Tim Maude Hypnotherapy

Author: Tim

Burnt Out Britain
Increasing numbers of people in Britain are getting burnt out – so says a report by Jenevieve Treadwell as part of the think tank, Onward. The report is an interesting read, laying bare the facts round commonly held beliefs, and proposing a new idea about why people get burnt out.

The report does not define “burn-out”, but associates it with tiredness, feeling overworked and feeling too knackered for leisure activities.

Busting the three burn-out myths

Treadwell argues that there are three myths about why more and more people are feel burnt out …
1. We are sleeping less – wrong … statistics show we are now sleeping more on average than we did in 1974
2. We are working more – wrong … at least for men, who are working very slightly less than in 1974. Woman are working slightly more.
3. We are feeling more rushed – wrong … survey’s suggest that our subjective feeling of being rushed has not changed much.
So what is it that causes burn-out?

Different Times

In order to create more nuanced thinking about burn-out, Treadwell identifies four different types of time:
1. Necessary time – This is the time we spend doing things that are necessary to keep our bodies working properly – sleep, eating, washing etc.
2. Contracted time – This is the time we spend working, that is doing what we have contracted to do with our employer or clients.
3. Committed time – This is the time we spend doing the other things that we have to do because we have no choice – taking the children to school, cleaning our house/flat.
4. Free time – The time that is left to us to do what we want to do – leisure activities, volunteering etc.
These different times compete with each other, and it is often the Free Time that gets squeezed out. We now spend less time seeing their friends, visiting restaurants, going out, volunteering, and exercising than in 1974.

So Why the Burn-Out?

Treadwell proposes that a big contributor to burn-out is the fact that we now change activities far quicker than we did in the past. We move from one activity to another and then back again far more than we ever did. Modern technology allows us to check our messages in the middle of eating a meal, or check our social media before getting out of bed. This constant changing from one activity to another increases the stress and the likelihood of burn-out.

What do I Think?

I work with people how are only just coping with stress and anxiety. In each session we talk about their lives and what they could do to improve it, which all supports a therapeutic hypnosis trance. I find that many of my clients decide that they want to re-organise their lives – simplifying and restructuring so as to get as much done as they ever did, but in a better way. For example, having set times when they don’t look at their phones, stopping taking work home with them at weekends, or prioritising time spent with their children.

From my experience, it seems to me that taking better control of your time is a good way to reduce stress and anxiety.

If you find that you are unable to control your own stress and anxiety on your own, you may like to give hypnotherapy a go. I work in my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire and would be happy to hear from you.

The Report in Full

Click to access Burnt-Out-Britain.pdf

Photo by ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash
April 4, 2023
The Impact of Regret on Anxiety

“Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.” Thus sang Frank Sinatra. Regrets, unfortunately, add more stress to our busy lives, and that stress can lead to anxiety. Anxiety comes about when we have filled up our (metaphorical) stress bucket. It can be filled with things like: too much to do, worry about the future, uncertainty, and of course regrets about past events.

The Stress Bucket

Where our stress bucket becomes too full, the primitive part of our brain engages in “fight or flight mode”. This generates anxiety. Anxiety is the brain’s primitive part telling us that something is wrong, that there is danger about, and we need to get ready to fight or flee. And this anxiety comes about when we have a build up of too much stress in our stress bucket.

Regret

Regret is a natural emotion that arises when we have either done something that didn’t work, or not done something that would be good for us. It is nature’s way of telling us to learn from our mistakes. If we look back in time and recognise things that may have not gone as well as we would have hoped, we have a chance to learn from those events and so choose a different path in the future.

What Happens When Regret Gets Out of Control

The problem comes when we spend too much time and emotional energy regretting the past. We may regret saying something mean to a friend in the heat of the moment, but if we spend hours agonising over it rather than doing something about it, then we will add a large amount of stress into our lives. The bigger the mistake the bigger the regret, and the more anxiety we suffer from.

John (not his real name) developed diabetes in later life, after having spent years eating a high carbohydrate, high sugar diet. He developed a lot of anxiety over the problem. He spent years of his later life regretting the bad eating habits of his youth, and wishing that he has had to self control to eat a healthy diet. The emotional energy that the regret (and the subsequent anxiety) prevented him from dealing with the diabetes itself.

Regret can become a vicious cycle. When you regret the past, you add stress into your stress bucket. The primitive brain recognises the amount of stress that you are under. It assumes that there is something wrong, and so generates anxiety. The anxiety is there to make you look around for the source of danger, but it ends up with you thinking about your regrets again.

