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.
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.
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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:
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?
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.
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Have you ever wondered if hypnotherapy will work for you? People often ask me about their doubts:
In this article, I will examine answers to these questions.
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.
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.)
So the answer is probably “yes” – provided that it is not a physical issue.
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”.
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.
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.
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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.
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
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:
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.
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
It always seems unbelievable. This person used to panic at the thought of speaking in front of an audience … they had frozen, unable to speak, when faced with delivering a talk that they had already rehearsed many times. And after a few sessions of hypnotherapy, they were able to stand up and fluently give a presentation to an audience of several hundred … and they actually enjoyed the experience.
This is the sort of transformation that I see in my clinic over and over again. It may be anxiety about giving a talk, about going on a plane, about changing jobs, about driving on a motorway. Or it could be worry about things going wrong, or lack of confidence in themselves. Or it could be so ingrained that they get anxious as soon as they wake up – even though it is just another ordinary day.
It seems like a miracle that people can change so quickly.
But think about it. If you break your leg, doctors can set your leg with splint or a plaster cast and after a few weeks, the leg will miraculously heal itself. When you allow your body to be handled by skilled physicians, that same body will heal itself. This seems like miracle too.
Your brain is simply a part of your body. Allowing a hypnotherapist to put your brain into the right state can allow the brain to heal itself. When I see my clients, that is all I do. I simply guide them into the right state of mind that allows the brain to heal itself.
I will never stop being amazed at how incredible changes can happen over a few short weeks.
I help people for whom anxiety is controlling their lives. If you are struggling with anxiety, in any one of its many forms, you can do something about it. Hypnotherapy is not the only answer, but if you would like to experience hypnotherapy, you can Contact Me and I will be happy to talk to you about it. I work from my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as online.
Photo by Henri Mathieu-Saint-Laurent