Anxiety
Hypnosis for Anxiety: 34 Sessions, Sorted by Behaviour Rather Than Label
Two of the five sessions worth your time here aren’t filed under anxiety at all — health anxiety sits under health issues, worry under thinking skills. Thirty-four titles across two folders, and the folder is no guide. What the anxiety does to your week is the thing that sorts it.
Five sessions worth your time
Anxiety is not one problem. These five are sorted by how yours behaves — whether it follows you around, waits for a dated event, turns up in rooms with people in them, attaches to your body, or just will not stop talking.
US$18.95each · one-off · about A$27 · ninety-day refund
Find the one that fits ↓Every session is an instant MP3 from the publisher, with ninety days to change your mind. Checkout opens on hypnosisdownloads.com in a new tab.
Chosen by Ernest McLeodClinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice. About Ernest →
We earn a commission if you buy through the links on this page. It doesn’t change what you pay, and it doesn’t decide what gets recommended. Prices are the publisher’s, in US dollars.
Which anxiety session should you start with?
Start from what yours does, not from what you would call it. Anxiety is not one problem with one name, and the commonest mistake is picking by the word that came to mind at two in the morning. A person who says “I’ve got anxiety” and a person who says “I overthink things” often want completely different recordings.
So the table sorts by behaviour. Does it follow you around, or wait for a date? Does it only show up when someone can see you, or does it live in your body? Read the left column, find the row that matches an ordinary week of yours, and ignore the rest.
If your fear has a name, you are on the wrong pageFlying, needles, spiders, the dentist — a fear pinned to one identifiable thing is a phobia, and it has its own ten-page section at fears and phobias. If it doesn’t attach to one thing, stay here. Two on that side of the line matter: panic attacks, which is what most people searching “anxiety attacks” actually want, and agoraphobia, if the shrinking has reached your front door.
| If this is how yours behaves… | Start with | Why this one |
|---|---|---|
| It follows you everywhere and never quite switches off. The subject changes; the level doesn’t | Generalised Anxiety | Works on the background level rather than any one worry, so a change of subject doesn’t matter |
| It waits for a dated event, and stops the moment the thing starts | Anticipatory Anxiety | Aimed at the run-up, where nearly all the suffering sits. You know the date, so it runs on a schedule |
| It only turns up when other people can see you, and the drive home is the worst bit | Social Anxiety | Built for the rehearsing beforehand and the replay afterwards, which take more of the week than the evenings |
| It attaches to your body, and outlives an all-clear by about a day and a half | Health Anxiety | For worry that outlives a proper investigation. Filed under health issues rather than anxiety, which is how it gets missed |
| It won’t stop the commentary, but you’d never call yourself an anxious person | Stop Worrying | Aimed at overthinking as a habit rather than a diagnosis. Filed under thinking skills, nobody’s first place to look |
| The thinking points backwards at what already happened instead of forwards at what might | Stop Ruminating | Rumination and worry share the machinery and face opposite ends of the calendar. This one faces backwards |
| It arrives in ten-minute surges, out of nowhere, and you are certain something is happening | Stop Panic Attacks | Panic is fear of the panic rather than of a subject. None of the five above reach it |
| It points at one named thing — a plane, a needle, a dentist’s chair | Fears and Phobias | A named fear has an address, and those sessions work on the object rather than the background |
| Your world has been shrinking: shops, then transport, then leaving home at all | Agoraphobia | Start there, and read its “when to see someone” section first. That one has a threshold |
| More than one of the rows above is plainly yours | Beat Fear and Anxiety Pack | Five at US$59.95 comes in under the price of four bought singly, and several shapes usually share one root |
What should a doctor rule out before you buy anything?
More than most people expect, which is why a first presentation belongs in a GP’s room rather than a shopping basket. Thyroid disease manufactures the whole set by itself: a racing pulse, tremor, ruined sleep, heat intolerance, weight falling away. Anaemia and low B12 add breathlessness and a mind that slides off things. A heart rhythm problem shows as palpitations arriving and leaving abruptly.
Then the list nobody thinks to raise. Asthma relievers. Thyroid replacement set slightly high. Pseudoephedrine in a cold and flu tablet. ADHD stimulants. The opening fortnight on an antidepressant, which commonly lifts anxiety before it lowers it. And drink: coming off a steady evening habit feels, from the inside, exactly like anxiety, and it peaks around breakfast.
None of it is a reason to shut this page. It is a reason to make one appointment, bring the packets, and be straight about the drinking. Every session here will still be here afterwards.
These belong with a doctor this week, not in a basketFainting. Breathlessness while you are sitting still. A pulse that flicks on and off rather than climbing. Losing weight alongside tremor and an intolerance of heat. New or severe chest pain is 000 today. And if you have a diagnosed mental health condition, are under a professional’s care, or have epilepsy, check before using hypnosis recordings at all.
Why does picking by the label go wrong?
Because the label describes the subject and the session works on the shape. Two people both say “anxiety”. One carries a level that never drops and borrows whatever subject is nearest; the other is steady until a date lands in the diary, then loses a fortnight. Same word, opposite problems, and a session aimed at one does little for the other.