What Do I Do if I Can’t Stop Regretting the Past?

Logically, there is no point in having regrets other than to make sure you don’t make the same mistake in the future. However, the primitive brain that generates anxiety (and makes you think about the regret) is not logical. The primitive part of our brain does not contain the same logical circuits that our prefrontal cortex, the most advanced art of the brain, has.

You need to find a way to remind yourself that you have got all the information you need from your regrets. Remind yourself that the past is gone, you can’t change it, and you coped with it all.
Now you have the future, and the future is there for you to make something better of your life. Focus your mind on the future and what could be, rather on the past and what could have been.

Changes will not happen immediately, the primitive part of the brain, the fight or flight part, will not respond immediately. You need to remind yourself every day that the past is gone and now is the time to think about the future. Keep at it. You will get there eventually.

Good luck!

If you have difficulty coping with anxiety on your own, you might like to consider hypnotherapy. I run my anxiety clinic in Fleet, Hampshire, using hypnotherapy to help normal people get over their anxiety.

Photo by Jan Canty on Unsplash

March 29, 2023
Sleep and Anxiety

Getting a good night’s sleep is very important if you suffer from anxiety. The problem is that people who suffer from anxiety can suffer with sleep problems – not being able to get to sleep, not being able to get back to sleep once you have woken up, and waking up too early can all lead to sleep deficit. The brain and body need more sleep, but they are not getting it.

Anyone who has had a baby or toddler who wakes up in the night demanding attention – they know the problem of sleep deprivation. Lack of sleep makes you more likely to snap at little irritations, makes you more stressed, and it becomes easier to drift into that malaise of not bothering with the normal patterns of life. All these negative emotions come from the primitive part of the brain that needs sleep to keep it under control.

Sometimes, circumstances stop you getting enough sleep – your partner snores, you work unusual shift patterns, you have a child who needs you in the night, or you are in physical pain. These are things you cannot help and you have to choose – either live with it or find ways of working round the problem.

As well as giving the brain a chance to sort out the emotional memories, sleep also helps the physical body restore itself. Sleeping well helps an individual maintain their physical health, and long-standing poor sleep is associated with a wide range of health problems.

Why is sleep so important when you have anxiety?

Lack of sleep can make anxiety worse. When you are asleep, the brain processes the emotional experiences you have had during the day – in particular, it processes the stressful memories. The bad things that have happened will either be forgotten or processed, so that the emotion associated with those memories is removed or dulled down.

Most people will have experienced a time when they got angry about something or other, and then they wake up in the morning wondering why they ever got cross about it. During the night, your brain processes those stressful experiences leaving you with less stress on your plate the following day. You wake up wondering why you got so upset by it all.

So if you don’t get enough sleep, and you have a lot of unresolved stresses, your brain does not get a chance to process them all at night. The next day you wake up still carrying the stresses from the previous day. For people that have highly stressful experiences, such as a serious accident, a close friend or relative passing away, or the sudden loss of their job … for these people, the stress can take days, weeks or months to be processed. PTSD sufferers may have years of putting up with unresolved stress. People who are sleep-deprived don’t deal with the stresses of everyday life well – as they haven’t had a chance to deal with the stress that they have already experienced.

Sleep is important for everyone, but it is particularly important if you have anxiety – because it puts you in that vicious cycle of lack of sleep increasing the anxiety, which in turns disrupts your sleep. If you do suffer from anxiety – look at your sleep patterns and see what you can do to make sure you get as much sleep as you need.

Photo of baby awake in bed by Michal Bar Haim on Unsplash

March 22, 2023
Attitude and Anxiety

The attitude a person takes to life can impact their anxiety levels.

Stress and Anxiety

Everyone has stresses in their lives, and anxiety arises if the stresses become too much. It’s as if we have a big bucket that the stress gets put in. The fuller the bucket, the more likely we are to have moments of anxiety.

Our natural mechanism for emptying our stress bucket is sleep. During our sleep, particularly during those periods of REM sleep when we dream, our brain starts sorting out memories. And some of the memories it sorts out are the unresolved stress items stored in our stress bucket.

So each day stress goes into the stress bucket, and each night, stress is removed. Provided that these balance out, we can be happy well-adjusted people. When too much is going in, the stress bucket fills up and that is when we start to have periods of anxiety. (We can also develop other negative emotions such as anger, depression, jealousy and so on.)

