Debate has raged for years among psychologists about whether the hypnotic state really exists. 

Doubters have argued that when a person is ‘hypnotised’, they are actually fully conscious, but are seeing certain mental imagery because the hypnotist has tricked their mind.

However, researchers from the Universities of Turku and Aalto in Finland and Sweden’s University of Skövde, have found evidence for the hypnotic state by studying a volunteer’s glazed staring eyes.

We all associate being hypnotised with a glazed over look, but paradoxically, this has never been seen as significant by scientists and has never been studied in any detail – until now.

Part of the reason for this is that a genuine glazed look is only seen in some hypnotised people.

The study findings were published in journal PLoS ONE, and came about from observing a highly hypnotisable person, who could be hypnotised and dehypnotised by just using a one-word cue.

This meant the change between hypnotic state and normal state could be varied in seconds.

They found that the glazed stare was accompanied by objectively measurable changes in automatic, reflexive eye behaviour that could not be imitated by non-hypnotised participants.

Significantly, in the field of hypnosis research this result means that hypnosis can no longer be regarded as mental imagery that takes place during a totally normal waking state of consciousness.

The researchers believe that it may be the first evidence of the existence of a conscious state in humans that has previously not been scientifically confirmed.

If you want more information about hypnosis and learn what it can be used for, simply click on the link below.

Click Here - What is Hypnosis?

Not all stress can be avoided, and it’s not healthy to avoid a situation that needs to be addressed. You may be surprised, however, by the number of stressors in your life that you can eliminate.

Learn how to say “no” – Know your limits and stick to them. Whether in your personal or professional life, refuse to accept added responsibilities when you’re close to reaching them. Taking on more than you can handle is a surefire recipe for stress.

Avoid people who stress you out – If someone consistently causes stress in your life and you can’t turn the relationship around, limit the amount of time you spend with that person or end the relationship entirely. 

Take control of your environment – If the evening news makes you anxious, turn the TV off. If traffic’s got you tense, take a longer but less-traveled route. If going to the market is an unpleasant chore, do your grocery shopping online.

Avoid hot-button topics – If you get upset over religion or politics, cross them off your conversation list. If you repeatedly argue about the same subject with the same people, stop bringing it up or excuse yourself when it’s the topic of discussion.

Pare down your to-do list – Analyze your schedule, responsibilities, and daily tasks. If you’ve got too much on your plate, distinguish between the “shoulds” and the “musts.” Drop tasks that aren’t truly necessary to the bottom of the list or eliminate them entirely.

Stress management strategy #2: Alter the situation

If you can’t avoid a stressful situation, try to alter it. Figure out what you can do to change things so the problem doesn’t present itself in the future. Often, this involves changing the way you communicate and operate in your daily life.

Express your feelings instead of bottling them up. If something or someone is bothering you, communicate your concerns in an open and respectful way. If you don’t voice your feelings, resentment will build and the situation will likely remain the same.

Be willing to compromise. When you ask someone to change their behavior, be willing to do the same. If you both are willing to bend at least a little, you’ll have a good chance of finding a happy middle ground.

Be more assertive. Don’t take a backseat in your own life. Deal with problems head on, doing your best to anticipate and prevent them. If you’ve got an exam to study for and your chatty roommate just got home, say up front that you only have five minutes to talk.

Manage your time better. Poor time management can cause a lot of stress. When you’re stretched too thin and running behind, it’s hard to stay calm and focused. But if you plan ahead and make sure you don’t overextend yourself, you can alter the amount of stress you’re under.

Stress management strategy #3: Adapt to the stressor

If you can’t change the stressor, change yourself. You can adapt to stressful situations and regain your sense of control by changing your expectations and attitude.

Reframe problems. Try to view stressful situations from a more positive perspective. Rather than fuming about a traffic jam, look at it as an opportunity to pause and regroup, listen to your favorite radio station, or enjoy some alone time.

Look at the big picture. Take perspective of the stressful situation. Ask yourself how important it will be in the long run. Will it matter in a month? A year? Is it really worth getting upset over? If the answer is no, focus your time and energy elsewhere.

Adjust your standards. Perfectionism is a major source of avoidable stress. Stop setting yourself up for failure by demanding perfection. Set reasonable standards for yourself and others, and learn to be okay with “good enough.”

Focus on the positive. When stress is getting you down, take a moment to reflect on all the things you appreciate in your life, including your own positive qualities and gifts. This simple strategy can help you keep things in perspective.

