Tim Maude Hypnotherapy

Category: Hypnotherapy

  • Feelings of Anxiety? You Are Not Alone

    Feelings of Anxiety? You Are Not Alone

    I used to commute into London every weekday, travelling in on a packed 12-carriage train. I would follow the crowds of people flooding off the train, out into the streets or down into the underground. I would watch the people as they scurried on to their places of work, each one an individual, each one with their own personality, their own goals in life, their own problems too.

    I think back to those days and now wonder: How many of those people suffer from anxiety?

    So I looked up the statistics. A packed 12-carriage train can take about 1750 passengers. Then I checked the rates of anxiety in the UK. And finally, I calculated that on just one of the many trains travelling into London each day:

    • 350 people will have felt anxious most or all of the time in the last two weeks
    • 105 people are suffering from diagnosable generalised anxiety disorder
    • 70 people have had a trauma in their lives sufficient to give them PTSD

    And that is just one one train. I then went on to think of all the other trains travelling into London or any other city in the world, or all the people in my town, or in the country. There are so many people who have anxiety that impacts their lives, so many people whose lives could be changed for the better if only they could get it under control.

    … And they could get their anxiety under control …

    They could work to getting a normal life back again. There are many people who have managed to overcome their anxiety and feel normal again. And yet, so many of them either don’t realise they can do something about it, or they give up at the first hurdle.

    Hypnotherapy is just one of the methods they could use to help them on the path back to normality. It is not the only thing they could use – they could try medication, other forms of talking therapy or there are a lot of things they can do for themselves like improving their diet or doing more exercise.

    You are welcome to explore any of these means of returning your life to normal. However, if you want to give hypnotherapy a try, you can Contact Me and I would be pleased to talk to you about it.

    References

    Anxiety Statistics
    https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/mental-health-facts-and-statistics/
    https://www.priorygroup.com/mental-health/anxiety-treatment/anxiety-statistics

    Photo by Ingo Joseph on Pexels

  • What to do if you have a phobia following a trauma

    What to do if you have a phobia following a trauma

    Some people develop a phobia following a traumatic event – usually a phobia of something around the circumstances of that event. It then becomes a struggle to walk away from it.

    Follow this link to read my full article on the topic.

    https://www.hypnotherapy-directory.org.uk/articles/what-to-do-if-you-have-a-phobia-following-a-trauma

    If you have a phobia, or any other form of anxiety, please Contact Me for a chat to explore what hypnotherapy can do to help. I work from my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as online.

    Photo courtesy of Frans van Heerden on Pexels

  • Getting Accustomed to an Anxiety Norm? Time to Do Something?

    Getting Accustomed to an Anxiety Norm? Time to Do Something?

    Some of the people I meet in my hypnotherapy clinic discover that they have been living with anxiety for years and did not realise it. They have become so used to having a certain level of anxiety all the time, from the moment they get up in the morning to the very second they go to sleep, that they do not realise that they don’t have to live like that.

    When you have a feeling of tension in your body every day, when your normal reaction to anything is to worry about it, when you always look towards the worst case scenarios – these are symptoms of a constant background anxiety.

    It is so easy to get accustomed to the anxiety being there all the time, that it becomes the norm. And when something is normalised, we tend not to do anything about it. We assume that everyone else is like this and it is just the way life is.

    Of course, this is spurious thinking. But if you want to calm it all down and lead a better life where you cope with stress and don’t have continuous anxiety, you have to do something about it. If you always do what you’ve always done, nothing will ever change.

    So, maybe it is time to do something. There are three broad options:

    1. Self-help – changing your lifestyle in some way that allows you to lower the stress you are under
    2. Medication – if you are bad enough, your doctor should prescribe medication
    3. Therapy – there are lots of choices here – of course, as a hypnotherapist, I would recommend hypnotherapy, but there are lots of other choices available.

    Before you even start on that, though, you need to think about yourself … have you got accustomed to an anxiety norm? If so, are you up to doing something about it?

    And Finally …

    I run my hypnotherapy clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as online. I help people who are only just coping with anxiety to get their lives back in order. You can Contact Me if you want to talk about it.

    Photo by Antoni Shkraba on pexels

  • Hypnotherapy Doubts Disarmed

    Hypnotherapy Doubts Disarmed

    Have you ever wondered if hypnotherapy will work for you? People often ask me about their doubts:

    • What if I can’t be hypnotised?
    • I don’t know if hypnotherapy can help with my sort of problem.
    • I have had this problem for years. Maybe it’s too deeply embedded.
    • Can you guarantee to fix me?

    In this article, I will examine answers to these questions.

    Can Everyone Be Hypnotised?

    Have you ever had one of those occasions when someone is talking to you and you stop listening to what they are saying – maybe you have a bit of a daydream? Do you remember a time, maybe during a boring lesson at school, where you found yourself just staring out of the window looking at nothing in particular? Have you ever got so engrossed in reading book that you completely loose track of time?

    These are all times when you have automatically gone into a trance. Trance happens when we loose track of what is going on around us. We may be thinking of something, or simply relaxing our minds. We are all capable of doing it. Hypnosis is about guiding someone into that state to help them solve their own problems.

    So the answer is “yes” – everyone can be hypnotised.

    Can Hypnotherapy Help with “My” Problem?

    It is surprising what sorts of issues people come to me for help with. If you have a problem with not being properly in charge of your feelings, your thoughts or what you do, then hypnotherapy can help. (With the obvious caveat that hypnotherapy can only help the mental side of things. For example, if you are uncomfortable being very short, then hypnotherapy cannot make you taller – but it can help you with being happier and more confident about being short.)

