Roger Foxwell Hypnotherapy | Clinical Hypnotherapy – Emotional Freedom Technique – NLP – IBVA

“Not everyone wants to get over their problem” may seem a strange statement for a therapist to make but sometimes people are so “wedded” to their issues that they become such an important part of their life that they cannot let them go. What will they talk about or what will occupy their time if they somehow resolve their issue? They may worry that they may not feel important or that they will be left with an empty gap in their lives.

Having said this, they will still insist that there is nothing they would like more than to get better – but somehow they don’t seem to be able to do it. It can feel scary losing an issue that has become a part of one’s life however uncomfortable it may feel. Ask yourself why people stay in bad relationships or continually seem to fall for unsuitable partners that appear to have similar unpleasant characteristics? In my opinion that one of the reasons (there are other) is because one is familiar with the discomfort but the option of going out into a world that is uncharted territory feels infinitely more frightening. There can be a natural tendency to settle for a default position that helps avoid taking challenging decisions. Have a look at motivational speaker Zig Ziglar’s take on this phenomenon.

/www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRMogDrHnMQ

In my next blog I will be looking at the “flipside” as to why it can be hard to make changes when we really need them.

Here I am following on from my last post about getting help with one’s problems. Suffering from some states such as depression or anger can often leave one in denial about any need for help. Maybe everyone around can see that obviously their partner, friend or colleague needs to address certain issues and behaviours in their lives but the person acting these out is often unable to see that anything may be wrong. Eating disorders are classic cases of the person with the problem stubbornly refusing to respond to any idea of having treatment. This leaves the people around in an almost impossible situation because even if one can drag someone to therapy it is very difficult to get a satisfactory reponse unless the patient is ready to respond under their own volition. We often have to hit rock bottom or experience some uncomfortable lifestyle change before we are able to put into perspective where we really are and find the motivation needed to change.

To read my article on OCD you can use this link. Thanks.

http://www.gotosee.co.uk/healtharticles/2010/01/treating-ocd-hypnotherapy-eft-glasgow/

I promised I would keep you updated on my new habit of a green smoothie a day. Well it has been a couple of months now and I can say that I am well and truly hooked. Not only that but my daughter and one of my sons are also converts! It is amazing how much fruit and veg you can pack into a green smoothie. If it was all laid out on a plate it would take quite a lot of “eating” to get through it yet in this form it becomes a very nutritious yet surprisingly tasty drink. You also get a good energy lift without any of the energy dip you often experience soon after eating sweet and processed foods.

Give it a go. I haven’t quite given up all the sweet foods yet but have found it easier to keep my weight steady and definitely am more selective about what and when I eat.

I have been seeing more and more clients for weight loss in the past few months and in many cases I get good results in one or two sessions. If one is eating too many calories through old messages such as “clean your plate” or “there are starving people out there” it is usually fairly simple to change these types of patterns in our thinking.

However, as I mention on my website, eating disorders, whether bingeing, overeating, or anorexic behaviours generally have little to do with food and all to do with a desperate need to numb one’s emotions. The frightening emotions that are buried in the psyche may be just too painful to bring to consciousness so there needs to be some way of avoiding having to think about them. A part of you will then look for a behaviour that helps keep these feelings at bay. Clients can often feel worried that hypnosis will “make” them open up with all sorts of information that they are either not aware of or would rather keep to themselves. But our unconscious mind is there to protect us and is programmed to keep this sort of information safely where it is until we are mentally and emotionally ready to deal with it. What is more, an experienced therapist will only move at the rate a client feels safe and comfortable with.

Letting go of these unresolved feelings is so often key to reprogramming our relationship with food but there are many techniques at the therapist’s disposal that will allow this to be done in a safe and comfortable way, allowing the client to move at their own speed and within their own comfort zone.

If you find yourself forever “yoyo” dieting, repeating the same destructive patterns or eating to make yourself “feel better” then finding out how you can really resolve the issues behind the actions will most likely be the key to turning your life around.

When I first meet a client I always want to know if they are on any medication or seeing a doctor for their presenting issue. This is especially important for more serious mental health issues and for any physical issues that may be related to how they feel. For certain problems long term medication may well be the best answer and as far as I am concerned that is to be left to my client and their doctor. But even then some form of talking therapy is likely to be of benefit in many cases alongside any drugs.