Stress management strategy #4: Accept the things you can’t change

Some sources of stress are unavoidable. You can’t prevent or change stressors such as the death of a loved one, a serious illness, or a national recession. In such cases, the best way to cope with stress is to accept things as they are. Acceptance may be difficult, but in the long run, it’s easier than railing against a situation you can’t change.

Don’t try to control the uncontrollable. Many things in life are beyond our control— particularly the behavior of other people. Rather than stressing out over them, focus on the things you can control such as the way you choose to react to problems.

Look for the upside. As the saying goes, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” When facing major challenges, try to look at them as opportunities for personal growth. If your own poor choices contributed to a stressful situation, reflect on them and learn from your mistakes.

Share your feelings. Talk to a trusted friend or make an appointment with a therapist. Expressing what you’re going through can be very cathartic, even if there’s nothing you can do to alter the stressful situation.

Learn to forgive. Accept the fact that we live in an imperfect world and that people make mistakes. Let go of anger and resentments. Free yourself from negative energy by forgiving and moving on.

Stress management strategy #5: Make time for fun and relaxation

Beyond a take-charge approach and a positive attitude, you can reduce stress in your life by nurturing yourself. If you regularly make time for fun and relaxation, you’ll be in a better place to handle life’s stressors when they inevitably come.

Set aside relaxation time. Include rest and relaxation in your daily schedule. Don’t allow other obligations to encroach. This is your time to take a break from all responsibilities and recharge your batteries.

Connect with others. Spend time with positive people who enhance your life. A strong support system will buffer you from the negative effects of stress.

Do something you enjoy every day. Make time for leisure activities that bring you joy, whether it be stargazing, playing the piano, or working on your bike.

Keep your sense of humor. This includes the ability to laugh at yourself. The act of laughing helps your body fight stress in a number of ways. 

Coping with stress

One of the first steps to cope with stress is learning to recognise your personal signs and symptoms. The way you function on a daily basis may change, or you may notice a difference in your body (such as tense shoulders), thinking, or general sense of wellbeing. Is the cause for your stress a real threat? Or is something causing needless worry in your life?

Stress is part of life but we don't need to compound our problems by putting ourselves down and thinking irrational thoughts such as "nobody gets stressed out like I do". We're not weak or neurotic because we're stressed – we're stressed because we're human. Blaming ourselves or doling out negative thoughts as self-imposed punishment is a waste of energy.

Approaching stress constructively

It can be tempting to hide from the people, places and tasks which make life difficult. By removing yourself from the situation, it's possible to find immediate relief – but the sources of stress will never go away unless we confront them.

If avoiding stress triggers isn't a good technique for dealing with stress, what is? Life experience teaches us that whenever we need to master a new skill – learning to swim, giving a public presentation, taking risks in front of others – it pays to take a deep breath, perhaps grit our teeth and get on with things. Most of the time, it all works out.

Positive confrontation is a good coping skill when faced with stress. Instead of avoiding a difficult boss, why not take every opportunity to work in his or her presence? Throwing ourselves in at the deep end until we master it is one way to desensitise ourselves to the people, places and work we find stressful. Taking action is good for our basic wellbeing too.

Another approach to tackling stress head-on is to keep tabs on our stress while we're working. Logging the time of day, situation, how strong feelings of stress were, how you coped and how stressed you felt afterwards can be a useful tool for some people. This can give us an accurate idea of when and where we get anxious, and what coping skills work for us in certain situations.

Another way to take action on stress is to control the body and mind. Self-relaxation leading up to stressful times (as well as afterwards) and positive self-talk ("I have the skills to do this job well", "I've done this a dozen times before") are excellent skills to have. Sometimes our perceptions of a situation may be inaccurate – interpretations of an event or situation may be more negative when we're down or dissatisfied.

It's possible to test our perceptions. Keeping a record (as recommended above) can be one way to get a fresh view of a situation. Also, we can label the strong, stressful emotions we're feeling as either positive or negative. So, before the next bout of stage fright, try calling it "excitement" and see what happens.

Enduring, mastering (and surviving) what life throws at us, and converting stress into a positive force, is a lifelong challenge. Everyone needs a certain amount of stress – it's what gets us out of bed in the morning – but remember to be gentle with yourself. 

The jungle is teeming with creepy-crawlies – and if you've got an insect phobia, it's not a good place to be.

Nevertheless, the Australian jungle is exactly where TV nutritionist Gillian McKeith chose to go to take part in I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, despite having not only a phobia of insects but also fears of water, heights and rats.

