This is part two of the transcript about therapy for anxiety
interview with Carollne Foran for her ‘Owning It: The Anxiety Podcast’
There is link at the end of this page if you would like to listen to the full interview.
Havening is your go to Therapy for Anxiety
CF: Okay, so Havening is your go-to therapy for pretty much everyone who walks through your door?
ST: With anxiety based issues yes. But we can also integrate NLP techniques and hypnotherapy in with the Havening, so I can get people to imagine a different future, I can layer in many positive ideas and suggestions as well.
What is NLP?
CF: Okay, what’s NLP?
ST: NLP is neuro-linguistic programming, neuro for neurology, L for linguistic and programming, like programming your mind.
So that idea again your brain’s a bit like a computer and you’re reprogramming it through how you think, what you visualise, what you say to yourself, and I can change how you feel.
CF: Okay and what would a NLP session be like?
ST: There’s many. NLP is a big area and it’s used in business and sales, for language patterns, how they influence people, it’s used a lot in therapy.
It was developed by Doctor Richard Bandler and John Grinder and they studied therapists back in the 50s and 60s, people like Doctor Milton Erickson who’s a very famous psychiatrist and hypnotherapist.
People like Virginia Satir who’s a family therapist and a few others.
So for example let’s look if someone comes in with a bad memory, or they’re visualising something in the future and they’re worried about it, and it’s creating that anticipatory stress.
So we would work out how are you picturing that, are you inside that picture, what are you imagining, what are you saying to yourself, and there’s something called associations.
So you’re going back in the memories or into the future and you’re really imagining it’s happening to you, and we know that the nervous system doesn’t really tell the difference very well between what’s real and what we’ve overly imagined.
CF: Oh yeah, I can attest to that.
ST: And sometimes we call that worrying.
So with NLP there’s a technique called disassociation where we’ll ask the person to float outside of the image, leave their body in it, make the image smaller like a black and white photo and push the image further away. And that helps to reduce and even delink the emotion from that memory, and we can teach them how to do that with various negative thoughts, memories of things they’re imagining in the future that’s worrying them.
CF: Okay so that’s NLP.
ST: That’s just one snippet of an NLP technique you could use, and you could even use those types of techniques in hypnotherapy.
Hypnotherapy for Anxiety
CF: Okay, hypnotherapy as its own thing describe that for me, and what we can expect with that?
ST: Well you’ve got the state of hypnosis first of all, so hypnosis is an eye closed process, it very much feels like meditation, and you’ve then got the therapy end of it, so you’ve got hypno and therapy i.e hypnotherapy So in a hypnosis for anxiety session for example, a therapy method would often be used whilst the person is in the trance.
So they might ask the person to go back to their past and go back to a memory and do that disassociation technique I mentioned, or they might ask the person in the hypnosis to go into the future and imagine a scene.
Maybe if they’re public speaking to see themselves doing the scene in a calm way, in a confident way, so we’re doing this positive mental rehearsal whilst they’re in the hypnosis.
CF: And what’s happening when you’re in a hypnosis state in a therapy session?
ST: Well it generally feels very relaxing, nice and calm, you’re actually aware of what’s happening, lots of people think it’s got to do with sleep from watching stage hypnotists saying ‘sleep’, so it’s like a meditation, you’re generally quite aware of what’s happening round you. Your mind and body goes into a calm relaxing state and you’re often much more open to suggestion at that point as well, and your mind can focus more, your imagination on various things.
CF: I would be of the opinion of having tried so many different types of therapy that anything that can get you into that deep deep state of relaxation is good, because it’s giving you a break from having this high cortisol stress response all the time.
Is it just like applying different therapies but it’s the same principle of just getting deeply relaxed, and then when you’re deeply relaxed trying to unblock or replace some sort of bad messaging in your mind?
What happens in your brain when Havening is applied?
ST: Yes different types of therapy have different theories behind what works for them.
Like in Havening for example you talk there of cortisol, and you’re absolutely right, when someone’s having a traumatic experience or when they’re feeling stressed generally their cortisol and adrenaline levels are quite high.
