Hypnotherapy Archives - Page 3 of 28

Being proactive with pain management

Huge numbers of people are affected by severe and continual pain. In this short article, we examine the effects of pain and how hypnotherapy could help to control and even prevail over the problem.

There are ten million people living with constant pain in the UK are you one of these people? (1) Pain is built to warn us of injury, but when that warning continues for long periods, it can be both debilitating and stressful. There are plenty of things that can cause chronic pain including surgical procedures, cancer treatments, injury and of course the wear and tear due to everyday activities. And whilst the correct medication could go some way to managing the related symptoms of these conditions, sometimes the sufferers are simply told that they ‘have to deal with it’.

Pain is usually a warning that is difficult to ignore. The consequences of long lasting pain can be just as incapacitating as intense pain from a recent injury.

Pain can have the following effects on an individual:

Increase or loss of appetite.
Insufficient sleep or poor quality of sleep through regular disturbance from the pain.
Lowering of their mood due to the constant sensations of pain.
Feelings of hopelessness, reduced self-worth and self esteem – feeling ‘broken’.

How hypnotherapy could help you with pain management

Hypnotherapy is a legitimate approach to pain management that is utterly non-invasive. If the pain is heightened by anxiousness or stress it is believed to be even more effective. Irritable bowel is a classic illustration of conditions that have been shown to be effectively addressed with hypnotheraputic techniques.

It is imperative to note that the way hypnotherapy helps a person in pain is to teach them strategies that alters the way the pain is registered and responded to. Therefore the person is empowered mainly because they are given the control to manage their pain on their own.

Effectively, you allow your mind to deal with the pain message in a more beneficial way. Hypnotherapy could well be the answer you are looking for. By using hypnosis for pain control you will learn some excellent relaxation techniques, and find your pain appreciably reduced after only a few sessions of hypnotherapy.

Paul White from The Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy based in Surrey explained why in his view hypnotherapy is extremely successful at reducing the perception of long term pain,

Often people view pain as the enemy, they try to fight it off, they try to ignore it and the become stressed, when these techniques are unsuccessful. Using hypnotherapy will help you to adjust your view of pain, for example, using visualisation techniques, you can actually change the perception of the pain. You can change colour, size and intensity. We will also help you to learn stress reduction techniques that will make you more responsive to the changes.

(1. http://www.britishpainsociety.org/media_faq.htm )

By Paul Howard 1 Comment

Feeling overwhelmed? Get better organised

When somebody is disorganised it can have a negative effect on many facets of their life on account of the stress it can cause. So by making use of hypnotherapy, you can be more relaxed and more successful at being better organised.

Everybody has a limit to the amount of jobs and events we can manage, and often it’s easy for the stress of being disorganised to spiral out of control. Perhaps you’re planning a wedding, or you’re taking on a lot of new jobs in the office? Or you’re causing family members and friends to genuinely feel hurt by your lack of ability to recollect birthdays and planned meet ups.

Being disorganised isn’t a problem in itself, until it starts to spiral out of control – and this is easier than you think. That’s because when we are stressed, we are likely to find it harder to think right, and this raises our natural tendency to be disorganised. In other words, stress about being ordered can stop us actually being ordered!

Is this you?

Continuously thinking about things you need to do, even to the point of not sleeping well?
Often forgetting birthdays and anniversaries?
Do you have to pull ‘all nighters’ in order to satisfy deadlines or find you don’t get things accomplished?
Getting short-tempered or irritated when required to do more?

How can hypnotheraputic solutions help?

Hypnotherapy is a fantastic tool for getting better organised, since it helps to break stress associated vicious cycles. By ensuring that you stay calm and clear headed, it’s a great deal easier to address demanding situations, think straight and be better organised.

The capability to be better organised is not something we are all naturally blessed with. However, it shouldn’t be inaccessible for anyone with a bit of practise. If you’re finding that it is something you simply ‘cannot do’ there is, in all probability, an underlying issue stopping you from being better organised.

Hypnotherapy solutions can be used to:

Contend with any subconscious ‘blocks’ to being better organised
Learn relaxation techniques that would clear your mind so you can function better on a daily basis
Help your memory and overcome mental blocks that prevent you from remembering essential tasks and dates
Target and resolve anxiety and stress problems

When someone is disorganised it can put a strain on their relationships with friends and family, and this causes a whole lot more stress which creates more problems in life. Hypnotheraputic solutions can assist you to learn why you are disorganised, give you the tools to contend with those problems and most importantly, make it easier to become self-confident, relaxed and able to get more organised down the road.

Paul Howard from The Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy, explained why, in their view, hypnotherapy specialist techniques are extremely helpful at helping people to get better organised.

