How I Overcame Anxiety and What I Now Teach My Clients

With thanks to our member, Ailsa Frank, for this article.

From Breakdown to Calm: My Personal Experience of Understanding Anxiety and the Techniques I Use in my clinic.

In 2002, after a breakdown during a divorce, I found myself facing one of the hardest periods of my life. I lost access to my belongings, my money, my friends and family, and, most painfully of all, custody of my ten-year-old daughter. It was a deeply traumatic time, and during those early months and years, I experienced real anxiety.

Fortunately, I discovered hypnotherapy quite early in my recovery. It helped me begin to shift my mindset and get my life back on track. While that mental shift was powerful, the anxiety itself took longer to understand and manage. I had to learn, gradually, how to live through it, soften it, and stop it from dominating my life.

In 2005, I trained as a hypnotherapist and began helping others. Often, I drew on my own experiences to develop techniques for anxiety based on what had helped me. I believe that sometimes having lived through something yourself gives you a deeper understanding of what a client may be feeling. It can help you meet them with greater empathy and practicality.

Over the years, I have come to see anxiety as falling broadly into three categories. First, there is anxiety where the cause is clear because something difficult has already happened. Second, there is anticipatory anxiety, where the fear is about something that might happen in the future. Third, there is anxiety where the person does not know where it is coming from at all.

I think it is very useful to identify with clients which type they are dealing with. Even that alone can bring relief, because it gives shape to something that otherwise feels overwhelming. I often begin with simple questions such as:

• Do we know why you are anxious?
• Has this thing already happened?
• Is this real now, or is it a possibility you fear may happen?

If something difficult has genuinely happened, then it is understandable that the client may feel anxious. In those cases, it is important to validate the feeling rather than fight it. Yes, this has happened, and of course you may feel this way from time to time. But you can move through these feelings and eventually turn that energy into something more positive and purposeful.

If the anxiety is linked to fear of something happening in the future, I encourage clients to explore what can realistically be done. If this is a warning signal, what practical steps can we take to reduce the risk, feel more prepared, or strengthen our ability to cope? Or understand that it’s very unlikely to happen.

If the anxiety seems to come from nowhere, I often work on the assumption that at some point in life the person experienced something that made them feel unsafe, worried or unsettled. Even if the conscious mind cannot identify it, the feeling may still be echoing from the past. In that case, the aim is not to force a memory, but to soften the emotional weight of the past so the client can move forwards more comfortably.

Here are two simple techniques I have found helpful.

The first is what I think of as “Pull Forward the Best of You.” I often tell clients that the anxious part of them is actually quite small, but it is getting far more airtime than it deserves. I invite them to close their eyes and imagine moving along the timeline of their life, finding the stronger, calmer, happier and more comfortable versions of themselves from different stages of the past. They may remember times when they felt capable, safe, proud, brave or at ease. I then encourage them to imagine taking the hand of each of those resourceful versions of themselves and bringing them forward into the present day.

The client then steps into that stronger version of themselves now. I encourage them to feel proud, bold and grounded, recognising that this version of them has always existed. Meanwhile, the worried or anxious versions are left behind, becoming smaller and less significant. I sometimes describe those anxious parts as shrinking to a few grains of sand on the vast beach of their whole life. This can be a powerful way of helping a client reconnect with their own inner resilience rather than identifying only with the anxious part.

The second technique may sound unusual, but it can be very effective. I call it “Lean In to the Anxiety.” So often people try to push anxiety away, fight it, or get rid of it. Sometimes that struggle gives it even more power. Instead, I invite the client to imagine their anxiety as something soft and non-threatening, such as a big, cuddly teddy bear. Rather than resisting it, they lean in and give it a hug.

This image can help transform the anxiety from something frightening into something manageable. The hug symbolises acceptance, safety and release. As they lean in, they can imagine the anxiety dissolving, melting away from the body and mind. I also explain that anxious feelings are often there to warn us, guide us, or show us where healing is needed. Instead of fearing the feeling itself, the client can use it as an opportunity to acknowledge how well they have done in surviving, adapting and continuing.

I then extend this idea to the future. I ask them to imagine the future as another soft teddy bear and lean in to that too, making peace not only with the past but also with what lies ahead. The message is that they already have within them what they need to make good decisions from this point onwards.

I have now worked as a hypnotherapist for more than twenty years, predominantly with clients who want help with alcohol. Anxiety is often deeply linked to drinking. Many people use alcohol to mask how they feel, to numb their worries, or to avoid uncomfortable emotions. Yet alcohol itself can also create anxiety, through poor sleep, physical stress, regret, hangover anxiety ‘hangxiety’, and fear about what may have been said or done.

For that reason, helping clients understand and heal anxiety is one of the most important tools in alcohol reduction work. My advice to fellow hypnotherapists is to really break the anxiety down with each client. Understand why it is there, what role it is playing, and whether it belongs to the past, present or future. Even talking those possibilities through can help a client understand themselves better. That understanding alone can begin to set them free.