Joanna came to me with severe anxiety which showed up most acutely when she was meeting new people or was faced with new experiences. She would suffer stomach churning, physical tension, overthinking and feel hot and fidgety. The anxiety was holding her back both socially and professionally.

In her hypnotherapy session, when I asked her subconscious mind what was going on, she went back to a scene from her childhood when her mum dropped her off at nursery for the first time and Joanna wet herself and was then deeply uncomfortable and upset. She also went back to other childhood scenes when she was in the car with her grandparents and there was a car crash, and another time when she had to go down for an operation.

These 3 scenes revealed to Joanna that, at a young age, her subconscious mind had formed the belief that bad things happen when her immediate safety net – her parents – weren’t around. Of course, there would have been countless times in her life when things were fine when her parents weren’t with her, but our subconscious mind’s job is to keep us safe. And so these 3 episodes of trauma made a powerful impression at the subconscious level. One of the ways our subconscious seeks to keep us safe is the anxiety response. Anxiety is nature’s warning mechanism (triggering the fight, flight or freeze response) and it crops up to protect us against perceived emotional as well as physical threats.

So Joanna’s subconscious was bringing her the anxiety to “warn” her that if she steps out of her comfort zone, bad things will happen. We are all open to forming unhelpful, disempowering subconscious beliefs when we’re at an impressionable young age. And equally, we are all capable of changing these beliefs remarkably quickly when we have uncovered them.

Once we understood the ‘purpose’ of the anxiety (because most of our unwanted behaviours are rooted in some positive intention at the subconscious level), we could easily clear it away in the rest of the hypnotherapy session. Joanna could then tap into more resourceful, empowering states to build her confidence.

Three weeks later, Joanna reported going to a networking event, making contacts and even enjoying the occasion. And her rating of her ability to ‘remain calm during the day’ had risen from 2/10 to 9/10. It’s phenomenal how quickly you can make a positive change when you make a shift at the subconscious level.