    • When you don’t feel in charge of your feelings – maybe you are anxious, stressed and tense, or maybe you feel depressed, angry, jealous or afraid
    • When you don’t feel in charge of your thoughts – maybe you ruminate about things that have happened to you in the past, worry about the future, worry about what other people are thinking about you and so on
    • When you don’t feel in charge of your actions – you know you shouldn’t smoke or drink as much but you do, maybe you unconsciously bite your nails or pick your skin, or perhaps you feel compelled to check the house is locked up even when you have just locked it.

    So the answer is probably “yes” – provided that it is not a physical issue.

    Can Hypnotherapy Help With Problems That You Have Had For Years?

    There is an old, but incorrect saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” We tend to believe that if we have had a problem for years, then it is part of us – that is the way we are – we just have to put up with it. WRONG!!

    Some behaviour or feeling may be well-ingrained, but that does not mean it cannot change. It may take a little longer, but it can change.

    So the answer is “yes”.

    Can Hypnotherapy Guarantee That I Can Change?

    The human brain is not like a car. A hypnotherapist cannot change a part that has gone wrong. What a hypnotherapist can do is to lead you into a state where the brain can sort itself out by itself.

    Does this guarantee success? I’m afraid not. A hypnotherapist can lead you, but cannot force you to do something that you really don’t want to do. In my early days as a hypnotherapist, I soon learnt that if someone comes to me just because their partner asked them to, it does not work. They have to want to change. They have to realise that there is a better state that they could be in.

    So although the majority of my clients come out with a successful change to their lives, the answer is “No”, hypnotherapy cannot guarantee a change.

    And Finally …

    I use hypnotherapy to help all sorts of people get over with all sorts of issues. I specialise in anxiety-related issues, but this is not all I deal with. If you would like to Contact Me, I would be very happy to have a few minutes chat to see if I can help. I work out of my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as seeing people online.

    Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels

  • The Difficulty of Having a Laugh When Anxiety Strikes

    The Difficulty of Having a Laugh When Anxiety Strikes

    When anxiety strikes, it is sometimes difficult to imagine a positive future, and yet that is what I ask my clients to consider. It is hard to have a smile, have a laugh, and enjoy each moment. And yet it is possible to get there.

    Anxiety is a natural response to threats. In a dangerous world, our survival instinct clocks in. If there is potential danger nearby, that instinct makes us anxious, and the anxiety makes us look out for the danger. When anxiety strikes, we start focusing on all the things that might go wrong.

    Focusing on things that can go wrong in times of danger is part of our survival instinct. It is this instinct that kept our ancestors safe when the world was a more dangerous place. In most of the world, there are few life-threatening dangers these days, and yet our survival instinct still activates.

    Our survival instinct is only concerned with keeping us alive; it does not care how we feel. It does not care that being filled with anxiety is not a nice place to be. It does not understand that, in this modern world, being filled with anxiety severely hampers what we are able to achieve.

    So I ask my clients not to focus on the things that could go wrong in their lives; I ask them to focus on what life will be like when it all goes right. I ask them to focus on enjoying life. If you suffer from anxiety, you will realise how hard this is to do. That is why hypnotherapy is so useful in helping to break the vicious cycle of anxiety and worry.

    If you can, when anxiety strikes, focus your mind on what you can enjoy in that very moment, and also what a successful future would look like.

    And Finally …

    If you have difficulty in managing your anxiety by yourself, you might like to Contact Me. I help people with anxiety by using hypnotherapy to break the anxiety vicious cycle. I work from my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire and also online.

    Photo courtesy of Nicola Crichton at the Mental Health Foundation

  • Anxiety is Like a Game of Jenga

    Anxiety is Like a Game of Jenga

    A life of anxiety is like a game of Jenga – you are only in control of half the things that are going on, and you never know when things might go wrong. Step by step, you have to make your move changing the position of something in your life, while someone else is making moves that you cannot control. And all the time there is a sense of jeopardy as you never know if your life will collapse in front of you.

    Of course, although our lives might seem like jeopardy, things very rarely go wrong to the extent that our lives are completely ruined. Most people have survived major changes to their lives, some brought on by themselves, but mostly brought on by external circumstances. We are a very resilient species and able to cope with a lot.

    Whereas a game of Jenga gives us a sense of excitement, never quite knowing when the tower is going to fall, uncertainty in life gives rise to anxiety. The stakes are higher in the game of life; we cannot rebuild the Jenga tower and start again. When things go wrong, we have to cope.

    Sometimes, it seems like there is so much that is going wrong, that the anxiety become overwhelming. This is the time many people seek out help. In truth, it would be better if they had sought help before it got that bad.

    Help comes in many forms, and these can be divided into three main categories:

    1. Self Help – There are plenty of things you can do for yourself that will improve things – exercise, eating less junk food, getting enough sleep, making time to give our brains a rest and so on.
    2. Medication – There are plenty of drugs that can be prescribed that can make an anxiety-filled life more tolerable.
    3. Therapy – There are plenty of therapists from different disciplines that can help.

    I would always recommend self-help first, but if you need help beyond that, my natural tendency is to head for hypnotherapy. Of course, that is what I do, so I would say that … but I have seen so many people get back in control of their anxiety-ridden lives through hypnotherapy that it comes at the top of my list.

    And Finally …

    If you want the help of a hypnotherapist, please consider me. I work out of my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire, as well as online. I specialise in helping people with anxiety-related issues. If you want to Contact Me, I would be very happy to have a chat and answer your questions.

    Photo courtesy of Emily Fullerton at the Mental health Foundation