More than ever before scientific research is attesting the essential responsibility of stress in causing and aggravating various physical and emotional afflictions. An article from a 1983 Time Magazine called stress "The Epidemic of the Eighties." The article also said that stress is an extremely serious health problem. Indeed one has to acknowledge that the world has become a lot more complicated and stressful in the last two decades since that article was written.

A lot of surveys indicate that almost everybody feels that they are subject to a lot of stress. Researchers in the field estimate that 75 to 90 percent of all visits to PCPs (Primary Care Physicians) somehow have to do with stress.

Most people report their stress is mainly due to their job. Stress levels have also grown in children as well as the elderly population because of several reasons including: Peer pressures that often lead to everything from smoking to drug and alcohol abuse; the dissolution of religion and family values; increased crime rates; threats to personal security; but also social isolation and loneliness.

Stress contributes to problems such as diabetes, ulcers, low back and neck pain, hypertension, strokes, heart attacks and insomnia. This is due to the augmented sympathetic nervous system activity and a high level of cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones. Chronic stress is corollary of lower immune system resistance. Stress can be responsible for anxiety, depression, and its several impacts on the body's organs.

The following definition for "stress" can be found in the American Heritage Dictionary: "To subject to physical or mental pressure, tension, or strain"

"Tension" is defined as follows: "Mental, emotional, or nervous strain"

The following definition is given for "anxiety": "A state of uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties"

And it defines "depression" as follows: "The condition of feeling sad or despondent"

The following is the definition of "clinical depression": "A psychiatric disorder characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, loss of appetite, anhedonia, feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness, and thoughts of death."

One thing is for sure, our thoughts are the main reason for our feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. We could also say that, what we think about, and our attitudes and points of view about our experiences dictate what we feel. That way, if we can manage to modify our thoughts, attitudes, and points of view, we can release our feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression and replace them with a better state of being.

People have always sought out methods that would allow them to eliminate stress. The pharmaceutical industry seems to have a pill for everything. And to that end the industry has developed a large line of sedatives from Valium to Xanax. If you choose to utilize these pills for relief, please be sure to be aware of the side-effects by reading the fine print, which most of the time include addiction and dependency. Unfortunately, these types of drugs aim at curing the symptoms, instead of the cause. So if one stops ingesting them, the symptoms can return.

A smarter way of getting rid of tension, stress, anxiety, and depression is to work on the root cause, which as I wrote before, is generally our thought processes. There is some good news. The essence of hypnosis is relaxation. The AMA accepted hypnosis in 1958 as an effective method of treating stress and stress related symptoms. However unlike anxiolytics, there are totally no negative side effects.

When you enter hypnosis, you are in the Alpha level of consciousness. It's the daydream like temporary psychological state which we pass through as we are about to fall asleep in the evening. And we pass through it once again as we wake up in the morning. There are lots of different ways that will help us guide ourselves into this state of tranquility, from progressive relaxation to visual imagery to listening to hypnosis CD's.

Once in a hypnotic state, we are able to interact with our unconscious mind, which is the center of our feelings. And it becomes easier to accept new ideas and points of view that can help us to dissipate anxiety, or even prevent anxiety from occurring in the first place.

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), which is a modern kind of hypnotherapy, offers a lot of outstanding methods for dissipating stress. Perhaps the technique that works best is called the "swish" pattern - or the "flash" pattern. When you use this method, your unconscious will automatically use bad, stress producing mental images, to generate relaxation producing mental images. Put differently, what usually makes you feel stress will now make you feel more relaxed!

TO SUM UP Tension, stress, anxiety, and depression can be prompted by our thoughts. So by changing our attitude and the way we resent our situation and our experiences, we can dissipate these feelings at the source. Hypnosis and NLP are natural tools that we can use to assist us to change our attitude and point of view to swiftly dissipate the source of these negative feelings.

(c) Copyright 2007 By Alan B. Densky, CH. All rights reserved.

Alan B. Densky is an NGH certified hypnotherapist. He offers a complete line of stress management hypnotherapy CDs, and advanced stress elimination CDs through his Neuro-VISION hypnosis website. You can visit his self hypnosis blog, and download a free MP3.