The Havening touch, when it produces delta waves in the brain it’s also producing serotonin GABA and oxytocin which are the feel goods and relaxation chemicals.
So when you’re actually Havening someone your cortisol and your adrenalin levels are going down and the oxytocin, GABA [Gamma Aminobutyric Acid] and serotonin are going up. So you’re actually creating that neuro chemical change in the brain and the body and that’s why you start feeling calmer.
CF: And outside of a therapy session if it’s a meditative type of thing is it something that you can do yourself?
ST: Yes we teach our clients how to use self-Havening, self-Havening can be applied. There’s even some videos on You Tube, if you type in my name into You Tube there’s a free Self-Havening demonstration there.
See https://www.youtube.com/c/StephenTraversHypnosisDublin
CF: Okay so that’s where you’re getting yourself into a relaxed state, you’re actually using touch with yourself to try and produce those nice hormones.
ST: Yes you’re using sensory touch. You’re gently stroking your arms, your shoulder down to the elbow, gently on the palms of your hands and also gently around your face, and that’s instantly starting the delta waves in the brain and reducing your cortisol and adrenaline levels.
CF: Okay I’m going to get tough on you now and say what would your response be to someone who said ‘this was all bulls**t’ or ‘it sounds like bulls**t’. I’m not saying it, I just know there will be sceptics out there and I always have to be careful.
ST: Well look first of all I’d always look at the person who’s saying it, are they qualified, what’s their background, what’s their experience, if it’s something that they’re sceptical of I understand and they were dismissive, because generally some people have had bad experiences.
They’ve gone to therapists or even doctors and they’re just really sceptical, nothing’s working for them, and the proof is really in the pudding. So if I was working with someone and they had panic attacks or a phobia or a bad memory, I would say well look give me 15 minutes of your time and let me prove it to you.
CF: Have you had people who suffered with panic attacks and did Havening and stopped having panic attacks?
ST: Yes, most of my clients stop having panic attacks yes, that’s the aim.
Yes that’s the aim.
CF: I can’t actually remember what the type of therapy was or who the person was, but I was particularly like Jesus Christ just give me anything. But I went in believing I’m going to walk out of here a completely different person, I’m going to walk in here with anxiety and I’m going to leave it when I walk out.
I believed it so much, I had a lovely relaxing experience, there were those things plugged onto my temples and it was just again probably just getting into a relaxed state and making you feel really safe. So I walked out of there feeling really calm and I was like oh my god it’s gone, it’s gone.
I went with my parents’ home and they also didn’t really understand anxiety, and when I said ‘oh it’s gone now’ they were like ‘oh okay’.
And I went to bed that night and my mum said ‘okay we’ll see you tomorrow’ and I said ‘yeah great’, and then I lay down in bed and I was like ‘yeah it’s gone’ and then I was like ‘is it gone?’
And I started feeling this slow little burning sensation that just started to fill up my body where I was like ‘oh my god no it’s not gone’, and I was ten times worse the next day and for a while after, because I thought that I was incurable.
I was watching all these You Tube videos; you know where you had to pay money to unlock the secret for how you would never feel anxious again. I even felt frustrated with The Power of Now book, because we can’t just all sit there and have a moment of enlightenment and then never feel it again, it’s hormonal, it’s not that simple, you can’t just switch it off.
So since I went to different types of therapy I now would say to anyone whatever works for you, whatever makes you feel good, but don’t go into something expecting you’re never going to feel anxiety again because that’s the worst thing you can do.
ST: Yes I agree. We all need a certain amount of stress or anxiety in our lives, especially if we’re in danger. If you’re walking along a side of a cliff it’s probably wise to feel a bit of fear or anxiety so you’re careful, if you’re walking down the street at night by yourself and you hear footsteps coming up behind you and someone shouting it’s probably good to feel a bit of fear and anxiety. The purpose of our emotions is to help us to survive and to keep us safe.
CF: Yeah, but they’re firing off in scenarios where we actually are safe and that’s the problem for people.
