Skip to content
Home » Anxiety

Anxiety

Comparing Havening Techniques and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Mental Wellbeing

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and its variants like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are established psychological approaches that address anxiety, depression, stress, and trauma by focusing on changing thoughts, behaviours, and responses to internal states. CBT often involves techniques like exposure therapy and thought records, aiming to modify reactions that interfere with life goals. While self-help resources exist for CBT, professional guidance is recommended for complex issues and challenging techniques.

Havening Techniques are a newer psychosensory modality that targets the neurobiological encoding of distress, particularly in the amygdala. It involves gentle touch (self-applied or by a practitioner) and aims to depotentiate traumatic memories and reduce stress quickly and effectively. Havening can be used content-free and integrates well with other therapies. It is effective for anxiety, stress, and trauma, helping to provide a sense of safety and facilitating shifts in perception. Self-Havening is a valuable tool for self-care, stress reduction, and building resilience, but professionals are necessary for treating significant or complex trauma. Both approaches offer distinct pathways to support mental wellbeing, with professional guidance being crucial for more severe or complex challenges.

Navigating Panic Attack Help

Help for panic attacks involves understanding their nature as temporary, non-dangerous physical reactions. Professional guidance can be beneficial, especially after ruling out physical causes. Self-help strategies include facing feared situations or symptoms directly without avoidance, employing specific breathing techniques for calm (though not as a way to stop an attack), actively challenging unhelpful thoughts and beliefs, shifting focus away from internal sensations and catastrophic thinking, cultivating acceptance and self-compassion, adopting healthy lifestyle habits like avoiding stimulants and practising relaxation, and using tools like journaling or worksheets to track experiences and identify patterns. The core is often learning not to react with fear or avoidance to the sensations and thoughts associated with panic.

Coaching for Overwhelm

Coaching for overwhelm supports individuals experiencing distress due to excessive demands, information, or pressure. It shifts the focus from the problem’s origins to building effective solutions and helps clients understand how their responses contribute to their overwhelmed state. Key strategies involve increasing self-awareness, embracing acceptance and mindfulness of internal experiences, using specific techniques to manage thoughts and emotions, taking intentional action aligned with values, setting boundaries, and learning to confront challenges and difficult emotions directly. The aim is to cultivate more flexible and effective responses, enabling individuals to live with less stress and greater fulfillment.

The Role of a Havening Techniques Practitioner

A Havening Techniques practitioner is a guide who uses specific touch and language-based techniques to help clients process distressing emotional memories and create positive change. Working within their professional scope, they adopt a client-centred, positive, and resource-focused approach. They gather client history, identify key concerns, and apply various Havening methods, such as Event Havening for specific traumas or Affirmational Havening for building positive states. A key feature is the ability to work content-free, respecting client privacy while still achieving results. Practitioners often integrate Havening with other therapeutic tools and report significant benefits for clients, including healing trauma, reducing anxiety and stress, building resilience, and enhancing wellbeing. Many practitioners find Havening transforms their own practise and promotes self-care, strongly recommending others learn and use the techniques.

Navigating Workplace Stress and Anxiety

Workplace stress and anxiety are common, arising from factors like workload, relationships, uncertainty, and limiting beliefs. Symptoms can range from physical discomfort to avoidance and reduced productivity. Effective management involves awareness, assertiveness, boundary setting, problem-solving, mindfulness, exposure, emotional and thought management, self-care, and improved communication, aimed at transforming potentially destabilizing anxiety into energy that supports productive work and well-being.

Benefits Of Havening Techniques For Managing Emotional Distress

The benefits of havening techniques lie in their neuroscientifically informed approach to reducing emotional distress. For anxiety, Havening can target the root causes in the amygdala, providing swift relief from panic and phobias. In stress management, it helps to lower baseline stress and build resilience through self-regulation techniques. For trauma, Havening offers a gentle yet powerful way to depotentiate distressing memories without the need for re-traumatisation. While not a primary treatment for depression, Havening can enhance well-being and foster a more positive outlook. Clients undergoing Havening can expect a gentle process involving soothing touch, often leading to a noticeable reduction in emotional intensity and improved coping abilities, with many gaining valuable self-havening skills.