The publisher’s own filing makes this worse rather than better. Thirty-four titles sit across their anxiety and social anxiety categories, and two of the five I would put my name next to aren’t in either — health anxiety is under health issues, Stop Worrying under thinking skills. Browse the anxiety folder and you never meet them.
Which is the whole job of this page. A catalogue is arranged for the catalogue’s convenience. You need it arranged by what the thing does to your week.
The five sessions, and what they cost
Each costs US$18.95, arrives as an instant MP3 and sits inside the publisher’s 90-day refund window. All five are narrated by Roger Elliott, a co-founder of the publisher and a practising therapist. These are the ones with a job clear enough that I can tell you who they are wrong for.
Generalized Anxiety Treatment
For a body that hasn’t stood down in months, under worry that keeps changing subject.
Anticipatory Anxiety
For the fortnight in front of a dated event, where the evenings and the sleep go.
Overcome Shyness and Social Anxiety
For the rehearsing days out and the replay afterwards, not for the minute you walk in.
Overcome Hypochondria (Fear of Illness)
For fear that outlived a proper investigation. Never a reason to leave a symptom unchecked.
Stop Worrying
For someone whose life runs perfectly well and whose thinking is the tiring part.
Figures the publisher reports about itself, which I have no way to audit: trading since 1998, and self-reported purchase counts for these five running from 1,839 for the health anxiety session to 7,155 for the social anxiety one, the highest of any title they list.
A purchase count records what sold, not what worked. Read it as other people having made the same guess you are making.
If more than one of them is yours
Two options, answering different questions. Stop Ruminating is a sixth single, for thinking that runs backwards over the past rather than forwards. The pack is five sessions at US$59.95, cheaper than four singles, and worth it only if three are genuinely yours.
Stop Ruminating
For replaying what already happened: why you said that, what they meant by it.
Beat Fear and Anxiety Pack
For anxiety that has taken several shapes at once rather than settling on one.
What can you practise this week for nothing?
Four things that cut across all five shapes, so they are worth starting before you have settled which page you belong on. Each page carries the practice built for its own shape, in proper detail. These are the ones that apply whichever row turned out to be yours.
- Log the cost for seven days, not the feeling
One line whenever the anxiety changes what you do: what you avoided, shortened, rewrote, cancelled, checked or drank. Time, and four words. Don’t try to change any of it this week. At the end you have the thing no amount of reflection produces — the shape, written down. Lines clustering round one date point to the anticipatory page. Round other people, social. Round your own body, health.
- Find the move that buys you relief, and stop paying for it
Every shape has one. Checking the lump again. Rewriting the message. Cancelling on the Tuesday. Two drinks before you leave. Each works inside a minute, which is the problem: the relief teaches your system the escape was necessary, so next time starts higher. Pick your most frequent one and drop it for a week. Expect that week to feel worse.
- Give the thinking a fixed time and place
Twenty to thirty minutes, same hour daily, at a table and never in bed. Anything arriving outside the window goes on a list in four words and waits. This is the best-evidenced free thing in the whole section, and it is set out properly on the generalised anxiety and stop worrying pages rather than repeated here.
- Book the GP appointment while you try the rest
Two jobs in one visit: the physical causes excluded, and a Mental Health Treatment Plan started if it is warranted. That plan brings Medicare rebates for up to 10 individual psychology sessions a calendar year under Better Access, and it needs a referral, so the appointment is the gate. Waiting lists are real. Get on one and use the weeks.
Give those a fortnight before you spend anything. If they are enough on their own, you have saved your money and I have sold you nothing, which is a perfectly good result.
Does hypnosis actually work for anxiety?
There is a real number, it is better than you might expect, and it does not mean what a sales page would have it mean. Valentine and colleagues, writing in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis in 2019, screened 399 records down to 15 studies and 17 trials. Once treatment finished, a typical hypnosis participant had come out ahead of roughly 79% of the people in the control groups.
Now the qualifications, all from that same paper. Fifteen studies is a thin literature. It measured anxiety broadly rather than any named disorder. And the authors concluded that hypnosis performed better bolted onto another psychological treatment than it did alone.
The wider picture is bumpier still. Rosendahl and colleagues in Frontiers in Psychology in 2024 went through twenty years of it: 49 meta-analyses covering 261 primary studies, effects running from nothing to very large, and only nine of the 49 rated high quality on the standard appraisal tool. Their most robust evidence sat in medical procedures and in pain. Not in anxiety as a condition.
And the gap that matters most on a page selling a recording: every trial behind that 79% had a clinician in the room, adapting to one person on one day. Nobody has tested a downloaded MP3 on generalised anxiety, social anxiety or health anxiety. Some of that effect probably survives the transfer. All of it certainly doesn’t, and a percentage quoted for a download was invented by whoever quoted it.