ST: Well in modern life there’s these invisible stressor’s as well, we’ve got these deadlines at work we have to achieve, we’ve got our goals in business, people are trying to run businesses, bring up kids, pay the mortgage, get to their gym class, some people are working 40, 50, 60 hours a week and all this can catch up with you.
And that’s this idea that prolonged stress can be a bad thing, even if it’s doing something that you enjoy doing. I remember at one point I was working six days a week seeing a lot of clients and I started getting pain in my neck, in my head, in my back, I wasn’t sleeping great, I was feeling irritable, I was feeling stressed, and I love what I do, but I was doing too much for too long, I was doing that for months.
CF: You were wearing down your prefrontal cortex?
ST: I was wearing down a lot of things. I was just working and sleeping six days a week, Sunday was just like [Sighs] oh just lie back, watch television, I didn’t even want to talk to anyone for hours, then back in again Monday morning another six days of back to front with clients.
Just working nonstop and just being aware of these things that can affect us all.
CF: Yeah, it sounds from what you’re describing that hypno therapy or Havening is such a worthy thing to try if there’s an isolated trigger. But for me, while I could definitely go back to my childhood and find moments that were scary that probably did lodge in my mind when I started to suffer really bad with anxiety, I really believed that it was a case of like you say I was stressed out for so long and I wasn’t addressing it.
I was wearing myself down and eventually I just slipped over into that mode of suddenly I was reactive to everything and I was sensitive and I felt exposed and vulnerable. So it’s a different kind of anxiety and there was no traumatic thing that I always felt like this is ridiculous that I have this anxiety because nothing bad happened, whereas I was looking for something like if someone had a death in the family that would maybe justify the anxiety whereas I couldn’t justify it.
ST: But it can be many things accumulating. What you’re describing there, feeling hypersensitive or hypervigilant, maybe overly empathetic, easily stressed or irritable, not sleeping great; they’re all symptoms or the consequences of a vulnerable neuro chemical landscape.
That means there’s too much cortisol going on, there’s too much adrenaline, there’s too many stressors from the past or in the present. And ways to deal with that–well first of all we can do the self-Havening, we can do that regularly everyday just to regulate, to keep that thermostat low of anxiety.
CF: Okay so you’re doing what you can to bring your cortisol down.
ST: Yeah, you’re not letting it build up every day, you’re aiming to bring it down through something like self-Havening, it could even be doing something like meditation every day
CF: So would it be similar to meditation in terms of the effects on your hormones and all those things in your brain?
ST: All the different types of therapy I’ve studied and trained in over the years when it comes to stress and anxiety I find Havening to be the most effective, in a sense it gives me the most instant feeling of calmness and relaxation.
I don’t need any special equipment, I can do it anywhere once I have my hands I can self-apply it on myself.
And once you start gently stroking it’s instantly starting to create those delta waves, reduce your heart rate, your blood pressure and calm you down.
CF: Could you say the same about a massage?
ST: Yes well the neurobiology of touch and on what Havening was developed on it actually came from looking at massage and Swedish massage, and how touch changes what’s happening in the brain and the body. So going for a massage maybe every week, well every day would be great wouldn’t it [Chuckles].
So it’s about introducing things into your life that create that emotional equilibrium and stop the allostatic load which is a build-up of stress getting too high, and it’s being aware and knowing the signs and the signals when you’re starting to feel. Like sometimes I’ll get maybe a little pain in my head or my neck or my back, and every time it’s because I’m trying to do too much or I’m doing too much.
CF: Can Havening be a preventative thing or therapy that you do to keep yourself well or is it something that you do retrospectively to try and address a problem that’s gotten out of hand?
ST: It’s both. We’re doing a lot of work in Havening over the last few years about resiliency and using Havening for emotional resiliency, so that’s why we’re teaching our clients to do it.
But unfortunately human nature, sometimes when we get rid of the problem we don’t necessarily keep doing the things that were working for us. So how many people don’t necessarily keep doing self-Havening after a session or keep doing their meditation or–
CF: Well I mean that’s true, because we turn to meditation when we’re in a desperate position and we think I’ll do this now and it obviously doesn’t work and you feel terrible and then you give up. I’m very guilty of not doing the things that work for me when I feel good, because when I feel good I don’t want to know about it, I just want to live. And then I end up back in a situation where I’m like okay I wasn’t appreciating how important it is to do these things every day that just keep that equilibrium there.