Bad Stuff Increase Stress

Bad stuff happens to us in our lives. We cannot avoid it – an unexpected bill, a person who is rude to us, or we can’t find an empty space in the car park. Our attitude to these events is important. We can choose to get annoyed and frustrated – maybe swearing to try and ease the tension. We can go over the injustice of it all in our head. We might pour out our troubles to a friend (and swear a bit more).

Swearing and complaining has a cathartic effect – giving us temporary relief from the frustration – but it also adds to our stress bucket and does not solve the problem.

Letting the Bad Stuff Go

A different attitude is to say, “It is what it is.” Or, “Who cares?”, “I can’t do anything about it, so let’s move on”, and just let the bad stuff wash over you. Then you have the time and energy to deal with whatever has happened. This doesn’t take the bad stuff away, but it does keep your stress bucket clear of additional stress.

It is not easy to learn to let the bad things of life go, especially if you have learnt the habit of getting annoyed at life’s upsets. People who have spent their life getting frustrated and annoyed have this habit well ingrained, and it is not easy to change. But you can.

Changing your attitude to the bad things in life

The first and most important step is to start focusing your attention on the good things in life. How much of your life is spent in thinking about the bad stuff, compared with the time spent thinking about the good. When you can spot the good things as they happen and spend time appreciating them, the stress levels drop … the. The stress bucket is not so full … then those times of anxiety are reduced.

If you have problems dealing with your anxiety on your own, you might consider hypnotherapy. I work as a hypnotherapist in my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire helping people with anxiety regain control of their lives.

Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash

March 14, 2023
Looking After Your Own Mental Health

Family Stress and Anxiety

The people I meet with anxiety are invariably stressed. I come across many people in my clinic who just have too much to do – often looking after their family. Whether it is earning money to keep a roof over their heads or organising the kids to make sure they have breakfast before going to school, it all adds stress. Too much stress can give rise to growing anxiety.

We cannot all live stress-free lives. Stress is a natural part of living. Stress is needed to achieve things – even if it’s only a small amount. But small amounts of stress add up. When you have responsibilities for children and other close relatives, you feel the stress more intently.

Everyone is different

Everyone is different, everyone handles stress in a different way, and everyone has a different capacity for stress before anxiety sets in. You have to judge for yourself how much stress you can cope with in your life.

How do you know if you are too stressed?

When you are too stressed, the primitive part of your brain starts to get a hold. You are more likely to have those moments of frustration; you might find yourself snapping at people (especially your family – the ones you love); you might start developing minutes or even hours of anxiety or helplessness. When you start to become overwhelmed and those negative emotions of anxiety, depression and anger start to come into play – that is the time to take charge.

The trap of ever-increasing stress

One problem with being part of a family is that you are constantly negotiating about who does what. Children are natural negotiators – sometimes it’s easier to tidy the kids’ rooms yourself than to get them to do it. And so it become very easy to take on just one more job. Your day might be full, but when the job of organising a weekend away comes along, you somehow fit it in … and when you do go away for the weekend, you somehow find all the jobs you would have done that weekend and fit them elsewhere. We can suffer from a drip-feed of increased jobs that stress us.

Your mental health comes first

When you are sitting in a plane, waiting for the flight, you will watch the safety demonstration. One thing they always tell you is … if the oxygen masks come down, put your own mask on before you help someone else. This always seems counter-intuitive. If you have your own child with you, your instinct is to help them first – but the instructions say you should put on your own mask first. Of course, we know the reason for this – you can’t help others if you are in trouble yourself.

You need to look after your mental health and, bizarre though it seems, it is sometimes important to look after yourself first before you look after the needs of your family.

Is stress a problem?

Increasing amounts of stress is only a problem if it’s a problem. If you can cope with it all – fine. Hundreds of people cope with a lot of stress and don’t need to do anything about it. Just be aware that the ever-increasing stress trap can creep up on you.

Everyone is different. The only person who can determine if you have too much stress is you.

What do I do if stress is too much?

You need to prioritise your mental health. Taking time for yourself to relax, go for a run, have a day in the spa, go a play football with your mates, or whatever it is you need to take a break – this is the oxygen mask in the plane. This is what you need to prioritise over the other demands on your life.

And you might have to say, “no” to people who ask you to do something. You might have to delegate your jobs to someone else for a while. You might have to just stop doing some of the things you are doing, and ask yourself, “Which is more important, doing this – or my own mental health.”

If you are having difficulty coping with stress and anxiety on your own, you may like to give hypnotherapy a go. From my clinic here in Fleet in Hampshire, I work with people who are only just coping with stress and anxiety. I use hypnotherapy to help them regain control of their lives.