Because stress causes numerous changes in the chemicals our brains release, it causes problems in many areas in our life. But in the case of staying organised it is a double whammy as not being organised causes more stress. So, by using hypnotherapy, the first thing we do is reduce the stress levels and when we do that the clients immediately have the ability to think clearly again.

By Paul Howard 1 Comment

Why weight loss gimmicks never work long-term

It’s all well and good people like Paul McKenna producing a gastric band app, but it’s important to understand that these types of apps are often weight loss gimmicks that do not compare with the one-to-one personalised help you would receive from one of our hypnotherapists whose sole aim is to help you to change your behaviour around food.

Our hypnotherapists look at your whole behaviour around food, what you eat, what food means to you and how you respond to the external events in your daily life.

The problem with any app that purports to achieve weight loss success using hypnosis is that it cannot take in to account the individual circumstances of the client. Which means that an individual approach is far more likely to achieve change in your feelings around food, change your behaviour and ultimate achieve sustained weight loss. There is a world of difference between using hypnotherapy and an inexpensive app that, at best we believe is only doing half the job.

Hypnotherapy involves a hypnotherapist working with you to establish how your behaviours are slowly but surely adding to your weight, looking at your underlying beliefs that support the behaviours and working out how to interrupt and alter those behaviours.

One thing that we do know is that unless you change your beliefs and behaviours, NO intervention will deliver what you want, which is fast, easy weight loss that will be maintained long term.

For 50 years we have been living with many fictitious beliefs about weight loss.

Now the truth is out. Read Olivia's story and the dramatic effect it had on her life.

Then, I would like to send you regular emails to help you to start taking control of your weight and give you a chance to think, feel and relate to food differently. I want you to know upfront that I will send you one or two emails every week.

Weight Loss Tips and Tricks Emails

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

So, the next time you consider any weight loss plan, pills, app or any weight loss gimmick, ask yourself a simple question. Will it change my behaviours and beliefs long-term? If not, then all you will achieve (even if it helps you lose weight) is to jump once again on the yo-yo diet cycle.

At the Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy we spent a year researching how our body works with food and, more specifically, how our mind interprets our eating patterns and the way different foods create different chemical releases in our brains. It is these chemical releases that affect things like cravings, hunger and mood.

During this year we discovered some amazing and actually well known, if not well publicised, facts about the way our mind and body works.

What we learnt led us to develop an eating plan that is so simple that anyone can follow. There is no calorie counting and, in fact, the whole idea behind the plan is to make it so easy that you don’t spend any time thinking about food.

This eating plan is backed up by hypnotherapy that builds confidence and motivation, uncovers and resolves underlying beliefs that support your old behaviours and helps you to create new, more appropriate behaviours. This creates a long-lasting behavioural pattern that lets you step off the yo-yo diet cycle and this means that you wont need any weight loss gimmicks in the future.

So if you’re looking for fast, easy weight loss that lasts, don’t forget to do things that change your old beliefs and behaviours and then create behaviours that help you to eat appropriately and stay slim and healthy.

By Paul Howard 1 Comment

Can Paul McKenna’s new £5 app help you to lose weight?

According to an article in the Daily Mail, Paul McKenna claims that his Hypnotic Gastric Band app is a ‘surgery-free weight-loss solution’ that ‘can help convince the unconscious mind that a gastric band has been fitted, so the body behaves as though a band is physically present.’.

However, top surgeons have warned that, in their opinion, giving customers the impression they will see the same results as gastric band surgery is wrong.
The surgical procedure, which costs about £6,000, involves doctors implanting an inflatable band around the top of the stomach to create a small pouch, so patients feel fuller quicker.

Well, the cynic in me would say that the surgeons have 6000 reasons to say that, but on balance the reality is that McKenna stands to make a small fortune with the app.

I have to agree with the sceptics for a couple of specific reasons. When we first developed the hypnotic gastric band at the Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy, it was most definitely a marketing gimmick. In fact, we actually developed it in a marketing course for hypnotherapists.

The idea was to use it to attract people to a stall in a shopping centre with the slogan “A hypnotic gastric band at a tenth of the cost and no pain or risk”. However, what we discovered was that it actually had “some” merit.

Because it was a gimmick, we just put something in the second hypnotherapy session about feeling full (the Christmas feeling, i.e. when you’ve overeaten and feel bloated) when they were half way through their plate and that feeling became full on by the time they got to the three quarters point of their plate.

What we discovered was that the clients that we did this with all found that they started to have difficulty if they tried to overeat.

But, we also found that just doing the hypnotic gastric band on its own was a complete waste of time. Firstly, obviously it can only work if the client is an overeater (bad portion control). If they are a grazer, then it is completely pointless. Secondly, without significant behavioural change (which hypnotherapy is great at helping the client to achieve), it simply does not work.