ST: Yes and it’s partly human nature, we tend to move away from pain towards pleasure, and pain’s a big motivator for us. So when we’re in pain we’ll take action, if someone’s teeth aren’t great it’s not until they get a toothache and they’re in pain that they go to the dentist.
CF: So what would you say to someone now who’s listening who’s having really bad anxiety who’s thinking look I’m willing to try anything. But also knowing my need to protect that person from feeling vulnerable and where I was, where they would just pay anything and go anywhere for any kind of therapy. Obviously there’s a lot of research and merit to what you’re talking about, but there’s things out there that don’t have that merit.
ST: Well I think there is no therapy that works for everyone 100% of the time.
Doctor Rodger Callahan, he’s a psychologist who created TFT [Thought Field Therapy], and he said, “if you have 100% success rate you’re not seeing enough clients” So to claim that one treatment or one therapy works for everyone all the time is unrealistic and it can create false expectations. My recommendation for people would be obviously I’d say look at Havening, but I’d also say do a bit of research, and if you’re going to see a therapist pick up the phone and have a chat with them.
Look at their website as well, look at their credentials, look at testimonials, success stories, that they’ve got a track record of success working with those specific issues that you want to work on, be it anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD, and have a chat with them.
Because it’s also about the connection that you have with the person sometimes, if there’s that rapport when you’re going in to see someone and that they can actually understand your problem.
CF: Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about phobias, I don’t know that I have any specific phobias but I get a lot of people messaging me who do. And is that something that’s easier to handle? Easier for you to address because it’s isolated and it’s tangible and you can see it right there, and it maybe does relate to a specific time that one bad thing happened, like with Charlene maybe she’s afraid of eating nuts in case she chokes or something.
ST: Yeah it’s another good question. In many cases phobias can be cleared in one therapy session, but it’s also if a phobia happens very young and it’s unresolved it can start affecting other areas in your life because trauma begets trauma.
So because you’ve a vulnerable neurochemical landscape something else might affect you, you’re more prone for another situation affecting you, then another affecting you, then another affecting you. So there can be a phobia but there can also then be panic attacks or social anxiety or some sleep problems, because the cortisol is too high, because there’s a lot of unresolved stuff going on. So if it’s just very isolated like a phobia–like I’ve worked with many people with phobias and they come in and it’s literally one or two sessions, it’s gone.
Then other people come in and there’s a phobia but there’s also a dozen other things going on, and you start digging a bit further with them and they’re not sleeping great, they’re feeling some unresolved anger or grief, they’re not functioning to their full potential, there’s other stuff going on. So if it is just a phobia they have it can be cleared within one or two sessions and you’re looking for that EMLI again.
CF: Okay what’s that again?
ST: Events, Meaning, Landscape and Inescapability.
CF: And do you think EMLI is something that people can take from this podcast and try and think about themselves with their own if they had a bad memory?
ST: Well when clients first come in to see me I often look for EMLI, because I just don’t want to treat the symptoms. And that’s a big mistake that I find that’s happening with a lot of people who come in to me, they’ve done a lot of therapy, they’re sitting with therapists and they’re looking at symptoms, and the therapist is not really pinpointing and identifying what’s causing and getting to the root of it.
CF: Is there always a cause and a root?
ST: The majority of the time yes. The vast majority of the time there’s always at least one memory, it’s rare that there isn’t, mostly every single time, the challenge sometimes is finding it.
CF: Do you think a lot of it goes back to childhood?
ST: Well we know when you look at Adverse Childhood Effects that’s ACEs They’re called that’s in academic literature on trauma and anxiety therapy.
And there is a correlation that the more adverse childhood effects a child experiences in early life there’s a higher probability that they’ll have an anxiety based issue.
We know for example that if you grow up with someone that has a drinking problem, an alcoholic when you were a child, there’s a higher probability that you’re going to have some sort of anxiety based issue, there’s correlations there through research on that.