Her utter terror when in the presence of "anything that moves" has led to the sadistic British public repeatedly voting for her to face bushtucker trials, which often involve braving insect-related tasks to win food.

As a result, the You Are What You Eat presenter has passed out and been revived with oxygen several times.

So why did she agree to go on the show at all? ITV said celebrities are always asked about fears and phobias before entering the jungle, and are made aware of the nature of the challenges they'll face.

Before the show started, Gillian admitted: "I have had a serious phobia of anything that moves since I was a child.

"I am very together as a person but when I see anything that moves, something takes over me.

"It's involuntary and irrational but I am terrified."

The 51-year-old said she had nightmares about what would happen on the show and did deep breathing exercises to help cope.

Before she went, she said: "I feel like I need a rest. From what I understand, it will be peaceful and relaxing, rather than the crazy madness I am used to."

Clearly underestimating the number of insects she was about to face, she added: "I am hoping I will have an ally in the camp who can get rid of them. I don't want to kill them – just get them away from me."

Hypnotherapist Dominic Knight, an expert in treating people with phobias, suggests Gillian may have thought the show would help her face her fears.

He said: "In her mind, she might have thought she could get through it, but she misjudged herself. When she finally got there, the nerves, the cameras and her reputation have all been contributing factors.

"Anyone would feel uncomfortable in there but not to the level of passing out. Fainting because of a phobia is very rare.

"The intensity of her fear must have been astronomical for that to happen."

Knight, who practices in Harley Street, London, said Gillian and the UK's 10million other phobics work themselves up into an intense state of fear.

He said: "They're afraid of how they're going to respond, as opposed to the thing itself."

Those who want to overcome their fears need to really want to do it, said Dominic.

He promises even those who've had phobias for decades can beat them by creating a positive association in the brain with whatever it is they're scared of.

He recently worked with an arachnophobe who burst into tears if a spider was in the room.

He got her to giggle at the thought of what she was doing. She can now take spiders outside by putting a glass over them.

Dominic said: "Instead of people working themselves up into sheer terror, they need to work themselves up into pleasure or happiness.

"If they keep doing that and reinforcing it, it becomes automatic."

Dominic has dealt with all kinds of phobias, ranging from common ones such as a fear of public speaking and fear of flying, to the more bizarre.

He helped a man in Hollywood who couldn't even be in the same room as cheese.

But by creating positive associations and making the man see how ridiculous his reaction was, he was soon able to pick cheese up without a problem.

"We all have a mechanism within us that allows us to overcome our fears," he said.

Your thought or association doesn't have to be real, added Dominic, but could even be a superhero for example.

He said: "If you think about it, the fear isn't real either."

As most fears are learned, overcoming a phobia is often a case of re-learning how to respond.

The only fears we're born with, Dominic said, are the fears of falling and of loud noises.

Triggers for phobias can sometimes be a bad experience, such as being bitten by a dog, or a subconscious association.

Such an association might be a person being frightened of driving on motorways, not realizing it is because they once had a very stressful job which involved motorway driving, so they've associated the stress with the motorway.

In this type of situation, people need to think about a time when they used to perform the task with no problem.

There are, of course, normal fear responses to certain situations – such as when you're faced with a pack of snarling dogs.

The difference between a normal response and a phobia is that the phobic will play the scene in their mind over and over again, working themselves up about what could happen.

Dominic said: "They are doing it themselves. It's all self-inflicted."

Dominic insisted that anyone can overcome a phobia – although he points out that Gillian may need support.

He said: "The fear was so intense that she may need some help to feel comfortable again because the ramifications of passing out like that can haunt her.

"If she thinks the experience got the better of her and she's going to learn from it, she'll be fine.

"But if she works herself up, her fear's going to be worse."

He said positive thinking is key, and added: "If other people have overcome their phobias, you can too.

"You don't need to learn to live with fear."

Further Help

For more information about hypnosis and to learn how it can be used to help you to successfully overcome your fear visit us at www.gfmhypnosis.co.uk

The quality of the service rendered, plus the quantity of service rendered, plus the mental attitude in which it is rendered, equals your compensation.  The more you give, the more you get.

No individual has ever achieved success without the help and cooperation of others.

The value of gathering together those of a like mind is self-evident.  A group of brains coordinated in a spirit of harmony will provide more thought energy than a single brain, just as a group of electric batteries will provide more energy than a single battery.

 To learn how you can be free from your phobia why not visit us at => www.gfmhypnosis.co.uk