Waiting Room

This blog was originally posted on April 7, 2014)

Photo courtesy of PresentationPro

          Sometimes, there is nothing to do but wait. Wait for the bus or train to show up at the station. Wait for the traffic light to change. Wait for the movie, concert or theater performance to start. Wait for a laboratory test result to come in. Wait for that important phone call. Wait for a child to be born, two weeks after its due date. Wait for that acceptance (or rejection) letter from the college of choice to arrive in the mail. Just…wait.

       Waiting seems like it should be an innocuous pastime; but it can be an extremely stressful activity under these and similar situations. Some people seem to be “good” at waiting; they know how to be patient. They have an apparently natural ability to put anxiety out of their minds and just be in the moment. They carry on living their lives, “soldiering on” whether they get the result they were hoping for.

Others are plagued by self-doubt and negative expectations. They pace the floor and run on nervous energy (adrenaline), trying to keep busy enough to get ahead of or escape the anxiety, anger and/or fear that they are experiencing while they wait. Even when the anticipated outcome is a positive one, tempers flare and emotions overflow during these tense periods of waiting. When I work with these clients in hypnotherapy, I use hypnosis and therapeutic guided-imagery techniques to desensitize them to specific stimuli that trigger anxiety or other negative behavioral response during a stressful situation. I also teach them how to do diaphragmatic breathing and how to create and access an anchor that will help them return to the relaxed, calm and focused feeling they enjoyed while in hypnosis as they cope with an anticipated (or unanticipated) stressful situation when they are in an alert state.

Finally, I teach my clients to employ the following “Mindful Parenting” skill to defuse and tamp out any emotional flare-ups they experience during moments of stress, frustration and/or impatience. (I have been using this skill on a regular basis myself since I learned it from Lisa Machhenberg, C.Ht., an instructor at the Hypnosis Motivation Institute.) It really works!

1.   Relax the muscles in your forehead and around face, and “smile” with your eyes. (Soft eyes)

2.      Ask yourself: What do I want to do at this moment? How do I want to respond to the insensitive comment/blaring horn/traffic jam, etc.?

3.      Take a deep breath from the bottom of your lungs all the way down to the soles of both feet (diaphragmatic breath).

4.       Exhale on the word calm, love, peace, etc.

5.    Make a choice about what you want to do next/how you want to behave to release the stress.

                 

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

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