When clients come to me, they do so because they have a problem. Usually, it is a problem involving anxiety. Maybe they worry about their children, their partner, their work, the cleanliness of their house, their health, driving on motorways … or anything else. Maybe they have anxiety about anything and everything. Or maybe they just wake up in the morning with a sense of dread for no particular reason …
… and I don’t ask my clients to tell me all the intricacies of their problem, in fact, we often have a good laugh about other things.
Problem-Focused Therapy
In many types of therapy, the therapist will ask their client to talk about their problem – when it happens, where it came from, how bad it gets and so on. The analysis of the problem is a key part of the therapy.
This problem-focused approach is the way that doctors treat patients. A few years ago I broke one of the bones in my finger. The doctor wanted to know how I did it (… a sporting injury), what sort of break it was (… an X-ray revealed it was a spiral break), and how much it hurt (… not much).
Having established all that, they could work out what the best treatment was for me. The best treatment for me turned out to be a splint for my finger and, later on, physiotherapy to help get the full range of movement back into my finger. The splint and the physiotherapy allowed my body to heal the finger by itself – but it all started with an analysis of the problem.
Solution-Focused Therapy
When clients come to see me, I do not analyse their problems. I do not ask them where the problem came from or the situations where it is really bad. I ask them about solutions: What are their best hopes for when the problem goes away? What is it like when the problem isn’t there? As the problem eases off, what positive differences will they notice?
When you worry about a problem, the limbic system (the primitive part of the brain that is concerned with survival) starts to raise the threat level. It assumes that whatever it is you are worried about may actually be just about to happen. So it starts to go into a fight-flight-or-freeze state and generates a lot of anxiety, just to make sure you are paying attention to the problem. In other words, it exacerbates the anxiety you already have.
However, when you focus on the things that are going right, and what it will be like when it is all sorted out, that is when the healing process can start. It is like putting a splint on the broken bone and doing physiotherapy – it tells the brain how it should be behaving, and allows the natural processes to move you back onto the road to normality.
Solution-Focused Hypnotherapy
A solution-focused discussion allows the brain to imagine the anxiety-free state that you want to be in. Hypnosis puts you into a nice relaxed state where your brain can more easily make the changes it needs to make to get there. Solution-focused hypnotherapy is a very gentle and natural way to get back on track.
If you want help getting over your anxiety, you might consider solution-focused hypnotherapy to help you. I usually see people between 5 and 10 sessions before they get to where they want to be. If you want to Contact Me, I would be happy to talk to you and answer any questions you might have. I work out of my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as online.
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