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Now more than ever, scientific investigations are attesting the essential role stress can have in causing and aggravating several physical and emotional afflictions. In the June 6, 1983 issue of Time Magazine, the cover story described stress as "The Epidemic of the Eighties." The journalist also declared that stress is our main health problem. And one has to recognize that our world has become a lot more complicated and stressful over the last two decades since that article was written.

Many surveys show that almost everybody has the impression of being under a great deal of stress. Researchers in the field estimate that between 75 and 90 percent of the visits to primary care physicians are related to stress.

Most people claim their stress is mainly due to their job. And stress levels have also increased in children as well as the elderly population because of several reasons including: Peer pressures that often lead to everything from smoking to drug and alcohol abuse; the wearing away of family and religious values and ties; increased crime rates; fear for personal security; and last but not least social isolation and loneliness.

Stress is a factor of conditions such as diabetes, ulcers, low back and neck pain, high blood pressure, strokes and heart attacks. This is due to the ever growing sympathetic nervous system activity and a high level of cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones. Chronic stress is corollary of weakened immune system resistance. Stress can contribute to anxiety, depression, and its different effects on the body's organs.

The following definition for "stress" can be found in the American Heritage Dictionary: "To subject to physical or mental pressure, tension, or strain"

"Tension" is defined as follows: "Mental, emotional, or nervous strain"

It defines "anxiety" as follows: "A state of uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties"

And the following definition is given for "depression": "The condition of feeling sad or despondent"

The following definition is given for "clinical depression": "A psychiatric disorder characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, loss of appetite, anhedonia, feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness, and thoughts of death."

We can be sure of one thing, our thoughts are the primary source of our feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. We could also say that, what we think about, and our attitudes and the way we view our experiences strongly influence our feelings. So if we can find a way to change our thoughts, attitudes, and points of view, we can be relieved of our feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression and change them for a better state of being.

Since the beginning of time, people have tried to find methods that would allow them to get rid of stress. With the pharmaceutical industry there seems to be a drug for everything. For that the industry has produced a large array of sedatives from Valium to Xanax. If you choose to use these pills for relief, please make sure that you read the fine print and learn about the side effects, which most of the time include addiction and dependency. Indeed these kinds of drugs attempt to cure the symptoms, instead of the cause. So if one stops ingesting them, the symptoms can return.

A smarter way of releasing tension, stress, anxiety, and depression is to treat its actual cause, which as I wrote previously, is generally our thought processes. Here is the good news. Hypnosis is all about relaxing. The AMA accepted hypnosis in 1958 as an effective way to cure stress or stress related symptoms. And unlike drugs, there are completely no undesirable side effects.

When you are in hypnosis, you are in the Alpha level of consciousness. It's the daydream like temporary psychological frame of mind which we experience as we are just about to fall asleep at night. And we experience it once again when we awaken in the morning. There are hundreds of different ways that we can guide ourselves into this condition of tranquility, from progressive relaxation to visual imagery to listening to hypnosis CD's.

Once in a hypnotic state, we are able to interact with our unconscious mind, which is the seat of our emotions. And one can more easily acknowledge new ideas and points of view that can help us to eliminate anxiety, or even avoid it in the first place.

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), which is a recent form of hypnosis, offers various outstanding methods for getting rid of stress. Perhaps the most effective technique is called the "swish" pattern - or the "flash" pattern. When you use this technique, your unconscious will automatically use bad, stress triggering mental pictures, as triggers for tranquilizing mental pictures. Put differently, what generally makes you feel stress will automatically trigger relaxation!

TO SUM UP Tension, stress, anxiety, and depression can be triggered by our thoughts. So by changing our attitude and the way we resent our situation and our experiences, we can eliminate these feelings at the root. Hypnosis and NLP are natural tools that we can use to help us change our attitude and point of view to quickly eliminate the root cause of our negative feelings.