What the guidelines actually recommendCognitive behavioural therapy is first-line in the NICE guideline for generalised anxiety and panic (CBT or applied relaxation, usually 12 to 15 weekly hours) and in the 2018 RANZCP guidelines used in Australia. Neither document mentions hypnotherapy anywhere. That is the honest size of the evidence, and it is why the GP appointment comes before the basket.
So the fair claim for these sessions is narrow. They work on arousal and habits of attention rather than on argument, and they can be used tonight without telling anybody. That last part is not nothing. Knowing you should see somebody and actually ringing to arrange it are separated by a gap most people never get across, and a page that ignores that is written for an imaginary reader.
When should you see someone instead of buying a recording?
When the anxiety has stopped being background and started making the decisions. A recording is reasonable to test while the shape of your week still holds. Once it doesn’t, what you need is a person who works with you across weeks and checks what you actually did. Buying a cheap file instead is the smoothest available way to push that appointment into next year.
- Six months of it, most days, and the line is still going up.
- Things have dropped off your week, or you only manage them with company.
- Something has to be drunk or taken before the evening will settle.
- You have had thoughts of harming yourself, or of not wanting to be here.
- A frightening event started it, and that event still arrives with it.
- It is stopping necessary medical care: tests, follow-ups, scans, dental work.
- Rituals have appeared: checking, counting, washing, or arranging things until they feel right.
That last one is why obsessive-compulsive disorder is deliberately absent here. It is a separate diagnosis in DSM-5, it responds to a specific therapy delivered by a specialist, and a general anxiety recording is the wrong tool for it. If intrusive thoughts and rituals are your problem, that is a referral rather than a purchase.
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Over half a million people have used these hypnosis sessions.
What are you looking for?
Common questions about hypnosis for anxiety
Which session should I pick if more than one describes me?
Pick the one that is costing you the most hours this week, and give it a fortnight before you consider a second. Buying three at once produces a folder rather than a habit. If three or more genuinely apply, the five-session pack at US$59.95 is cheaper than four singles and comes from the same publisher on the same terms.
Is anxiety one condition or several?
Several, which is why the table on this page sorts by behaviour. Generalised anxiety, social anxiety and health anxiety are separate diagnoses with separate criteria and different first-line treatments. Anticipatory anxiety is not a diagnosis at all but a feature that turns up inside most of them, and worry is a habit that can exist without any diagnosis attached to it.
Why is OCD not on this page?
Because it is a separate diagnosis in DSM-5 rather than an anxiety disorder, and it responds to a specific therapy delivered by someone trained in it. Selling a general anxiety recording against intrusive thoughts and rituals would be the wrong tool sold confidently. If that is what you are dealing with, it is a referral through your GP.
Is hypnosis as good as CBT for anxiety?
No. CBT is the first-line psychological treatment in the NICE guideline and in the 2018 Australian guidelines, and neither document mentions hypnotherapy at all. The meta-analytic evidence for hypnosis in anxiety is real but thin, and its own strongest finding is that hypnosis works better added to another psychological treatment than used on its own.
Are anxiety attacks and panic attacks the same thing?
Anxiety attack is not a clinical term, and most people using it mean panic attacks: a surge that peaks within about ten minutes, arrives with no subject attached, and convinces you that something physical is happening now. That has its own session, filed on the phobias side of this site, and none of the five here will reach it.
How many times do I need to listen?
Think of it as a fortnight of quiet evenings rather than something you reach for when a bad day arrives. These sessions work on background level and on habits of attention, and neither moves quickly. A single listen tells you almost nothing. Judge it somewhere in the second week, well inside the refund window.
What if a session does nothing for me?
Send the publisher your order number inside 90 days and the money comes back in full, with no reason required and one refund per customer. Nobody can predict which recording will suit which person, so that window carries more weight than any claim on this page, mine included.
Related categories
- Fears and PhobiasTen sessions for fear with a name attached: flying, needles, spiders, driving, the dentist, heights.
- Stop Panic AttacksIf it arrives in surges with no subject, and you are certain it is your heart.
- AgoraphobiaIf the map of where you can go has been getting smaller for a while.
Ernest McLeod — clinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice.
- ICHP
- FELLOW, ASCH
- IICT MEMBER
A publisher files a session where its catalogue needs it. Working out which shape each one is actually built for, and putting two of them back where a reader would look, is the part I do. I made none of them. More about me →
Whatever you decide about buying, start the seven-day log tonight and name the move that buys you relief. Neither costs anything, and between them they do a fair share of what you would be paying for.
Ninety days to change your mind. If a session doesn’t do what you wanted, email the publisher your order number and they’ll refund you in full — no questions asked, one refund per customer. The publisher has traded since 1998, the ninety days is their term, and it covers every session listed here.
These are self-help audio sessions, not medical treatment, a diagnosis, or a substitute for professional care. Anxiety symptoms overlap with thyroid disease, heart rhythm problems, anaemia, B12 deficiency, medication side effects and alcohol withdrawal, and a first presentation needs a doctor’s assessment. If your symptoms are severe or persistent, please speak to a doctor or a qualified therapist.
Written by Ernest McLeod — clinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice. Last updated 2026-08-14.