Panic Attacks and Hypnosis

Panic Attacks

Panic Attacks can be one of the most frightening experiences one can have and can appear, as it were, out of nowhere. To suddenly become aware of your heart beating faster, a loss of control and feeling disconnected from your surroundings is a very uncomfortable experience. Plus, once we have had one panic attack our body and brain remembers it and this can set up a loop whereby the brain stem continues to be alert and on the lookout for anything that might trigger a panic attack again. Unfortunately that only compounds the problem and we can become more liable to having them on a regular basis.

This experience is a message from our primal brain saying it does not, for whatever reason feel safe. Once the primal brain is activated like this it is very hard to switch off because it is in effect four times stronger than our frontal “thinking” cortex at getting it’s message across to the body.

Basically the frontal cortex, which can think logically for us, resides in the front of the skull and the primal primitive brain at the back of the skull. So once a panic attack begins generally no amount of logical thinking will turn it off and we just have to go through the experience until the body runs out of adrenaline and we can begin to calm down.

However there is a lot we can do ourselves to bring those feelings into check and manage them until they become fewer and fewer in our lives. Using hypnosis is a perfect tool to help calm the nervous system and regain control of the uncomfortable physical and emotional feelings. Also there are breathing strategies available that will help us to breath in a way that relaxes rather then excites the nervous system. Also subtle trance based ways of thinking can help us turn this around.

The beauty of using trance based techniques such as hypnotherapy is that not only does it make it easier to slip into a comfortable state of relaxation but also the trance state helps us bypass the conscious mind and generate change on a deeper unconscious level.

Stay calm

If you would like to know more about hypnosis, Emotional Freedom Technique, NLP and other ways of engaging your creative mind for relaxation and change do feel free to contact me and I will be very happy to help.

Always seek medical advice when appropriate.

Does anxiety take the pleasure out of your life and how Hypnotherapy can help.

Anxiety

You can make powerful and lasting change with Hypnotherapy, NLP and EFT

Anyone who suffers or has suffered from anxiety knows the feeling that tells you that you are the only person experiencing it. Obviously our logical mind knows that it cannot be true but the problem is that our primal brain will generally respond to a non life threatening experience and a life threatening experience with pretty much the same intensity either way.

So here is the point, although we cognitively know that the situation we are experiencing is not a matter of life and death it is very difficult, if not impossible, to ‘think our way out of it’. We can tell ourselves all we like “not to worry”, “I’ll be fine” etc, but the primal brain easily wins the contest. If we could turn it round with our thinking we would not need hypnotherapy, NLP, psychotherapy, counselling or any other therapy to help change these  embedded thinking patterns. Wouldn’t it be easy if we could just tell ourselves that it wasn’t so and everything would be sorted?

However we know it is not as simple as that. So how would you like to turn your thinking round and clear any intrusive thinking that has been preventing you from enjoying your life as much as you would like?

I am a hypnotherapist, NLP and EFT (Emotional FreedomTechnique) practitioner so obviously these are my chosen modalities to help clients make change. In fact I strongly believe that the royal road to healthy change is first and foremost to engage the creative unconscious mind in helping make the change. Your creative mind only needs to go into a light eyes open trance to help you open up a hidden treasure trove of creative tools and knowledge. This can help you engage more of the feelings and experiences you want and fewer and fewer of the ones you don’t want.

If you would like to achieve real and empowering change in your present and your future, now is the time to help yourself. Discover how an experienced professional can give you the tools to help rapidly and effectively turn this thinking around.

My message to clients “This is serious work, have some fun doing it!”

Emotional Freedom Technique

EFT Tapping

EFT (Tapping) helps former Apprentice star

 

As complimentary therapies become more popular so techniques like EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) become more well known. Although there are still a number of my clients who have not heard about it when they first come they are very soon won over by it’s simplicity and effectiveness. Once they understand how to use it and how useful it is it soon becomes a daily practice in their lives.

