“Hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up smoking” according to the largest ever scientific comparison of ways of breaking the habit in New Scientist Magazine (New Scientist vol 136)
Hypnotherapy works on the subconscious part of your mind. The part of your mind that makes you want to smoke, despite knowing that it’s bad for you and you want to stop.
You may know consciously that smoking is bad for their health, that it can be expensive or socially unacceptable; however these things do not override the powerful unconscious habit. You may still feel compelled to smoke. Hypnotherapy effectively tackles the unconscious desire to smoke.
Anxiety can be experienced at different levels, and although most people experience a relatively mild form of anxiety when facing particularly stressful situations (such as a speech or presentation) anxiety disorders are severe and can disrupt the day-to-day life of an individual. Anxiety can be brought on by a fear of something that happened, or what we think happened and dread happening again.
When individuals suffer from an anxiety disorder it may lead to avoidance of certain situations because they fear their anxiety may be triggered. This can in turn lead to relationship and/or career problems such as not being able to achieve potential job opportunities or promotions and being unable to develop personal relationships.
Individuals suffering from generalised anxiety disorder often anticipate tragedy and worry extremely about family, money and health. Generalised anxiety disorder interferes with daily life and is usually diagnosed when an individual spends at least six months worrying excessively about normal everyday problems. Other minor issues such as chores or appointments can also cause anxiety and for some, just getting through the day can be extremely stressful.
Another type of anxiety disorder is panic disorder which is characterised by terror, which strikes suddenly without warning. Panic attacks are a common symptom of panic disorder, but not everyone who has a panic attack will develop panic disorder. Panic disorder is much more common than is generally recognised and affects a large proportion of the population.
Social anxiety disorder is defined by extreme anxiety and discomfort in social situations. According to some research, social anxiety (also known as social phobia) is the third most common psychiatric disorder after depression and alcoholism. Fear of being around other people, having to interact with them and being judged negatively by them are the common signs of social anxiety. Agoraphobia (the fear of open spaces, crowds, public places and/or travelling alone) is another severe form of anxiety.
As there are different types of anxiety, there are a number of different symptoms, however the most common include:
Hypnotherapy can be an effective treatment for anxiety disorders, it aims to seek out the root cause of the anxiety and change an individual’s perception of a past event or release emotion from it.
If you suffer from insomnia the feeling will be all too familiar, lying awake into the small hours, minutes feel like hours and the more you try to sleep, the harder it becomes. It can be so hard to function and everything seems harder when you’re tired all the time. You might be having other sleep problems other or as well as insomnia, like night mares, disturbed sleep or walking in the night. These are all things hypnotherapy can help you with.
Diets don’t work. Feelings of deprivation often become too much after a few weeks and more often than not, we end up gaining more weight than we had lost. Diets also don’t work because they don’t address our relationship with food. You know eating large portions is unhealthy, but feel unable to stop? Understand all about what a healthy diet ‘should’ be, but find yourself reaching for high fat and sugar foods? Do you know that food doesn’t make you feel that much better, but can’t help but eat for comfort? By working at a subconscious level, weight management hypnotherapy allows you to effectively address your relationship with food, and our habits so that you can lose weight easily, and for good.
Any weight loss programme depends on an individual making changes in their lives.
Virtual gastric band therapy is a proven technique, which leads to amazing results accomplishing life-long changes in attitudes to food. It works by leading you to want smaller portion sizes, eat healthier food and feel full on smaller amounts, working on an unconscious level to put you in tune with what your body really needs. After the sessions, you will eat what you want but you will choose healthier food in smaller amounts.
Hypnosis works by leading clients to feel as if they had had actual gastric band surgery. My aim for clients is to lose between 1 and 3 pounds a week as therapy leads them distinguish between genuine physical hunger and emotional hunger, ie. eating out of boredom, anxiety, as an emotional prop. The therapy teaches how to deal with those feelings without turning to food.
Are you holding yourself back due to a lack of confidence? Feelings of low confidence and self-esteem are often deeply rooted in the subconscious and can affect our every thought, feeling and action.
The good news is that change needn’t be hard and take months and just by reading this you’re taking the first step to feeling better. Hypnotherapy can help you to become the person you want to be, do the things you want to do, and feel great doing them. Change the way you think about yourself, and situations, at a deep level with hypnotherapy for confidence.
Many of our fear or phobias are subconscious, they aren’t conscious or rational. That’s why we need to work on it at a deeper level for it to be effective. Hypnotherapy works quickly and effectively and you leave feeling relaxed, in control and positive.
Some stress in normal but if this persists or becomes more than you feel you can cope with you can do something about it. Hypnotherapy can be an amazing technique for stress management.
Often our reactions to stressful situations come from the subconscious mind, a place that we aren’t consciously aware of or in control of. Using hypnotherapy, it’s possible to speak directly to the subconscious, and regain control.
What is PTSD? Post-traumatic stress disorder (or PTSD for short) is the name given to the psychological and physical problems that can sometimes follow particular threatening or distressing events.
Most survivors of trauma return to normal given a little time. However, some people will have stress reactions that do not go away on their own, or may even get worse over time. These individuals may develop PTSD. People who suffer from PTSD often relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached or estranged, and these symptoms can be severe enough and last long enough to significantly impair the person’s daily life.
People with PTSD experience three different kinds of symptoms. The first set of symptoms involves reliving the trauma in some way such as becoming upset when confronted with a traumatic reminder or thinking about the trauma when you are trying to do something else. The second set of symptoms involves either staying away from places or people that remind you of the trauma, isolating from other people, or feeling numb. The third set of symptoms includes things such as feeling on guard, irritable, or startling easily.
PTSD is marked by clear biological changes as well as psychological symptoms. PTSD is complicated by the fact that people with PTSD often may develop additional disorders such as depression, substance abuse, problems of memory and cognition, and other problems of physical and mental health. The disorder is also associated with impairment of the person’s ability to function in social or family life, including occupational instability, marital problems and divorces, family discord, and difficulties in parenting.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) and BLAST (Bi Lateral Analysis and Stimulation Treatment )
The mind can often heal itself naturally, in the same way as the body does. Much of this natural coping mechanism occurs during sleep, particularly during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Francine Shapiro developed Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) in 1987, utilising this natural process in order to successfully treat Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Since then, EMDR has been used to effectively treat a wide range of mental health problems. EMDR utilises the natural healing ability of your body. After a thorough assessment, you will be asked specific questions about a particular disturbing memory. Eye movements, similar to those during REM sleep, will be recreated simply by asking you to watch the therapist’s finger moving backwards and forwards across your visual field. Sometimes, a bar of moving lights or headphones is used instead. The eye movements will last for a short while and then stop. You will then be asked to report back on the experiences you have had during each of these sets of eye movements. Experiences during a session may include changes in thoughts, images and feelings. BLAST technique is an accelerated form of EMDR developed by Nick Davies after he noticed that EMDR was not only a lengthy process but the process was done in a different order to how the brain, patterns traumatic experiences, he then went on to build on this platform adding other therapy modalities in order to speed up and refine the client’s experience. Blast technique can be used not only for PTSD but for cravings, guilt, anxiety or even to find the root cause of a feeling or an emotion.
The type of events that can cause PTSD include:
serious road accidents
violent personal assaults, such as sexual assault, mugging or robbery
prolonged sexual abuse, violence or severe neglect
witnessing violent deaths
military combat
being held hostage
terrorist attacks
natural disasters, such as severe floods, earthquakes or tsunamis