Photo by Logan Stone on Unsplash

March 7, 2023
Phobias – the most common form of anxiety

It is estimated that around 10 million people in the UK has a phobia, that is, more than one person in every seven. Some phobias are simple and some are complex. For some people a phobia is a slight annoyance; for others it dominates every aspect of their lives.

What is a phobia?

A phobia is an irrational fear of something. Someone with arachnophobia will feel an uncontrollable fear and anxiety when they see a spider. There is no rational reason for this fear; the spider is almost always harmless, but even so, the fear is real.

Some phobias are simple. The simple (albeit irrational) fear that comes over them when they see something: spiders, frogs, cows, birds, clowns, lightening and so on. Other phobias are to do with doing something – a fear of flying, having a vaccination, going to a hospital, talking on a phone, vomiting and so on. And then there are the more complex phobias such as fear of going to somewhere new, or fear of social occasions.

Almost anything can be the subject of phobias. Some unusual ones that have been recorded include a fear of belly buttons, string, mirrors and peanut butter (and almost anything you can think of).

What is the phobic reaction?

When someone with a phobia encounters the object of their fear, they experience genuine fear – that is, the same fear that you would have if your life was in danger. It is usually a totally irrational fear, and so many phobics are often embarrassed by their reaction. It is embarrassing because it is irrational and because the people around them are not fearful.

Where do phobias come from?

Many people like to know where their phobia comes from. Knowing this helps them rationalise why they have the fear, and it helps them explain it to others.

Some phobias are picked up in childhood by the young developing brain as it learns by copying reactions from the parents. If one or both of the parents have a phobia of spiders, say, the child may well pick up on that fear (quite unconsciously) and develop a similar phobia themselves.

Other phobias are developed by a single incident. For example, if a child is by a pond looking at the frogs and falls in, then mother rushes over panicking and drags the child out, then the child picks up on the mother’s fear and associates it with the frog, and so develops a phobia of frogs.

What happens inside the brain of a phobic?

Within the brain, fear is created by the fight-flight-freeze centre – the amygdala. The amygdala is a very primitive part of the brain. It is not clever and is incapable of working out what fears are rational and what are not. Nor is it capable of coming up with a different reaction. All the amygdala does is check what it did last time it the person encountered a spider / frog / needle etc and to repeat it.

The amygdala’s fear response overrides the rational response. The thinking part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) finds it upsetting that it experiences fear when logically there is nothing to fear – and in some people, the prefrontal cortex starts to make up stories to rationalise the fear, even though the story may also be nonsense. For example, someone with a fear of birds could start to believe that the birds are plotting against them.

How do you fix a phobia?

Like all mental health issues, a phobia is only a problem if it’s a problem. Many phobics live quite normal lives except for an occasional hit of anxiety when they see the object of their fear. If this does not happen often; if they can live with it, then it’s not a problem.

If it’s a small problem, then you could just wait and see if you grow out of it. Older people are less likely to have phobias, telling us that a lot of people with phobias when they were young grew out of them.

If you have a phobia that really effects your life badly (and believe me, some phobias can be devastating), then you should consider therapy. Two common forms of therapy that treat phobias are Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CPD) and Hypnotherapy.

Phobias are quite fixable, and you can get treatment that will lead to the fear going away completely or at least reducing by a point where it become tolerable.

What happens during CPD treatment of phobias?

The CPD treatment of a phobia is likely to include gradual exposure to the object of fear. For example, the arachnophobic may first be shown a picture of a spider from a long way off for a brief second. Once they can tolerate that, the picture will be shown for longer and a bit nearer. Once that is tolerated, they move on to watching a video of a spider, and so on. Each time getting closer to being able to tolerate a real live spider in close proximity.

What happens during hypnotherapy treatment of phobias?

In a hypnotherapy treatment of phobias, the hypnotherapist will spend some time just talking to you – getting to know you and allowing you to get used to them. They may ask you to talk about your phobia, but don’t be surprised if they discuss other things too. Then they will lead you into a relaxing trance and ask you to imagine things. They will ask you to imagine some fantasy – some might say farcical – events involving the object of your fear, in a way that is calm and relaxed – even comical.

If you have a phobia that is dominating your life and you want help dealing with it, you might like to consider contacting me. My hypnotherapy clinic is in Fleet in Hampshire.

Photo by Ayo Ogunseinde on Unsplash

February 28, 2023