However in a lot of cases taking drugs long term is never going to solve the underlying issues of why a person has feelings or behaviour patterns that they would rather be without. I subscribe to regular newsletters from Dr Mercola in America and they always make very interesting and entertaining reading. This article  from Dr Mercola talks about how he feels that there is an over medicating in America of people suffering from depression and is well worth a read. Although there seems still to be a prevalent view that depression is something that one perhaps just has to live with or at best may take years to overcome in my experience that is not always the case and I have first hand experience, as have many of my colleagues, of being able to help clients make significant changes in their emotional wellbeing in as little as just a few sessions.

As an update to the above this is a recent article on the BBC (health) website  by Dr Joanna Moncrieff where she talks about how putting patients on medication for pschological issues can be just a case of putting them into a “drug induced state” without ever addressing the real issues behind the problem.

Just been improving my healthy eating aims by incorporating the “green smoothie” into my diet. I must say it tastes a lot better than I had imagined and there is endless variation in ingredients so if you Google green smoothie you can find everything you need to know or go to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFm9_6BTCHM and see how it is done. Some fans say that if you drink one a day for a month you could lose your taste for sweet foods. I will keep you posted!

Here is the recipe I used today:

2 Lettuce leaves – 1/2 a Banana- Stick of celery – a carrot – piece of cucumber – four strawberries and a couple of cups of orange juice all blended together.

If you are reading my blogs you are possibly finding out a bit more about me and looking for more information about how I work. Well one important clue there is in these blogs is that they are all quite short. Why are they all quite short? Because these days we generally do not have time to wade through reams of information and would prefer what we are looking for to be crisp and to the point. That is how hypnotherapy, NLP and EFT works at its best.

This also equates to the way I work in the therapy room. I prefer to offer my clients information as succinctly, practically and as clearly as I can. Any “homework” will be powerful techniques that can make lasting and meaningful changes that can be done easily and quickly. These will also be techniques that one can use for a lifetime but techniques that used regularly can make amazingly empowering changes in one’s life. So KISS!

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood” is a phrase attributed to the co-founder of NLP Richard Bandler. This is a reference to how NLP techniques (and in this case especially Time Lines) can help improve the way we feel and interact with the world. Time Lines are a particularly powerful way of generating resources that we have within us or can develop from without to help us make empowering changes for the rest of our lives. Notice that I did not use the term future because if our head is always in the future we will never be able to live in the present. Conversely if our head is always in the past we also will not be able to live fully in the present.

Put simply we are all connected in our minds with thoughts and feelings about past and future that have a powerful bearing on how we feel in the present. If you imagine your past as a line connecting yourself to the present and the same with your goals and hopes for the future you would probably visualise this line behind you for the past and in front of you for the future. This is what in NLP we call a Time Line.

The interesting thing about time and memory is that it is not set in stone and time can change memories as much as two people can have different memories about the same event. The beauty of being able to use this technique is that it gives us the opportunity to make adjustments and empowering changes to how past experiences affect our present and future. So “it’s never too late to have a happy childhood” doe not mean that we can change history but it does mean that it is within our power to use our present knowledge and understanding to alter and adjust the way past experiences affect our present and future.

A good friend of mine phoned the other day to tell me about some emotional issues that had arisen that he was having difficulty coming  to terms with.  As we spoke it became clear that he did not really have any plan in mind about how to tackle the problem and really just wanted to talk over the situation with me.

Obviously I empathised with how he was feeling but when I realised that he had no plan or even desire to change how he felt about the situation I suggested that this might be the very best time to readjust how he felt about things. Obviously this would mean some emotional work would need to be done but wasn’t the issue trying to tell him something?

When an issue arises in our lives it often seems easier to try to ignore it, soldier on, pretend it will go away or even use it as a way of letting everyone know how difficult things are for us at the moment. But if there is some area of our lives that needs sorting out it has been brought to our attention for a reason and this is the very time when we should be working on it. Using it as a prop or hoping it will go away means that it is never addressed or resolved. It is easy to become more understanding, more spiritual or more likable when everything is going well. It is when things are tough that we need to put in the effort to move ourselves on positively in our life.

I am a fan of the tv series “The Dog Whisperer” where celebrity dog trainer Cesar Millan takes badly behaved dogs and rehabilitates them (but first he has to retraining the owners!). One of his sayings is “a bad moment is a good time to rehabilitate yourself.” That moment really could be telling you that now is the time to make a change.