Who would have thought 12 months ago (certainly not me!) when I was working in my international business consultancy and flying overseas regularly, at least six times each year to China, that I would now be running a clinical and solution focused hypnotherapy business.
COVID-19 came along in January and suddenly my China/UK work disappeared literally overnight. Serendipity or something similar, that I had decided in September to join the CPHT Leeds Hypnotherapy training course to train as a solution focused hypnotherapist with my sights on having another job to supplement my pension when that time arrived – I’m not there just yet! In fact, training as a hypnotherapist has probably been one of the most important decisions I have ever made.
Last year I had a health scare with suspected lung cancer following a scan which was diagnosed shortly before the hypnotherapy training course started. The consultant decided to wait for a further three months to see if the white matter in my lung grew before doing a biopsy. During this time I had started my hypnotherapy training and from the first month of the training course, we had to give family and friends hypnotherapy relaxation sessions each week. Not only did I manage to help family and friends but it also helped me relax as well with my worry about having lung cancer. Thankfully, I didn’t have lung cancer.
I was back in China again mid-December and am pretty sure (in hindsight) that I caught Coronavirus. Temperature, coughing, exhaustion and all the rest which lasted on and off for about 8 weeks and resulted in me being given long-term antibiotics. Then came lockdown on the 23rd of March.
I was anxious, there’s no doubt about it, like most of the population, but I continued to practise hypnotherapy online. Without any doubt helped my anxiety during this time as well as the anxiety of my clients.
The pandemic caused China business to die but it cleared the way for me to focus on my hypnotherapy training, to finish my portfolio, and develop my new hypnotherapy business, Jo Fisher Hypnotherapy. I qualified last month, web-site finished and live, social media pages in place, and now I am just putting the finishing touches to my consulting room ready for face-to-face clients.
Strangely I enjoyed lockdown – it has been the longest period of time for me without traveling overseas for probably the last 35 years of my career. It gave me the opportunity to reflect and relax and to also study hard. I have enjoyed being ‘at home’ and I seem to have saved lots of money at the same time – bonus!
Of course, lockdown has now finished and we are encouraged to ‘go back to work’. And although I am excited about the freedom after all these weeks, I have been feeling a little bit anxious about coming into that big wide world.
The mind doesn’t like change and it can be seen as a threat. Lockdown itself was a big change but actually most people, once they got used to the change, enjoyed the slowdown in their lives. Although it’s exciting now we are emerging, our mind automatically goes back into survival mode and as this happens, we can operate within the primitive parameters of depression, anxiety, and anger or a combination of all three. Remember that we should be kind to ourselves and do things at our pace in order that we feel comfortable.
Here are a few tips to help you to beat any anxiety that you may have emerging from your cocoon.
Focus on the 3P’s – positive interaction, positive action, and positive thinking …..
- Meet your friends and family (social distancing of course!)
- Keep active – running, walking, tennis
- Get as much sleep as you can and try to get into a regular pattern
- Focus on everything positive
- Focus on the solution, not the problem