Understanding The Anxiety Management Coach

An anxiety management coach empowers individuals to understand and effectively manage their anxiety rather than solely aiming for its elimination. Drawing on philosophies such as solution-focused therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), the coach utilises a range of tools and techniques including questioning, breathing exercises, cognitive restructuring, mindfulness, relaxation, goal setting, and exposure. The coaching process is collaborative, focusing on building self-awareness, accepting anxious feelings, and committing to valued actions. Anxiety management coach support is applicable to various forms of anxiety, including generalised anxiety, social anxiety, panic attacks, workplace anxiety, and performance anxiety, ultimately helping clients to build confidence and live more fulfilling lives.

The role of neuropathically play in overcoming anxiety

Neuroplasticity plays a fundamental role in overcoming anxiety. It refers to the brain’s remarkable ability to change its structure and function throughout life by forming new neural connections. This means that the neural pathways underlying anxious thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are not fixed and can be altered through consistent effort and new experiences. Here’s how… Read More »The role of neuropathically play in overcoming anxiety

An outline of the brain’s dual pathways to generating anxiety.

The brain has two main pathways that can lead to the generation of anxiety. These pathways, although distinct, can also work together. The cortex pathway begins with the sense organs and travels through the thalamus to the cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain. The frontal lobes within the cortex play a significant role… Read More »An outline of the brain’s dual pathways to generating anxiety.

How might avoidance perpetuate anxiety symptoms?

Avoidance can perpetuate anxiety symptoms in several ways. Firstly, avoidance is negatively reinforced because it leads to a temporary reduction in anxiety. When you avoid a situation, person, or thought that triggers anxiety, the immediate feeling of relief reinforces the avoidance behaviour, making it more likely you will use this coping mechanism again in the… Read More »How might avoidance perpetuate anxiety symptoms?

The Amygdala Brain Function

The amygdala is a critical part of the brain’s emotional processing system, primarily involved in detecting threats and generating fear and anxiety responses. It forms emotional memories that can influence future reactions. While its protective function is vital, an overactive amygdala or the misinterpretation of non-threatening stimuli can lead to negative issues such as heightened anxiety and inappropriate fear responses. Individuals can employ various self-help strategies like deep breathing, mindfulness, exercise, and trigger identification to help regulate amygdala activity. However, when anxiety significantly impacts life, professional help from therapists offering CBT, ACT, exposure therapy, or EMDR, and potentially medication, can provide more targeted support in retraining the amygdala and managing anxiety.

UNDERSTANDING NLP FOR ANXIETY

NLP for anxiety is a set of techniques focused on understanding and altering an individual’s thought patterns, sensory experiences, and behaviours associated with anxiety. By identifying triggers, reframing negative associations, accessing positive states, and building helpful thought habits, NLP aims to empower individuals to take control of their anxiety and develop more effective responses to stressful situations. It emphasises the idea that individuals can reprogram their minds to reduce and overcome anxious feelings.

COACHING FOR OVERWHELM

Overwhelm is a state of feeling unable to manage excessive demands, significantly impacting an individual’s mental and emotional well-being. Neurologically, it involves overactivity and potential impairment of the prefrontal cortex due to stress and information overload. Coaching offers a powerful pathway back from overwhelm by adopting a solution-focused approach that emphasises present action, skill-building, and personal empowerment. By concentrating on creating solutions and implementing practical strategies, coaching can provide tangible relief and a renewed sense of control, potentially offering a more direct and action-oriented route compared to traditional therapies that may focus more on historical context and in-depth emotional processing.

Applying Psychosensory Therapy

Psychosensory therapy offers a unique approach to addressing anxiety and emotional distress by utilising sensory input to influence brain function. Examples range from touch-based techniques like Havening to movement-based practices like yoga. Havening, in particular, uses gentle touch to potentially reduce the impact of traumatic memories and current anxiety. Anxiety coaches can effectively integrate psychosensory therapy to provide clients with immediate relief, enhance emotional regulation, and promote self-reliance in managing their anxiety, ultimately aiming for improved well-being and the ability to lead a more fulfilling life.