Blushing Archives - Hypnotherapy Surrey

Hidden anxiety

Millions of people are affected by anxiety every year. Many live and cope with their anxiety on their own, suffering quietly. Anxiety is something we all experience at some time in our lives, but for most, it is just a short term experience.

Anxiety affects us both physically and psychologically and in its normal form will help us stay alert, flag up any danger and help us with all round performance.

The panic and adrenaline that anxiety produces is what kept our forebears alert and alive and is referred to as the ‘fight or flight’ response. Even though we don’t have the dangers that our ancestors did, adrenaline still helps us today. However, in excess it can, in many cases, work against us, causing us to have panic and fear when there is nothing to worry about.

Enduring a great deal of anxiousness for a long time can have an unhealthy impact on a person’s life.

Panic, fear, lack of sleep, palpitations, dizziness, feeling sick and anxiety attacks are just some of the symptoms connected with anxiety. Just the thought of getting through the day is enough to produce anxiousness, and sufferers do not know how to stop the worry cycle. Chronic anxiety can impact anyone at any time of their life, even though it is reported to be more common in childhood and early adulthood.

Many people with this condition report they feel like they’re ‘going mad’. They think that no one could understand them and truly feel uncomfortable and ashamed. They suffer in silence, hiding their issue from friends, family, children and colleagues. Their confidence in their body and mind is no longer there, so they put up an emotional and behavioural pretence.

Sad to say, it’s common practice for victims to hide this issue, believing there’s just no hope. But this can, in fact, feed the anxiousness and make it much worse.

Discovering and taking care of the root cause of the issue is the most effective way of removing the anxiety. If there is no longer an underlying reason, there will no longer be an effect.

Hypnotherapy techniques are extremely helpful in alleviating anxiety and tackling the underlying difficulties. Hypnotherapy helps the person discover new techniques for thinking, feeling and coping with their problems.

A hypnotherapist will aim to diminish a person’s detrimental views by suggesting favourable feelings to the subconscious. The mind is a very powerful thing, and hypnotherapy uses the resources of our subconscious mind to regain influence over our thoughts.

Paul Howard, an anxiety specialist from The Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy, based in Surrey, said, “Anxiety comes in many shapes and sizes and, therefore, it is crucial to understand each client’s triggers and beliefs about their anxiety. Once a good understanding has been reached, it is normally fairly straightforward to adjust and refocus their thoughts onto a more appropriate path.”

The Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy is committed to raising awareness to the help that hypnotherapy can bring to sufferers of anxiety issues. They have specialists that cover various issues such as anxiety, weight control, insomnia, psoriasis and smoking. They have been in practice since 2002 and have male and female therapists on staff.

First, I want to inspire you about Amanda and how she worked through her anxiety and the things she learned that helped her.

Then, I would like to send you regular emails to help you to start taking control and give you a chance to think and feel differently about anxiety. I want you to know upfront that I will send you a few emails every week.

Complete this form and I will tell you about Amanda.

Anxiety Tips and Tricks Emails

Sign up and get FREE entry for our prize draw for 4 standard hypnotherapy sessions

By Paul Howard 3 Comments

The Way to Overcome Social Anxiety Issues

One of the most common types of anxiety disorders is social anxiety disorder.

It can create problems in circumstances that many of us take for granted, like being at the checkout in a supermarket or even socialising with a group of friends.

Social anxiety sufferers can alienate themselves from best friends and family, which can lead to further problems, both in the home and, in some cases, at the workplace.

Social anxiety manifests itself in a number of ways, including talking face-to-face with people, reading aloud or writing whilst being watched, queuing in banks, and any circumstance where they are the centre of attention.

A fear of criticism is often quite prominent in this disorder, so sufferers regularly avoid situations where they may be criticised. This is maintained and heightened by any ongoing criticism, which in the main, comes from their own critical self-dialogue.

A person with social anxiety can sometimes have low self-worth and feel insecure, which may lead to further problems within relationships.

Without treatment, someone with social phobia problems may develop anxiety attacks which can include nausea, chest pains, shaking and lack of breath.

Further repercussions of this disorder are depressive feelings and an incapacity to relax, which can bring about misuse of alcohol and drugs to attempt to escape their present reality.

It isn’t unusual for an individual with severe social anxiety to lose or quit their job, experience marriage breakdown, or perhaps stop socialising, and even day to day living may become difficult.

Obviously, it is a very debilitating disorder if left to grow without check; the great news is that hypnosis is very effective at treating social anxiety at every stage of the condition.

Hypnotherapy helps to establish whether or not there is a hidden issue, perhaps an experience from the past which has developed into feelings of fear, insecurity and anxiousness.