Here in this article former Apprentice star Jessica Cunningham explains how EFT played a large part in helping her control her health anxiety.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5634123/Former-Apprentice-star-Jessica-Cunningham-reveals-suffers-hypochondria.html

EFT, or “tapping” for short, is a technique developed in America by engineer Gary Craig and works by gently tapping on acupressure points around the body. As an acupuncturist would apply needles to these points so, just by gently tapping on them with one’s fingers one can get amazing relief from many issues physical and emotional that can be resistant to other forms of treatment. It also works very well alongside many other treatments such as hypnosis and can even help boost the effectiveness of such treatments. One of the biggest bonuses of EFT is that clients can learn it themselves and continue to safely use it when they are at home.

As you will read in the article Jessica was using it for Health Anxiety issues which is a not at all uncommon and I regularly find it extremely effective helping clients overcome panic attacks, anxiety, stress, depression and performance issues. In fact it really can be of benefit with virtually all of the issues that clients bring to my office.

If you would like help for any of the above problems or other issues in your life and would also like a tool that you can take with you and use yourself, find a good EFT practitioner and they will be able to help you by using it in the therapy room and also showing you how you can take it away and use it yourself to great effect.

Men, controlled by your eating?

Men Eating

Eating disorders

A recent article in the i Newspaper (3rd November 2016) by Eve Simmons highlights a real lack of information regarding men with eating disorders.

Statistics appear skewed probably partly by the male psyche and society’s unconscious restrictions on men “owning up” to having any sort of mental health issues. So understandably a lot of eating disorder information is aimed at women but as Eve Simmons article points out “men get eating disorders too.”

Figures from The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence estimate 11% of eating disorder sufferers are male and 6.4 percent of all adults displayed some form of an eating disorder. So as they point out those figures in fact point to more like a 25% figure for males.

The good news is that it is possible to recover from an eating disorder and with the right help and focus remove this often devastating illness from your life.

Here is a copy of the SCOFF questionnaire developed by John Morgan at Leeds Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust that can help sufferers check if they have some or all of these pointers

* Do you ever make yourself sick because you feel uncomfortably full

*Do you worry that you have lost control over how much you eat?

*Have you recently lost more than one stone in a three month period?

*Do you believe yourself to be fat when others say you are thin?

*Would you say that food dominates your life?

According to SCOFF a positive of two or more answers to these questions should raise your awareness of a possible issue.

Mental/health Awareness week will take place May 8 – 14th in 2017.

Three things to bring with you to a hypnotherapy session

Therapy Session

And get the best results when working with your hypnotherapist

If you haven’t experienced hypnotherapy before it can be a little daunting wondering what will happen and how you will feel when in hypnosis. Most of us have seen stage shows and hypnotists on television so understandably one may feel a little wary. However hypnosis could be one of the most relaxing experiences you have had but unfortunately the thoughts of “will I cluck like a chicken or tell all my darkest secrets” can make us somewhat guarded at that first appointment.

Now, a professional hypnotherapist would not make any of their clients cluck like a chicken and you certainly will not be telling anybody anything that you would rather keep to yourself.

However these worries can set up an unconscious resistance before we even cross the threshold so it is best to be aware of these thoughts to help allow yourself to participate as comfortably as you like in the session.

First, remember that the therapist is there to help you and has your best interests at heart. One of the strengths that Milton Erickson, the founder of modern hypnosis had, along with his remarkable skills was his ability to unconsciously convey to his clients how much he cared that they achieve the very best results.

Consciously knowing this means that there will be no need to “do battle” with the hypnotherapist. Just think how much more relaxed will you feel and how much easier it will be when both of you are working together. Those who arrive with arms folded and a “well fix me then” look on their face will take up valuable time in their session when they could be making valuable changes instead.

One reason for this resistance is that our logical thinking mind may not want us to do this work since our logical mind may not want to hand over control to the creative mind. (Yes you can relax, it will still be your mind not the hypnotherapists‘!) What the logical mind can find hard to grasp at times is that accessing the power of our creative mind will help free our logical mind thereby encouraging the whole brain to work more harmoniously. The vast majority of clients are very easy to work with and if there is any discomfort then as professionals it is our job to help put the client at ease so they will leave the session happier and more relaxed than when they came so helping them achieve their best results.

