In this episode, we dive into the “Anxiety Trance”—the state where your brain becomes hypnotized by its own negative stories. Many people believe anxiety is simply worrying about the future, but it is actually driven by your explanatory style: the way you explain setbacks to yourself.

Drawing on the research of Martin Seligman and the principles of positive psychology, I break down the three cognitive traps that keep you stuck in an anxiety spiral: Permanence, Pervasiveness, and Personalization.

What You Will Learn:

  • The Anatomy of the Trance: Why your brain assigns catastrophic meanings to simple events.

  • The 3 Traps: How “Always,” “Everything,” and “Me” thinking fuels learned helplessness.

  • The ABCDE Framework: A step-by-step guide to interrupting the program:

    • Adversity: Stripping the event down to the facts.

    • Belief: Identifying the automatic “hypnotic” thoughts.

    • Consequence: Noticing the physical and emotional shift.

    • Disputation: Becoming your own defense lawyer.

    • Energization: Finding the counter-evidence to shift your state.

  • The Hypnotherapy Edge: Why willpower isn’t enough and how to address the subconscious programs formed during the childhood “imprint period”.

Practical Exercise:This week, simply try to “catch” the pattern. When you feel an anxiety spike, name which of the three traps you are falling into. Once you observe the pattern, you are no longer fully inside the trance.

Connect with Mark Stubbles:

On March 22, 2026   /   Podcast   /   Leave a comment

Leave a Reply