What is anxiety and how does it affect your daily life?
Anxiety is often misunderstood, and dismissed as worrying or overthinking, but according to evolutionary psychology, it goes a lot deeper. Dr. Walter Cannon identified the fight-flight response as a subconscious primal survival mechanism that activates when you face a threat - If you can eat it, fight it; If it can eat you, run away! Your sympathetic nervous system increases your heart rate, releases adrenaline, and directs blood flow away from the organs and brain, into the limbs to maximize physical strength. This is not a clear state of mind for making good decisions, because your brain’s oxygen has been diverted to your muscles so that you can run fast or throw things. It’s also not a good time for digestion, because although your body is demanding energy, it’s quicker to convert fat than digest food, so your organs are busy preparing glucose for your muscles from your fat reserves, not from your stomach. (This explains the nausea.) All animals have this fight-flight response, and after the threat passes, the parasympathetic nervous system returns the body to homeostasis. Everything goes back to normal and the animal carries on eating grass as if nothing happened - but modern human problems are not that simple.
In his book “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers”, Dr. Robert Sapolsky reveals our dilemma: wild animals can go in and out of fight-flight several times a day without any long term stress, because their environment gives them plenty of space and time to rest and recover after a stress event. Our human fight-flight mechanism is inhibited by social pressure because animal behavior is not acceptable, but our lives are full of stress events - abusive relationships, crossing the road in traffic, being shouted at by your boss - a zebra living in our environment would be terrified all the time! Many people live in fight-flight mode, because the mechanism can’t shut down until the threat goes away. Evolutionary psychology tells us that if we suppress fight-flight, we don’t rest and recover after a stress event, so it escalates into anxiety or collapses into depression. It’s an understanding, not for any clinical conditions, but for many of our daily problems like insomnia - we can’t sleep when we’re in fight-flight; smoking - which gives temporary relief even though it actually makes everything worse; exacerbated phobias and fears, and low self-esteem - because constantly being in fight-flight makes us feel persecuted and our confidence suffers.
How does Andrew’s anxiety treatment bring you calm?
Anxiety and depression may have the same cause, but they are opposite physiological states, and require opposite interventions. For the depressed state, positive affirmations provide motivation to re-engage, but in the anxious state where the system is overactivated, affirmations may increase the feeling of being overwhelmed. My treatment for de-escalating fight-flight and reducing anxiety is meditation for you to self-regulate, and addressing the cause, which provides the space for you to return to a calm state. A 2024 study published in JAMA Network Open found Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction as effective as escitalopram, a common anti-anxiety medication, for treating anxiety disorders. Mindfulness is the most extensively researched form of meditation - observing thoughts and sensations without judgment. Research on Transcendental Meditation (TM) since the 1970s shows that regular practice decreases cortisol levels (stress) and stimulates Alpha brain activity. Alpha is a calm state of wakeful relaxation where your brain rate is 8-12Hz, whereas anxiety is characterized by erratic brain activity and high Beta, 18-40Hz. Dr. Joseph Wolpe’s principle of “reciprocal inhibition” means you cannot be in two opposite physiological states simultaneously, so if your meditation technique is effective, your brain will maintain the Alpha frequency, and you feel calm.
I learned TM in my 20s and became interested in brain states, and neuroscience, particularly psychoacoustics - the studying of the effect that certain sound frequencies have on brain states. I started creating brainwave entrainment soundtracks for my hypnotherapy practice in 2010. These soundtracks guide your brain from everyday Beta activity, through Alpha (8-12Hz calm awareness), into Theta (4-8Hz deep subconscious access) — the same brainwave pattern that occurs naturally during deep meditation and just before sleep, where subconscious reprogramming is most effective. I have found these soundtracks tremendously effective, not only in facilitating hypnosis in my clients but also reducing their anxiety. I currently use a soundtrack that I designed in 2025, for all my hypnotherapy sessions. For anxiety this is essential because learning to meditate requires patience, guidance, and consistency, and this is not realistic for someone who is anxious. Most people give up learning to meditate before realizing the benefit, but as my client, you have free access to The Soul Sanctuary, where you can download any soundtrack to support your work. “Assisted Meditation” is a guided meditation soundtrack to help you get started, and it’s also very helpful for going to sleep.