So all you have to do is bring along the belief that you will be exploring wonderful and powerful ways to help let go of the issues you will be working on plus three experiences that will help you get the best possible results –

Focus, relaxation and imagination.

Are things looking up yet?

Vision is a whole body

Vision is a whole body and mind issue

Reading one of Katy Bowman’s Nutritious Movement blogs she said “Vision is a whole body issue” and I would entirely agree with her. (In fact if you haven’t read any of her books I would encourage you to do so. Alignment Matters is where I started and I think I have bought one for pretty much everyone in my family now!)

And now I am adding to her sentence “and a mind issue”.

For a while I have been using the eyes and eye movements as part of my modalities for change in coaching and therapy sessions. I have some training in EMDR (Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) which specifically uses certain eye movements to help release and reprocess traumatic memories and emotions that are locked in the brain. It can be especially valuable in helping clients suffering from PTSD.

However I also have various other strategies I use that I find very simple that help take the sting out of residual painful emotions. These strategies have been developed through my interest in how we use our eyes and our ability to see and the links to the body’s nervous system.

I wonder how many of us have thought much about the many connections to the body and mind that are continually happening beyond your everyday awareness? Once we can harness simple understandings and make conscious and unconscious adjustments in this area it can make a noticeable positive difference to awareness and experience of the world on a daily basis.

The beauty of this, is that it is something we can become aware of and make a difference to virtually all day without even trying. After all we will spend all day (hopefully) with our eyes open so a simple change of awareness in how we and where we look is going to take virtually no extra time at all however busy we are.

It is interesting how the eyes and our looking pop up into everyday conversation all the time. Take these phrases

“Things are looking up”

“He can’t see the wood for the trees”

“Chin up”

“It’s not looking good”

“I can’t seem to focus on the issue”

You “Get the picture.”   Feel free to add a few of your own.

They are all unconscious references to what we are seeing. “How are things today?” “Things are looking up” We may see it as a pleasant enough reply to the question but where we do we look when things are not going well? We look Down.

So there is a continuous loop of unconscious positive or negative information just being generated from where and how we are looking and using our eyes. It is a fact that relaxing and widening our peripheral vision will immediately help engage the parasympathetic nervous system, the part that helps us relax and ideally balances with the sympathetic nervous system which engages our body into stimulus responses.

So “What are we all looking for?” We may be looking for a good time, some relief, some relaxation, some pleasure or just some peace and quiet. Perhaps we need to look no farther than in front of our own nose?

Workplace bullying

Workplace Bullying

Dealing with workplace bullying 

The dictionary definition of a bully is “A person who uses strength or influence to harm or intimidate those who are weaker”

Any sort of bullying is pretty despicable and there has recently been a lot of media talk about bullying in the workplace.

First of all it is important that anyone who thinks they may be being bullied carefully organises their strategies by logging incidents, getting help from their union and keeping as best one can everything on a professional level.

Bullying at work can include sexual harassment, spreading rumors, undermining someone’s work and can be perpetrated face to face, by email, letter or phone. This constant undermining of someone’s personality and competence is likely to have a severely detrimental effect on the victim’s self esteem and ability to carry out their work efficiently.

However bullies are generally pretty weak and cowardly individuals and will soon back off when they are shown that we are not prepared to put up with this type of intimidation.

So how does one turn this around and wipe that seemingly indelible word “victim” from our forehead that seems to unconsciously attract this unpleasant sort of person?

 

One way of looking at it is that the bully is acting from their child self and therefore it is easy for them to spot someone else who may also be acting from their child self. So the bully is behaving as if they were perhaps 14 years old and they have spotted a victim who is unconsciously coming from perhaps their 8 year old self.