Helping the person to take charge of these thoughts is just part of the remit for hypnotheraputic treatments.

By teaching the subconscious how to change the perception of these memories, as well as changing the behaviour of the person’s thinking, we re-establish favourable thinking and feelings of positivity, control and confidence.

Hypnotherapy specialist techniques help the person to remove the associated problems and go back to a normal life, without any social anxiety.

By utilising hypnosis, people find it much easier to be around others and quite frankly just be “normal” again, because they feel more relaxed and in control.

The increasing confidence and self-worth fuel improvement in romantic relationships, work and social settings at an escalating rate.

Paul Howard, a hypnotherapist specialising in social anxiety, and a director of The Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy, explained, “The criticism we receive in our early years can, if severe enough, cause social anxiety and set up the desire to do ‘things’ perfectly. This desire sets up behaviours where the person develops unrealistic perfectionism traits which have an ongoing effect on their work and the people around them. These problems are often the driver to seek treatment for their social anxiety.”

First, I want to inspire you about Amanda and how she worked through her anxiety and the things she learned that helped her.

Complete this form and I will tell you about Amanda.

Anxiety Tips and Tricks Emails

Sign up and get FREE entry for our prize draw for 4 standard hypnotherapy sessions

By Paul Howard Leave a Comment

Blushing, how hypnotherapy can help

Becoming red-faced at inappropriate times or extreme blushing, is a common problem for many individuals. For many individuals extreme blushing would appear to happen without any legitimate reason. This lack of control tends to create anxiousness which generally makes the whole problem even more serious. The more concerned you are regarding blushing, the more you will continue to do it. And the more you expect to blush, the more liable it is to happen. The Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy can help you to change your situation if you blush.

Blushing denotes shame, self-awareness and self-doubt socially. This tends to impact individuals so powerfully that it inhibits them having a regular life. It may cause you to steer clear of social contact and hold you back at work if you’re required to talk in front of some people and even speak to other individuals.

Your love life might be affected. When there’s a problem with going red, romantic meetings are a lot more troublesome. It is normal to find another person attractive. Even so, the majority of people would like to possess control over when and if we allow that person to know the way we feel.

The high amount of anxiety linked to going red can certainly compel people to avoid all situations they fear may cause them to go red.

If you don’t have a problem with blushing, you will not predict it happening to you. Accordingly, you will get no problems with it on an everyday basis.

The biological mechanism of blushing is uncomplicated. Yet, the unconscious reasons can turn out to be even more intricate.

Many forms of hypnotherapy are around to help battle the issue of blushing. Typically the hypnotherapist will lead you through a procedure that will help you to figure out the original situation or learning that might have triggered the issue with your subconscious mind. Some individuals have gone through a distressing event when they were young which may have led them to go red. Finding the source of the problem means that you can identify it, handle it and in the end remove the issue altogether. The therapy will even involve teaching the subconscious mind to, in reality, form new coping systems suitable for any former triggers. For that reason, the old situations will no longer turn into a conscious issue and thus can be forgotten about.

At The Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy, we tackle the behavioural pattern driving the blushing. This means that you retrain the brain to stop planning to blush in the scenarios that have previously instigated it. When your conscious and subconscious mind cease expecting to blush, you will stop blushing.

Traditional therapy (non-hypnotic) addresses blushing at the conscious level. This means that the biggest portion of the mind (the subconscious) isn’t taken into consideration. And that means you can be dealing with the condition consciously when both the subconscious and conscious mind could get considerably more effective with the use of a hypnotic approach.

As soon as you open up the potential of your brain as a whole, having control over blushing gets to be a great deal easier because you will no longer be required to consciously try to stop it occurring.

Paul Howard, Anxiety specialist and Institute Director, said “By using hypnotherapy for blushing we help our clients collapse the underlying beliefs that support the blushing behaviour. Once that is done we then move on to dealing with some of the specific situations in which the clients blushes. In particular, we stop them over thinking the situation because when the do that they plan to fail. Because the underlying anxiety has collapsed the change in behaviours happens reasonably quickly and after a few weeks the clients notice a significant change in their lifestyle.”

First, I want to inspire you about Amanda and how she worked through her anxiety and the things she learned that helped her.

Complete this form and I will tell you about Amanda.

Anxiety Tips and Tricks Emails

Sign up and get FREE entry for our prize draw for 4 standard hypnotherapy sessions

By Paul Howard Leave a Comment

Blushing, there is a way out

hypnotherapy for blushing Blushing is often dismissed as a silly thing and nothing to worry about. This is generally the view of someone who does not blush. Of course they say this with the aim of helping the blusher. But unfortunately it does the opposite.

