Havening Practitioner Can Help with Anxiety

The Role of a Havening Practitioner

A Havening practitioner is a trained professional who uses Havening Techniques to help clients overcome emotional distress, including anxiety. Havening is a psychosensory method that uses touch, attention, and positive visualisation to activate the body’s natural healing systems. When a person experiences anxiety, their body can get stuck in a fight-or-flight response, causing physical and emotional symptoms. Havening techniques aim to release the body from this state, promoting relaxation and peace. A practitioner guides a client through this process, helping to reduce the intensity of negative feelings and enhance a sense of wellbeing.

Havening Techniques Explained

Havening works by engaging the amygdala and releasing emotional memories. By using specific touch skills, focused concentration, and positive visualization, Havening can interrupt negative brain pathways and create positive associations. The basic steps of Havening involve:

• Identifying a difficult or traumatic memory or feeling.
• Touching specific areas of the body, like the forehead, temples, or upper arms, while focusing on the memory.
• Repeating a positive affirmation or visualization, such as “I am safe and protected”.
• Continuing to touch the specified areas while repeating the affirmation or image for several minutes.
• Taking deep breaths after the process.

These techniques are not just about managing anxiety; they’re designed to promote healing and self-discovery. They help to alleviate stress, anxiety and trauma, while also boosting self-awareness and creativity.

Additional Tools and Strategies

In addition to Havening techniques, a practitioner may incorporate other tools and strategies to support their client’s journey with anxiety:

Various Types of Havening

A practitioner may use several different types of Havening, such as:

• Event Havening: To address a specific event that is causing anxiety.
• Transpirational Havening: To address recurring emotional states across multiple events.
• Affirmational Havening: To reinforce positive qualities and build resilience.
• Hopeful Havening: To instil a sense of hope for healing and recovery.
• Role Havening: Where a practitioner takes on the role of someone from a client’s past in order to mitigate past trauma.

Distraction Techniques

A Havening practitioner may use distraction techniques, which can help to prevent emotionally charged memories from entering working memory, and to help you maintain a positive state during the Havening process.

Mindfulness and Present Moment Awareness

• Practitioners may help clients to develop an awareness of the present moment, which is useful when dealing with anxious thoughts.
• Mindfulness techniques encourage a non-evaluative approach to the world and to their own experience.
• This may help clients to notice the process of thinking, evaluating, and feeling without getting caught up in the content of their thoughts.

Values Orientation

Practitioners may help clients to focus on their values and what really matters to them, and encourage them to engage in activities that align with those values. This may help clients to move past the negative impacts of anxiety, and instead focus on living a rich and meaningful life.

Self-Care Practices

A practitioner may encourage self-care practices, such as exercise, spending time with loved ones and mindfulness techniques, to support overall wellbeing. These activities may help with the management of stress and anxiety.

Why a Havening Practitioner Could Be a Better Choice

For many people, a Havening practitioner can be a better choice than other approaches to overcoming anxiety because:

• Addresses the Root Cause: Havening aims to get to the root of the anxiety by targeting the encoded traumatic experiences in the amygdala. Rather than managing symptoms, Havening seeks to release the emotional content of past events so that they no longer trigger present-day anxiety.
• Safe and Gentle: Havening is a safe, gentle method, that can be used even when the client does not want to share the content of their anxiety. It does not re-traumatise the client. It is content-free and can still produce effective outcomes.
• Rapid Results: Havening is known for producing fast, effective, and long-lasting results. The speed and efficacy of Havening is a significant change to many conventional therapies.
• Empowering: A Havening practitioner can help a client to learn self-havening techniques, providing them with a tool to manage their own anxiety independently. This promotes self-reliance and enables clients to use the techniques whenever they experience distress.
• Integrative: Havening can be integrated with other therapeutic approaches. Many practitioners may already be trained in other modalities that can be integrated with Havening.
• Versatile: Havening can be used in a variety of contexts and with different people including children, couples, and groups. It is also used to treat different conditions such as phobias and panic attacks.
• Neuroscientific Basis: Havening is rooted in neuroscience and psychology, which provides a solid understanding of how it works. This can make it more appealing to those who are looking for a scientific method of dealing with anxiety.
• Holistic Approach: Havening supports overall well-being, promoting self-awareness, creativity, and a sense of inner peace.

Summary

A Havening practitioner uses Havening Techniques, a psychosensory approach, to help people overcome their anxiety by addressing the root causes of their distress and promoting relaxation and wellbeing. In addition to Havening touch, a practitioner may include other strategies such as mindfulness, values orientation, and self-care. A Havening practitioner could be a better choice for many people due to its focus on addressing the core emotional content of anxiety, the safe and gentle nature of its techniques, the rapid results, and the emphasis on self-empowerment. The ability to integrate Havening with other modalities, its versatility, its basis in neuroscience, and its holistic approach make it a powerful and effective tool for promoting healing and resilience.