Now we all can unconsciously at times interact from our younger selves and someone who lacks confidence may really feel stuck in that past time frame without even being aware of it. Unfortunately bullies have an innate ability to spot this, also without consciously knowing it so will home in on their prey knowing that they are unlikely to get any trouble back from someone who is lacking in confidence.

So the point here is the importance of not only taking your issue through the appropriate channels but also to find techniques and strategies that build up confidence and self esteem in a healthy and empowering manner. We all have our younger parts of us that have helped us develop into the person we have become but your 8 year old doesn’t want to be dealing with awkward people with misplaced egos in the office. Our 8 year old just wants to play. It is our full grown up self that has the knowledge, wisdom and understanding to handle the sort of situations grown ups handle.

 

So learning and developing strategies that will help us feel comfortable and empowered in our full grown up self will help us deal with these situations in a much more grown up and effective way. Once the bully unconsciously recognises there is a change of dynamics and energy nine times out of ten they will soon back away. The most important thing is that you will become your full authentic self and confidently take on that knowledge, wisdom and experience that is yours. I have seen a complete change in body language and energy within just ten minutes when a client literally steps into that full self that is theirs to take with them.

If you have been suffering from any sort of bullying and would like to discuss any of the points in this post just call or email me and I will be happy to help.

Hypnosis and EFT can help heal your past

Heal Your Past

Are you afraid of your past?

We all have a past and we all have “baggage” from our past but are those past experiences holding you back from connecting with the person inside that is “trying to get out”?

Many people do a wonderful job of getting on with their lives even though they may have experienced trauma or abuse in childhood or later. And many are getting on with their lives but unfortunately still stuck with feelings of guilt, shame, anger and fear.

I never cease to be amazed at the resilience of the human psyche, however if one can begin to heal these past scars and reclaim the real, authentic and confident self that you know could be “you” what difference would that make to your life now and in the future?

The problem here is that these experiences can be “tucked” safely away in our unconscious and the thought of going to therapy and bringing everything back into the conscious mind may seem too much to even contemplate. And I really do understand that.

Many survivors of an abusive past will go for counselling or psychotherapy to talk through these past issues and this can help bring resolution, but what if the thought of going over and over and sharing all the uncomfortable details of your past with someone you don’t know feels far too intimidating and frightening?

Well there are other options, and therapies using Self Hypnosis confidence and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) can be a very powerful way of getting your life back and helping yourself to enjoy your life so much more and leaving behind that shame, anger and fear without having to go through it all again. And why would you want to “go through it all again”?

 

Now this is not to say that all hypnotherapists and EFT practitioners will use these techniques in a “content free” way so you will need to discuss with the therapist how they work before committing yourself.

I have found that the more I work in these areas with clients the less of the background details I need to know and interestingly the more I work in this “content free” way the more effective the changes become. If a client wishes to tell their story then that is fine but sometimes it is just too painful or we may not even consciously remember anything about it because we have safely repressed that information and trying to unearth it would probably not be a good idea anyway.

Using EFT and hypnotherapist glasgow in specific ways designed to help clients unconsciously release bad memories is often remarkably effective and I have seen clients achieve massive changes in confidence and self esteem within one or two sessions with very little discussion about their past and how it made them feel. An important part of the work is releasing that connection but releasing so that one can become free to build a life that looks forward instead of back.

So what I am saying here is that my experience tells me that releasing trauma and difficult past experience does not need to be a long and painful drawn out affair. You really can put space between you and the past in a healthy and safe way with the absolute minimum of discomfort.

If you feel your future is being blighted by your past then you can call or email me and I will be happy to discuss this with you.

Hypnosis helps to calm stress and anxiety

Stress and Anxiety

Stress

I am getting more and more enquiries about help for stress related issues. Some will be about stress at work, some stress in relationships and many just a feeling of being generally overwhelmed with nothing the client can put a finger on.