Meditation is the mechanism to de-escalate fight-flight, but in our sessions we also address the cause - a situation or difficult relationship, toxic work environment, boundary violation, or combination of circumstances that’s causing your anxiety. I provide practical counseling on how to handle these situations: standing up for yourself, setting boundaries, protecting your emotional energy, and developing the confidence to advocate for your needs. Meditation takes you out of fight-flight by helping you observe your thoughts with a non-judgmental attitude, developing non-attachment; and counseling hypnotherapy helps you imagine resolving situations in a state of calm power, and guides you in rehearsing your solutions in that safe environment. Hypnotherapy resolves the trigger that is pushing you to go into the fight-flight state, and meditation builds the skills to remain in your calm detachment state. Many clients discover their anxiety is connected to other areas needing work — insomnia from racing thoughts at night, stress-eating patterns, smoking to manage social anxiety, confidence, self-worth, relationship dynamics, or career decisions. In your sessions we look at underlying concerns as they emerge, and methodically work through what needs to shift for you to keep calm and thrive.
What happens in an anxiety treatment session with Andrew?
Sessions are between one and two hours depending on your booking preference, but your first session is two hours to give us time to talk about what’s concerning you, and leave enough time for hypnosis. We always start with a conversation to review where you are in life - sleep quality, eating habits and nutrition, exercise, and meditation practice. In your first session we take about ninety minutes looking at your situation and what’s happening in your life, any medication you’re talking, what’s holding you back and causing your anxiety, any trauma you’ve experienced, and identify practical solutions: how you can stand up for yourself, set boundaries, protect your emotional energy, advocate for your needs. This conversation gives me the material I need to create your personalized hypnosis script, which is specific to your situation.
Hypnosis takes between twenty and thirty minutes. You’re relaxing in a comfortable space at home with the psychoacoustic soundtrack and my voice streaming through your headphones. Video allows me to read your body language and adjust my pacing to focus on what relaxes you. You can communicate any time but most people don’t feel the need. The combination of Alpha-inducing soundtrack and my voice guiding you take you into a daydreaming state, deeply relaxed but still aware. Your body relaxes more than usual, your shoulders and chest soften, and your breathing become deeper and slower. That change in breathing tells me that you’re in the Alpha state, and I begin the meditation training by suggesting a perspective shift that allows you to step back and observe your thoughts without judgment.
With practice, you develop a resting attitude when you meditate. Every thought that comes up, you choose this attitude: “I’m resting” - you let go of your thoughts, and cultivate detachment. At first this feels wrong, because we were taught that you can’t just let your thoughts trail off, that’s irresponsible! But that’s exactly what happens when you fall asleep. Meditation is the awareness that you are resting from thinking. And pretty soon this feels really good, peaceful, not doing anything. Many people describe this as the most calm they’ve felt in a long time. After a few minutes, I guide you in rehearsing the solutions we discussed — imagining standing up for yourself or setting boundaries - this is where the meditation and counseling work together - using the meditation to keep you grounded while you practice these new responses. I bring you out of hypnosis about five minutes before the end of the session and we talk about your experience.
How many hypnotherapy sessions will you need to feel more calm?
The first step is learning how to de-activate the fight-flight alarm - and most of my clients with anxiety say they feel noticeably calmer after the first session. But it will take at least three sessions (three weeks) for you to feel the calming effect of your meditations in your daily life, if you use the training soundtrack every day. If you already know a meditation method, this will help deactivate the alarm. The second step is to change the situation that was activating the alarm in the first place. Even if your anxiety is being activated by a recent reaction to current stress, like a work situation or a relationship, that can take time to change. Or there may be old relationship patterns or traumas that need to heal in order for you to make healthy choices about bosses or partners.
