Afterwards Alison told me, “It wasn’t what I thought.”
Alison Cairns of Pūr Energy Life interviewed me as part of her video channel. She came knowing nothing about hypnotherapy and asked lots of questions. I took her through a brief hypnosis simply for relaxation, and she talks about the experience afterwards. It’s about an hour and a quarter long – so settle down with a cup of something before you start watching.
Not everyone has the self-esteem of politicians. In fact, there are some (or maybe many) politicians whose self-confidence comes over as arrogance. But it is the people at the other end of the scale that I want to talk about today – those people who lack self-esteem.
For those people who don’t really believe in themselves, life can be miserable – always holding back, always thinking everyone else is better than them. They don’t believe that they can achieve anything in their lives and don’t believe they are worth anything.
People who have poor self-esteem will often have some or all of the following characteristics:
Why is it difficult to do something about poor self-esteem? The answer is simple. If you have poor self-esteem, if you don’t believe in yourself, then you don’t believe you are capable of change. But, of course, you are quite capable of changing, even though you don’t believe it.
It is hard to change a belief about yourself. It feels like you are attempting to pull yourself up into the air by holding onto your ankles and lifting. If you don’t believe you can do it – why start?
I am writing this today to let you know, in no uncertain terms, that you can do something about it. You don’t have to have the arrogance of some politicians (you know the ones I am talking about), but to have an honest understanding of what you are capable of achieving leads to a happier life. And a better understanding of your own self-worth leads to a more balanced view of yourself.
There is a lot of advice that people will give you about tackling low self-esteem – such as being kind to yourself and challenging negative thoughts. If you can manage to do these on your own then go for it! There is no better therapy than doing it yourself.
However, it is often difficult to be your own therapist, so you may want to see a counsellor or CBT therapist for example. As always, I would recommend hypnotherapy.
Hypnotherapy is good for people with low self-esteem because it address the sub-conscious and those limiting beliefs that cause the problem in the first place.
I work out of my hypnotherapy clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as working with clients online. I focus on issues around anxiety, and poor self-esteem often goes hand-in-hand with anxiety. If you want to Contact Me, I will be happy to arrange a few minutes chat about it.
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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:
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.
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
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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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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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Are you visited by periods of anxiety? Or maybe you suffer from anxiety most of the time? Here is a little psychological trick that may just help. It’s a way of fooling those negative emotions into separating themselves from the rest of you.
Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister who led the United Kingdom through most of the second World War, had mental health issues. What those issues were is the subject of debate among historians. Views range from mild depression and anxiety to bi-polar disorder. What we do know is that there were times when it affected him more than others.
Churchill developed ways of coping with these mental health issues. One of these was to tell himself, “We must just keep buggering on.” Another way of dealing with it was to name the dark moods he had. He called them the “Black Dog”. His daughter explained that the Black Dog was usually kenneled – but came out to visit sometimes.
Naming the dark emotions he had was one way that Churchill had of coping with them.
When anxiety strikes or depression overwhelms you, ask yourself, “If this emotion were to have a name, what would it be?” I am not talking about the clinical name, like “Generalised Anxiety Disorder” or “Emetophobia”. Give it your own personal nickname, like “The Worry Monster” or “The Blue Meanie”.
Having got a name for it, use that name when you talk to others about your mood, or for you own self-talk. Remind yourself that what that you have just named is not you – it is just visiting.
Naming a negative emotion is a psychological trick that you can play on the primitive part of your brain that is generating all those negative emotions. By naming an emotion, it externalises it. That is, it helps you start to think of that emotion, not as part of you, but as a separate entity.
For some people, naming the emotion might not get rid of it, but it makes it easier to cope with. For others, they may find that it visits less and less frequently and with less power each time it visits.
If you are struggling to cope with anxiety or anything related, you might want to give hypnotherapy a try. It is not the only solution, but if you want to give it a go, you are welcome to see me in my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire or online. Contact Me if you would like a chat.
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