CF: Okay. So when somebody comes in to you they can expect that they’re going to go back in time and probably try to explore and uncover things that maybe they don’t think are relevant but actually to you they are very obviously.
ST: Yes, and it’s very easy to pin point if it’s relevant or not, because if they have a memory and they’ve buried it away or they don’t look at and they think oh I’m fine but I don’t need to look at that, all I have to say to them is ‘close your eyes, go back to that memory and vividly remember it, see what you saw, remember what you heard, and really go to the worst part of that memory’.
If there’s an encoding in the amygdala there they’re going to start feeling uncomfortable within seconds, emotions will start to come up.
And we’ll scale it on a scale of zero to ten where are you on that scale.
And sometimes it mightn’t even be that high, it could be like a three or a four, and I might say ‘well what’s that feeling?’ and they go ‘I feel angry’.
And then when I start Havening them because the delta waves–which causes associative processing and frees up the brain and things start to unlock quicker associations. So when we start Havening them it’s like going down a rabbit hole with different memories and emotions that are suppressed and even repressed that come up into their conscious awareness.
So they can start off feeling angry about one thing and then suddenly they go back to something completely different or just really suppressed or shutdown or even forgotten about.
CF: Okay, and would you describe the Havening and the different types of therapy as complimentary to everything else you do in your life to try and help on your anxiety?
ST: Yes it’s this idea of a holistic approach. So if you do some Havening sessions for example it would be good to keep up things, some self-Havening as part of your resiliency or self-care.
CF: But if you do your Havening and then you’re like I’m smashing three double espressos in the morning and you’re still wondering why you’re feeling anxious, like you kind of have to look at the whole picture don’t you?
ST: Yes you’ve got to look at yourself, everyone is an individual and your subjective experience, and yes for some people they can drink one espresso and they’re getting heart palpitations, some people can drink coffee before they go to bed and they’re fine. So it’s about being self-aware and what works for you because different things do work for different people and people respond and react differently to things as well.
Like some people external stressors light them up, sometimes top CEO’s and high performers they enjoy challenges, while another person external stressors and challenges they don’t want them, it literally does stress them. It’s also about looking at your life, what are you doing with your life, are you in a job or a career or living your life doing what you love and loving what you do, and that’s a big part of it, are you fulfilling your potential.
Sometimes you can be in a situation in your life where you’re not happy doing what you’re doing and that’s the problem. So sometimes people come in and they’re feeling anxious about something and they’re trying to get rid of the anxiety, but the problem could be well you’re in a job that you absolutely hate maybe then we need to look at that.
CF: Okay, so you have to be realistic.
ST: Or you’re in a relationship that’s not working. So it’s about being practical and it’s about being able to identify what are the main causes and triggers of the stress and looking at the bigger picture.
CF: Okay, where can people find you?
ST: If they go to my website Hypnotherapy Dublin website stravershypnosis.com that’s my main website, there’s a blog there as well where I giveaway lots of free information and advice.
So just type in Stephen Travers into Google, there’s lots of information there and pages about me or they can call my office as well.
CF: So we could only lightly touch on the theories and the neuroscience of what backs up Havening and everything, but if someone is still thinking oh I don’t know and they want to read more about the research and any sort of proper measurable scientific studies where can they go for that?
ST: You can go to Kings College study on Google, Kings College study Havening, they can also go to the official website Havening.org and there’s white papers there, and go to the research section and there’s lots of white papers around the research and neuroscience.
And even typing Havening into You Tube there’s various videos which talks about Havening as well, there’s one by Tam Johnston, she gives you a lot of the science behind it as well, but Kings College study if you really want to look at the study that would be the one to look at.
CF: Okay, Stephen Travers thank you so much for joining me on Owning It: The Anxiety Podcast.
ST: Thank you Caroline.
Here is the link to listen to the full podcast interview about what Havening is and how it can help with your anxiety. https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/owning-it-what-is-havening-and-how-can-it-help-your-anxiety/id1449728710?i=1000457087836