When people dismiss blushing as insignificant, it makes the blusher feel “silly” and “stupid”. I have never worked with a blusher who thought it was insignificant. However, what I do hear is “I know it’s stupid but….” or “I feel silly saying this but….”

Blushing is something we see a lot of and is very confusing and uncomfortable for the client. It is often accompanied with feeling hot, sweating, embarrassment and fear. But what is it? Why does it happen?

Blushing is used by the subconscious to remove the blusher from a situation that the subconscious believes is dangerous (normally danger of embarrassment). By making the person blush it generates the desire/need to leave the situation.

It usually occurs because of a severe fear of criticism. This can often be set up in childhood by critical parents, bullying or ridicule from teachers at school.

Let us consider a young girl whose father is always critical of her. Nothing is good enough, perhaps he calls her “silly” or “stupid” and makes comments like “What do you know, you have no idea”. However, he may also call her “pretty” and “beautiful”. This continues into her teens and often even when she leaves the home and has her family of her own.

Her desire to please her father increases with the level of criticism and often creates a need for perfectionism, which all leads to vile negative beliefs about herself and her abilities. But in contrast, her beliefs about her body and looks will probably be quite good and healthy.

As this girl grows she will start to avoid situations where she might be judged (critically with regard to intellect). However, she may be quite at home entering a beauty competition, providing they didn’t need to talk in public. Talking in public is liable to be the top things on her list to avoid.

If she starts to blush at sometime in her childhood this will just heighten her anxiety and add lots more situations for her to avoid, as now her anxiety is obvious and on display to the world.

To treat this form of social phobia the underlying belief that she is “not good enough” will have to be addressed in the first instance and once that has been achieved the fear of the fear will need to be addressed.

The fear of the fear, i.e. the fear of blushing in public, will need to be tackled by generating situations in her mind where she used to blush and have her complete these situations in a calm and relaxed way. This would all be done whilst she was in hypnosis.

Typically, if this treatment is done by an anxiety specialist, it should be achievable in 3 to 4 sessions (depending on the client and their circumstances).

If blushing effects you, do not despair, there is a way out of it. Hypnotherapy is a very effective way of getting your subconscious mind to change the beliefs that support the behaviour.

By Paul Howard 1 Comment

Criticism can really effect our lives in so many ways

We are all subject to hypnotic suggestion from the day we were born, some good suggestion, some not so good. For example, how many of us were told to “finish our plates before leaving the table”. This suggestion was driven into us many times over years. How many of us now wish we were able to leave food on our plate? We call this conditioning and conditioning happens in many areas of our life. Another way we are conditioned negatively is through criticism. If we have critical parents, siblings or peers we can be conditioned to believe that the things we do, the way we look, the way we talk or even our intellect, is lacking in some way.

This type of conditioning, if it continues for a significant period of time, generates a belief that “I’m not good enough”. This belief we see in clients that have a fear of criticism, fear of failure and/or a fear of judgement, lead on to various types of social phobia including blushing, presentation nerves, exam freeze, nail biting, and ultimately panic attacks, anxiety and can even be a factor in depression. These beliefs have a significant effect on self-esteem and self-confidence.

We often blame ourselves but are we really to blame? This sort of conditioning is generally way out of our control. As a child it can come from parents, bullies, teachers or even siblings. Worst of all, if it continues for a substantial period of time, we become used to it. It becomes comfortable and eventually becomes the norm. So much so, in fact, that as we go into our adult lives we actually seek out similar people to be around. Often people seek out what they are used too. For example, if they have had a critical parent they may well get involved with a partner that exhibits the same type of behaviour, and so the cycle of criticism continues. Then what happens when offspring come along? Do you think the criticism will stop? Of course not. It is perpetuated down the generations. So where does it end?

Sometimes when the self-esteem and self-worth is low enough, or the person has reached the end of their tether, they will do something about it. This is the type of client we see at The Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy all the time. By using hypnotherapy we are to change the core belief that “I’m not good enough”. Although not simple to do, it is essential to achieve so to facilitate change in the client, not only now but for generations to come. Getting rid of these vile, negative beliefs that they have about themselves allows them to believe in themselves and allow the thought that just perhaps others can believe in them too. It also allows them to re-evaluate their relationships with others and to decide which relationships are worth holding on to, and which ones that it would be better to let go. After all, if friends, partners and loved ones are continually negative and critical about you and the things you do, are they really being helpful or do they just put you down so they can feel better about themselves? Sometimes they need a wake up call and as you become more confident about yourself and your actions, you start to repel and rebuff their put downs and sometimes it can help them to realise that these types of behaviour aren’t helpful. At the very least you stop taking these put-downs to heart and start to enjoy your life with a completely new outlook. One that is full of promise rather than vile negative thoughts.