Some 6,500 weight-loss procedures were performed in 2013. These included fitting a gastric band, and gastric bypass.

Paul McKenna says that hypnotherapy is, as a matter of scientific fact, a proven means of weight loss. His spokesman explains that the gastric band hypnotherapy app is ‘merely an innovative variation on a scientifically tried and tested means of weight loss’.
He specifically points to a 1985 trial which showed 109 hypnosis patients lost significant amounts of weight, and continued to do so over a two-year period, when used alongside other ‘behavioural’ treatments, compared with patients who only had behavioural treatment.

Currently, patients must have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 40 or above, or 35 or above with a serious health condition, to meet the criteria to have weight-loss surgery on the NHS.

For 50 years we have been living with many fictitious beliefs about weight loss.

Now the truth is out. Read Olivia's story and the dramatic effect it had on her life.

Weight Loss Tips and Tricks Emails

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

Gastric band hypnotherapy can safely assist those people who have struggled to lose weight, but only if they need help to manage portion size. At the Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy we would not install a hypnotic gastric band in isolation. We would also address things like motivation, self-confidence, behavioural change, motivation to exercise and healthy eating within the treatment.

My thoughts are that the cost to the NHS for those 6,500 weight-loss procedures that were performed in 2013, at best (ignoring complications) would be £39 million. The hypnotic gastric band treatment for all 6500 would cost just under £3 million (with us, the complete programme costs around £350). Even if just 20% were successful that would be a saving of £5.5 million and would save 1300 people from having potentially life threatening surgery. Further, even the ones that did not lose enough to avoid surgery, at least they would be in a better place physically and mentally, which should help the success rates of the surgery.

By using hypnotherapy to lose weight, the worst that can happen is “nothing”. The same cannot be said for surgery. In the main, our clients get significant weight loss and a real long term change in their behaviour around food.

By Paul Howard 2 Comments

Treating Business Stress

It does not matter where you stand on the corporate ladder, you can still be affected by workplace stress. In this short article, we’ll look at what could help tackle business stress in the workplace.

Are you under pressure at work? You’re not alone

It makes no difference if you are mopping the floor or the MD of a multinational, you can still be affected by workplace stress. According to one study (1), stress, depression and anxiety made up 39% of all workplace illnesses in 2013/2014.

Maybe you’re in senior corporate management and you have found the recent strains and stresses of making redundancies or reaching targets has effected your ability to perform on a daily basis? Or perhaps you’re an entry level worker struggling to cope with the countless layers of management passing down orders to you every single day, pushing you to improve when you really feel you simply cannot complete one task effectively, let alone several.

While employees would rarely admit to suffering from business stress for fear of being viewed as weak, the sad fact is that business stress underpins a large proportion of employee absenteeism. Co-workers may believe that a person who is absent because of “stress” is simply ‘making it up’, which can then make it significantly more difficult for the absent employee to return, building the stress and anxiousness and contributing to the actual problem.

Though it is the responsibility of the employer to successfully manage staff stress levels and do all they can to decrease them, it is also down to the staff member to seek help where applicable.

Business stress can cause a breakdown

In the business world, some workers will actually continue working until they quite literally have a breakdown and find themselves completely unable to function. In this circumstance they are unable to make decisions, anxiety can more often than not become a factor and even the slightest bit of additional stress can send them spiralling downwards. Their work then starts to suffer as they struggle to meet deadlines, and they simply don’t perform at their best in high pressure circumstances, and as a result they and the business they are working for suffer.

The Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy can really help with these sorts of problems. We use hypnotherapy to tackle the underlying thought processes, feelings and beliefs, which are generating or sustaining stress, as well as teaching coping methods to tackle any future stress more effectively.

More often than not, our ability to succumb to stress is due to a trauma or issue that is much deeper than just the environment we are currently working or living in.

We would normally search for any underlying problems and remove or alter the effect it is having on the worker’s psychological mind, as well as teaching the worker how to relax properly. Not only does hypnotherapy processes remove the effects of stress in their working life, but also, in many cases, it has a powerful effect on the home life as well.

It is a win-win scenario for the employee and the company and if businesses invested more in their employee’s mental health, we’d have far fewer sick days, which is great for our economy as well.

(1. http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causdis/stress/index.htm )

Paul Howard from The Surrey Institute of Clinical Hypnotherapy, based in Wallington, Surrey, explained why, in their view, hypnotherapy is an extremely effective tool in dealing with workplace stress. “Business stress has been shown to be far less troublesome if your approach to it changes. Basically, if you start to see stressful situations as a challenge that you are more than capable of dealing with, the negative effects to health and well-being are significantly reduced, if not completely eradicated.”