To cope effectively with pressure, motivation and excitement in our lives and to get things done, perform at work and deal with everyday issues effectively we need the mind and body to be able to “wind up” to a certain level that will give us the energy to do the things that need doing. However, the problem is being able to let go of the excess tension at the appropriate moments, to be able to calm the body and mind so that we do not get locked in an internal “flight or flight” loop that seems impossible to get out of.

Ideally we should be able to move reasonably easily from a state of medium or even high internal tension to a more relaxed state of being since there is nothing inherently wrong with the state of stress in itself. In fact it is an indication that our body is doing all the right things, it just means that it is not doing “all the right things in the right order” and that is when we get stuck in a primal part of the brain that is only designed to “save” us but does not have the tools to make rational and organised decisions. Hence, we feel as if we are out of control.

Feeling out of control is an extremely uncomfortable feeling and if we have no tools or strategies to help us regain some feeling of being in control then we will be left feeling helpless and hopeless. This then leads to a series of physical, emotional, behavioural, and cognitive symptoms to which there seems no way out. (Always first consult your GP in any case.) So what is the answer to this problem and what techniques can help?

It can also be useful to use more than one technique that will support and help a client achieve the best results. There are many therapies such as acupuncture, CBT, counselling and massage out there that will help with stress but in my opinion for stress and anxiety issues Hypnotherapy is one of the most simple, safe and effective ways to help rapidly calm and heal the mind and body. (If you would like to sample a free hypnosis experience there is a download at the top of the home page of my website.) Meditation, mindfulness and yoga are very popular now and any one or combination of these other techniques with the right professional practitioner will help alleviate the symptoms of stress. Sometimes it can be beneficial to use a variety of techniques to help strengthen the parasympathetic (relaxation part) nervous system and achieve a more dynamic balance over the whole system.

We will all come up against many times of stress during our lives and they may be big or small instances but learning how to deal with them is the key.

If you would like any more information on how I am helping clients deal with stress and anxiety and how Hypnosis, Emotional Freedom Technique and my own simple and powerful strategies designed to help turn your thinking around on a daily basis please call or email and I will be happy to help.

Are you talking “Absolute Turnip”?

Have you thought about changing your thoughts?

Andy Murray competing in the 2016 French Open tennis quarter finals was heard to shout “Absolute Turnip” to himself as he fought to break the serve of big hitter John Isner. Apparently this is a phrase he has been using for a few years now, presumably for shots that were not his best and it certainly worked on this occasion.

However, how often during the day do we talk to ourselves and are we really listening to what we say to ourselves carefully? Pretty much everything we say to ourselves will have some unconscious effect on our perception of ourselves and our skills. It may not be enough for us to notice any immediate difference but the “drip, drip” effect of this self talk can easily make a big difference to our confidence and self esteem over time.

Now we may find it amusing to call ourselves or our tennis game “absolute turnip” but remember that your unconscious mind is listening to everything you say and may not be translating it the way you expect.

Have you ever told a child “now don’t drop those plates”? Seems to be very good advice and a very good suggestion. But what message does the unsuspecting youngster hear first? Drop the plates!! Why, because the brain will first do a quick rehearsal of “drop the plates” before adding in “don’t”. Too late! The plates are on the floor and broken before the conscious mind has a chance to save the situation.

There is a very good book “Your body believes every word you say” and if we think about it for a moment we cannot have an emotional feeling without a physical reaction any more than we can experience something physical without some sort sort of emotional experience. Plus, our mind is constantly making decisions for us before we know we have even thought of them. This is a very useful thing since this leaves the prefrontal cortex free to make our executive decisions and operate hopefully with our best interests in mind, while we carry on doing our everyday tasks like walking downstairs or washing up.

So it’s well worth paying a little more attention to your “self talk” bearing in mind that there are lots of different parts of you listening to what you say and interpreting that information perhaps not in the way you expect. Maybe saying our tennis is “absolute turnip” is no big deal but saying derogatory statements about ourselves and our skills certainly is. We all deserve better so make sure you do a bit of weeding around that unconscious vegetable patch and grow some more positive thoughts. It really will make a difference.