How is stress different from being busy?

Being busy is about your schedule. Stress is your nervous system's response to feeling like the demands on you exceed your capacity to cope. Although there is a link between having a lot to do and feeling stressed, you can be busy without being stressed, and stressed without being especially busy.

How can Hypnotherapy help if my stress is caused by things I can't change, like work or family circumstances?

While Hypnotherapy can't directly change your external circumstances, it can change how your nervous system responds to them- building greater capacity and resilience, so the same pressures feel more manageable. This work can also help you respond better to your situation- making sound decisions, enforcing healthy boundaries, meeting your own needs, advocating for yourself, creating meaning and purpose, and having a healthy relationship with yourself- all of these can positively influence your external circumstances too.

Can stress affect my physical health?

Chronic stress can affect the immune and hormonal systems, contribute to muscular tension and pain, and is associated with a wide range of physical symptoms including fatigue, digestive issues, headaches and disrupted sleep. Over time, chronic stress may also contribute to health problems, particularly when combined with other risk factors.

Is stress a mental health condition?

No, stress isn’t classified as a mental health condition. In fact, we all need a certain amount of stress- for example, exercising, travelling, meeting people, and learning anything new all involves some (healthy) stress. And we can cope with short term unwanted stress if we have the capacity. The problem is when the stress response remains activated for too long without adequate recovery- that's when stress can become chronic and begin to affect our physical and emotional wellbeing.

What are the signs of stress?

Common signs you are under too much stress include- headaches, jaw tension, sore shoulders and back, digestive issues, sleep problems, feeling like you can’t relax, overthinking, irritability, feeling overwhelmed.

Why do I feel stressed even when nothing is going wrong?

When you have been under pressure without the tools to adequately cope with demand, even the little things can feel too much. A nervous system that's been under sustained pressure can stay on high alert even once the original stressor has passed. This doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you- it's a learned pattern that can be updated, and the feeling of load can be put down, given the right conditions.

London Cognitive Hypnotherapy for Stress & Burnout | Online UK

Everybody experiences stress- and indeed some types of stress are essential for growth, such as exercise or learning a new skill.

But stress can also be extremely harmful when it is perceived as too demanding and exceeding our tolerance. In fact, stress can have significant effects on physical and mental wellbeing, particularly when it becomes chronic.

Stress can manifest physically, emotionally and mentally, creating worry, insomnia, pain, tension, irritability, a feeling of overwhelm, and an inability to think clearly- all of which can cause more stress. It can be a negative, vicious cycle, and extremely unpleasant to be caught up in.

Stress, burnout and the nervous system

When stress becomes chronic, the body can remain in a state of heightened activation, with ongoing changes in stress physiology that can affect sleep, mood, energy and physical wellbeing.

Over time, chronic stress can affect the body in significant ways, partly through the close relationship between the endocrine, nervous and immune systems. Addressing chronic stress can therefore have benefits that go beyond simply feeling calmer.

Burnout is what happens when chronic stress runs for too long without adequate recovery. Where stress feels like too much, burnout often feels like nothing- you may feel demotivated, unable to find meaning, and find it hard to care about things.

If burnout resonates more than stress for you, please mention this in our clarity call.

How I work with stress and burnout

Cognitive Hypnotherapy Cognitive Hypnotherapy can help you explore unconscious patterns and emotional responses that may be contributing to stress, as well as develop healthier ways to manage it.

Developing a greater capacity to tolerate distress can make it easier to cope with external factors that are causing you stress, helping you feel more resilient, balanced and able to think clearly.

TRE can help release physical tension and give the body an opportunity to regulate after periods of stress. Many people find it a useful self help tool, and once learned, it can be practised independently at home.

Being stressed also affects our breathing, causing us to breathe too fast and too shallow. When this becomes a habit, it can make us more stressed- leading to a further vicious cycle. Buteyko Breathing can help to modify unhelpful breathing patterns, which some people find useful for reducing physical symptoms of stress and developing a greater sense of ease.

Other forms of Somatic Therapy such as Havening, EFT, and Impulse Completion can also be used to work with physical tension, emotional responses and stress-related patterns.

Together these approaches form part of the wider Breath Body Mind Method - addressing stress from every angle rather than relying on any single technique.

Stress is also closely connected to anxiety, insomnia and chronic pain — and addressing one can have a positive ripple effect across all of them.

If you would like individualised 1:1 support, you can explore that here.

If you’d like to start with a ready-to-go recording, you can check out the selection of hypnotherapy audios here in my Shop.

Book a free call

"I have benefitted greatly from my sessions with Ella- she has a lovely calm bedside manner and the tools she has armed me with are now having a positive effect on so many areas of my life."

Being busy is about your schedule. Stress is your nervous system's response to feeling like the demands on you exceed your capacity to cope.
Although there is a link between having a lot to do and feeling stressed, you can be busy without being stressed, and stressed without being especially busy.
While Hypnotherapy can't directly change your external circumstances, it can change how your nervous system responds to them- building greater capacity and resilience, so the same pressures feel more manageable.
This work can also help you respond better to your situation- making sound decisions, enforcing healthy boundaries, meeting your own needs, advocating for yourself, creating meaning and purpose, and having a healthy relationship with yourself- all of these can positively influence your external circumstances too.
Chronic stress can affect the immune and hormonal systems, contribute to muscular tension and pain, and is associated with a wide range of physical symptoms including fatigue, digestive issues, headaches and disrupted sleep.
Over time, chronic stress may also contribute to health problems, particularly when combined with other risk factors.

No, stress isn’t classified as a mental health condition.
In fact, we all need a certain amount of stress- for example, exercising, travelling, meeting people, and learning anything new all involves some (healthy) stress. And we can cope with short term unwanted stress if we have the capacity.
The problem is when the stress response remains activated for too long without adequate recovery- that's when stress can become chronic and begin to affect our physical and emotional wellbeing.
Common signs you are under too much stress include- headaches, jaw tension, sore shoulders and back, digestive issues, sleep problems, feeling like you can’t relax, overthinking, irritability, feeling overwhelmed.
When you have been under pressure without the tools to adequately cope with demand, even the little things can feel too much.
A nervous system that's been under sustained pressure can stay on high alert even once the original stressor has passed.
This doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you- it's a learned pattern that can be updated, and the feeling of load can be put down, given the right conditions.