Hypnotherapy or counselling for anxiety?

[MarshaMarshaMarsha]

I have suffered for years from bouts of anxiety when things get particularly manic at work. It leads to a constant sick feeling, loss of appetite and awful sleep, often waking up at 1am and not getting back to sleep with my mind whirring. Would traditional therapy/counselling or hypnotherapy be the better fit to try and help me manage this stress?

I'd say hypnotherapy. It'll certainly work faster than counselling. I found it really effective, the person I saw got down to what was driving my anxiety and I got a really huge shift. It feels so relaxing too.

Thank you, that is interesting. I honestly don’t think there is a hidden reason in my past for this, it’s just how I am. But maybe I’m wrong! I do find it almost impossible to switch off fully though eg even if having a massage my brain won’t be still. So I’m worried hypnotherapy wouldn’t work for me. Any other opinions please would be appreciated.

As a therapist I’d say in my experience there’s always a reason for anxiety. Not necessarily some deep dark secret in the past - often it’s as accumulation of different things that on their own seem innocuous but taken together overwhelm someone’s coping mechanisms. Therapy can be really helpful, CBT can help manage symptoms and talking therapies can help get to the bottom of it but you need to be prepared to talk openly and to question your own thinking which can be really hard when you’re already anxious. Therapy isn’t a miracle cure and I’d say is ineffective if someone doesn’t have the capacity for reflection in between sessions.

I found hypnotherapy massively helpful but as with most things, I’m sure it depends on the skill of the therapist.

It wasn’t that there was a hidden reason, more that I didn’t realise that some things in the past were still affecting me (thought I’d worked them through and I hadn’t, even though I’d had years of other therapy), but in hypnosis it became a lot easier to resolve them and then the future seemed a lot more possible.

I had a very busy brain at that time, couldn’t stop thinking and was going over worries all the time trying to work them out, but it was fine, it was actually a huge relief to have some time where my brain got a break and I was able to actually relax for a change.