The constant among all these variables is that the effect of hypnotherapy is cumulative - each session builds on the positive experiences from the previous session. The scientific term for this is neuroplasticity - your brain can “rewire itself” to maintain calm and return to homeostasis more easily after stress events. Famously, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, in his book Psycho-Cybernetics from 1960, observed that it takes at least 21 days (three weeks) to create a new habit, while the more recent Landmark Study from 2009 found it was closer to 66 days. The secret to making neuroplasticity work for you is repetition - the more your mind feels calm and in control, the more your brain will remember how to hold that state. The meditation gives you the calm foundation to make these changes, and making these changes removes the triggers that activate your fight-flight response. Both aspects reinforce each other.
Is Andrew’s hypnotherapy anxiety treatment effective?
Yes, hypnotherapy is highly effective for treating anxiety, and there’s substantial research backing this. A comprehensive 2024 research review published in Frontiers in Psychology examined 20 years of hypnotherapy research and found results comparable to established psychological interventions, with particularly strong findings for anxiety disorders. More recently, a 2025 review of 20 studies involving 1,250 people found that hypnosis significantly reduced anxiety, with minimal adverse effects. In my practice, 99% of my clients report feeling a reduction in their anxiety during the first session. That immediate shift gives a person who may have hesitated a sense of confidence that this approach is going to work for them. The effectiveness comes from addressing anxiety at the subconscious level where it actually operates. As we discussed, 90% of your behavior is subconscious, and anxiety is a chronic fight-flight response running automatically at that level. Hypnotherapy accesses the subconscious patterns directly rather than trying to override them with the 10% conscious willpower. What makes my approach particularly effective is the combination of meditation training to de-escalate the fight-flight response, counseling in hypnosis to address the situations triggering your anxiety, and psychoacoustic soundtracks that make the meditation accessible even when you’re anxious.
The two core components of my approach (meditation training and psychoacoustic soundtracks) both have substantial research backing. A comprehensive review of 47 studies with 3,320 participants found that mindfulness meditation programs produced improvements in anxiety after 8 weeks. For psychoacoustic sound therapy, a 2024 systematic review examining 12 studies found that binaural beats, whether used as pure beats or masked by natural sounds, showed better results in alleviating anxiety and depression symptoms compared to control conditions. Research published in 2025 found that theta binaural beats (4-8 Hz) have consistently been demonstrated to evoke a relaxation response for anxiety reduction, while alpha frequencies (8-12 Hz) support the calm, wakeful meditation state shown in TM research. The soundtracks I’ve been creating since 2010 use both frequency ranges — theta for deep relaxation during hypnotic sessions, and alpha for meditation training and daily practice between sessions. This combination addresses anxiety through both de-escalation of fight-flight (theta) and maintenance of calm awareness (alpha). Online hypnotherapy is particularly effective because of these psychoacoustic soundtracks - the work happens in your mind, regardless of location. Many of my clients who struggle with anxiety actually prefer online treatment because they can relax at home without the stress of commuting.
What results can you expect from Andrew’s anxiety treatment?
Your sleep will improve after your first session as a result of the combination of hypnotherapy and the meditation soundtrack that you can download and listen to while going to sleep. Most people describe their first session as finally being able to let go and rest for the first time in months. Sleep is a natural cure for anxiety, and when your sleep improves you start noticing improvements elsewhere. Within the first three weeks you can expect improvement in mental clarity, as well as physical changes - the tightness in your chest eases and you find yourself taking deeper breaths, your shoulders drop more easily and your jaw and facial muscles soften. This is mostly as a result of the daily meditations, which also have the benefit of helping you catch yourself thinking stress thoughts for no reason, or you pause and recognize a negative scenario building, and let it go.
The combination of hypnotherapy sessions and daily practice works holistically to create results that you can sustain, based on new skills and mindset. You become more productive because your thinking is clearer and you make more intentional choices. As the treatment develops over three to nine weeks, you resolve the causes and triggers that kept you in fight-flight mode, and you are empowered to move out of stressful situations or stop taking on other people’s stress. Your life starts to change - It might be accepting more social invitations that you previously would have felt anxious about, or you develop the skills to communicate effectively and finally have those difficult conversations you were avoiding. You become clearer about your boundaries but also more patient and tolerant, and kinder with yourself and others. The negative self-talk changes to calm observation, and trusting yourself.