How Hypnotherapy and Solution Focused Psychotherapy can help you with your hair loss worries?
We can spend many hours and many pounds on our hair, deliberating over a new hair cut, trying different shampoos, conditioners, styling products and colours. It is the way we express our identity to the world, whether we wear it long or short, curly or straight, how we treat that crowning glory says something about how we want to be seen.
Stress induced hair loss
So it is obviously distressing when your hair begins to fall out for no apparent reason. To find out what is causing the problem you need to visit a trichologist such as Shuna Hammocks. However, it seems that there is a link with stress for some types of hair loss, such as Alopecia areata, so reducing those stress levels is a very good idea, whether you have a healthy head of hair or are beginning to notice some hair loss.
Fight, flight, freeze or fake it
When we are very tense or stressed most days, the body is in an almost constant “fight or flight” mode. This equips us for dealing with a crisis, so the body focuses on sending blood to the muscles for the fight or for fleeing. Other processes like the immune system, digestion, higher level thinking, are all put on hold as unnecessary for instant survival in a do-or-die situation. Likewise, the body considers it is not important to grow more hair, you might be eaten by a hungry tiger any moment now! This can result in Telogen effluvium when the hair follicles go into a resting phase and within a few months you notice your hair falling out with none to replace it.
When you are suffering from chronic stress, hypnotherapy is an extremely effective way of reviewing your work/life balance, confidence and beliefs. With solution-focused conversations, we can find some positive strategies to help you feel more at ease and energised, and with hypnosis, we can adjust some of the outdated ideas you might discover are holding you back from confidently saying no to others’ demands, and stopping to from relaxing. We might also address diet, exercise, working and social aspects of your life.
If you are suffering from hair loss that might be attributed to chronic stress, then hypnotherapy can help to find a more confident attitude as well as relaxing you deeply and teaching you how to relax yourself. Once you are back in a healthy balance with your life, then your body processes will work more normally, and so normal hair growth is more likely to return as does other processes that get knocked out of kilter when we are habitually tense, processes such as sleep, digestion and thinking styles.
Tearing your hair out
Anxiety can cause some people to adopt habits that result in hair loss, such as Trichotillomania. This is when there is an irresistible urge to pull out hair from your scalp, eyebrows or other areas of your body. Hair pulling seems to be a way to deal with negative or less comfortable feelings, often associated with stress, loneliness or boredom. It becomes the mind’s short cut away from those feelings, but the results lead to further unhappiness as the effects of the habit become obvious. People with this condition often try to hide the effects and sometimes stop going out in public as they feel so ashamed of how they look.
Hypnotherapy can help to uncover the trigger for the pattern of behaviour and change the habit to find a better way of dealing with the uncomfortable thoughts or feelings and allow the hair to grow back once your arms and fingers relax and find something better to do.
The important message is that stress and hair loss do not have to be a permanent part of your life, you can learn to get your stress under control and really get good at feeling confident and relaxed. When that happens, there’s a good change your hair might grow back.
Call Nicola on 01777819075 if you would like to find out whether hypnotherapy and solution focused psychotherapy would help you with your anxiety or to change habits.
