Understanding stress, and finding your way back to balance

What happens inside you

Stress triggers the fight-or-flight response, a survival mechanism older than any of your problems. The brain signals the adrenal glands, cortisol and adrenaline arrive, and your body reorganises itself in seconds:

• ·Heart rate climbs, to push blood to the organs that need it.

• ·Breathing quickens, to take in more oxygen.

• ·Muscles tighten, ready for an action you will probably never take.

• ·Digestion and immune function are put on hold, because survival comes first.

Excellent for a near miss on the highway. Expensive when it runs quietly for months.

What chronic stress costs

The heart

Sustained stress raises the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

Immunity

A body braced for threat fights off infection less well.

Digestion

Conditions such as IBS and ulcers are commonly aggravated by it.

Mood

Anxiety, depression and burnout are frequently the long tail of unmanaged stress.

Pain

Tension headaches, migraine and back pain are stress made physical.

Sleep

The rest that would repair the damage is usually the first thing to go.

One system, not two

Stress does not stop at the neck. Persistent worry turns up as stomach trouble and fatigue; feeling overwhelmed turns up as a braced back and a night spent staring at the ceiling. It runs the other way too, which is why treating only the thoughts, or only the symptoms, tends to disappoint. This is also why the mind-body connection is not a soft idea. It is the mechanism.

Stress is not what happens to us. It is how we respond to what happens, and in that response sits the room to change it.

How hypnotherapy helps

Hypnotherapy uses guided relaxation and focused attention to reach a state in which the mind is unusually open to new instruction. Three things become possible there:

Rewiring the pattern

Most stress runs on a recurring worry or fear. We find its root and put something calmer and more accurate in its place.

The relaxation response

The state itself moves you out of fight or flight, lowering cortisol and letting the body do its repair work.

Real resilience

You leave with tools you can use on your own, so the next pressure meets a steadier version of you.

What the research says

Published research on hypnosis and stress points consistently in one direction: measurable drops in cortisol, better reported wellbeing, and reliable reductions in anxiety and physical tension. It is neither magic nor nothing. It is a well-studied way of using a state you already have.

Five things that help anyway

• ·Breathe slowly and deliberately, with a longer exhale than inhale. It switches the relaxation response on directly.

• ·Move your body most days. Exercise burns off the chemistry stress leaves behind.

• ·Protect sleep like an appointment. Recovery happens there or not at all.

• ·Give the day somewhere to go: a walk without your phone, ten minutes of writing, anything that lets you process rather than store.

• ·Say it out loud to someone. Carried alone, stress compounds.

Sessions run in person in Mulbarton or online, and start with a ninety minute consultation that is mostly conversation.

Stress is part of a life with anything in it. Suffering from it constantly is not the price of admission.

Angela Pereira is a certified hypnotherapist and Parts Therapy facilitator in Mulbarton, Johannesburg South, working in person and online. She came to this work through her own hypnotherapy, for a driving phobia that had quietly organised her life.