts and feelings take over and each time we experience the feeling our heart begins to race there is a surge of adrenaline as our bodies are placed in a constant state of alert that we call stress and anxiety and its a devil to shake off.

It can be very difficult to remove or overcome these fears alone.

I can easily help you to remove these fears so that you can get on with your life.

Why not call me for a free half an hour consultation, to discuss how I can help you.

Contact Jacqui@jsntehrapies.co.uk