| Preganancy Anxiety By Pat Sonnenstuhl Condition: Pregnancy Anxiety Client presents with concerns about her pregnancy, and describes free floating anxiety about the baby, birthing early. In the information gathering session, I observe her language and mannerisms, and listen to what she is trying to say. The client expresses anxiety from a sister who seems to focus on the medical possibility of problems, and her husband whose mom had a stillbirth with one of her pregnancies, and the client expressed concerns about the words used and the approach by these individuals, and is seeking ways to work and cope with the anxiety. As we discussed this, the mom felt confident that the baby would go to its expected due date, and that the anxiety wasn’t really warranted. But, at moments of anxiety or weak moments, the anxiety became very difficult. She has sought my care twice, and now her baby is due. I first saw this mom last year, early in her pregnancy. I helped her create a peaceful place and taught her ideomotor finger responses. I initially did some imagery and visualization with her to improve her communication and connection with her baby. This was early in pregnancy, before she felt her baby moving, and the time when she was having some bleeding. At our second session, which was in March, I collected information, and this is where the information about free floating anxiety and the information about the stillbirths came to light. I again established a peaceful place with her, and used some ideomotor responses with her to help her identify some of her concerns. I gave her some posthypnotic suggestions that she could go to her peaceful place anytime she wanted to, which I was hoping would decrease her anxiety. I did a long imagery with her to help her feel very connected with her now very active baby, and gave some post-hypnotic suggestions about the baby coming just when the time was right, and that she would know if there was anything that wasn’t right. Then I did a fear release script, cited affirmations, and helped her make close contact with her baby. Her assignment was to create more affirmations for herself and her baby, and to use Peaceful place and anchors to re-establish herself back to a lowered anxiety state. She had made some positive decisions about having a birthing Doula with her for her birth, and choosing childbirth classes that would nurture her and her partner. She seemed to be really in tune with herself and her body, and these things gave her great insights and motivations. I am waiting now to hear about her birth, and what transpired for her. She did not want to do HypnoBirthing with me, and I hadn’t learned some of the NLP techniques I have since then learned in this course. But here are some of the things I could have done, if given the opportunity: First of all, I would explore the issues with her, using the questions of the Meta Model to gather information. I would watch her visual and behavioral representational cues to determine what her representational style was, and then approach her using her representational style. I would help her unpack her sensory style by having them describe a happy time, and then have her repeat that using the processing words of visual, auditory and kinesthetic words, telling what she saw, felt and heard. By having her tell this story three times, she would reveal her basic strategy to me, and how she interprets things, showing what language styles she finds most useful. This would become the basis for some of our interactions. I would then playback these strategies her strategy, which would build and develop my rapport with her. Key questions from the Meta Model applicable in this situation are: What do you want from this? What will this do for you? How will you know when you have it? When, where and with whom do you want it? What gets in the way? What resources do you already have and what additional resources do you need? How are you going to get there? I could probably have used the Fast Phobia technique to help her resolve some of her fears. Another technique would have been the New Behavior Generator, substituting peacefulness and clarity when the anxiety started to become an issue. In other words, using her inner resources. A variation on this might have been using Reframing to reframe the thoughts and help her seek new and strengthening thoughts. If one views anxiety s the pattern to be changed, then I could help her develop new patterns to use when anxiety came into the picture. This would help her tap into her own resources and expand their use when needed. This would strengthen her self esteem and ego. Using Future Pacing, I would have her look ahead to situations that might generate anxiety (such as discussions with her sister or mother in law) and imagine ways to approach these situations. I also could have used a Swish Pattern with her, having her focus on the anxiety, and then having her replacing it with a peaceful image of herself either very pregnant, or with her new baby in her arms. This would have reinforced her ability to overcome this anxiety. Two other techniques that might have been effective would have been the Building Self Confidence Exercise and/or the Self-Appreciation Exercise. Both of these allow for the imagination to develop a positive self image and build upon that. Also, feeling loved form someone outside yourself could have been very powerful. I could have had the baby be the source of this love, or of course, her partner, or even a higher power.
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