More mediation with the new Acas code
The new Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures will come into force in April this year and with it comes a lot more focus on using mediation to resolve matters of dispute. This means we are likely to see much more need for mediation in all areas of business, as well as family matters.
Mediation has been used in the workplace more and more often in the last few years, however, has not taken off as much as had been expected. The new focus that the new Acas code is putting on mediation is likely to change all that and HR departments everywhere will be looking to bear this in mind when potential personality clashes between employees might arise.
It involves using a neutral third party to mediate between two parties in a dispute. Both parties must be willing to take part. Although the new Acas code does not demand that mediation be used, the code puts great emphasis on the company intervening as early as possible and informally where appropriate. Mediation is best used as early as possible and, although HR departments can be good at intervening, they are never seen as neutral because they represent the interests of an employer. An employed mediator, however, is neutral and is trained skilfully to help individuals to forget their own interests and focus instead on an intended goal and how the two parties can best achieve that goal.
31/03/2009 | Posted in Mediation,
Curing a fear of clowns
In recent articles, we have discussed the media's latest coverage of fears and phobias. One surprisingly common phobia that recently gained a mention in the Mirror is the fear of clowns, otherwise known as coulrophobia.
Hypnosis is well known for being able to help people overcome their fears, even when they become so bad that they affect their going about their daily live; they are then referred to as phobias. Coulrophobia is no exception. Different people are scared of clowns for different reasons; for some, it is the colourful make-up, for others the insanely wide grin and for some it is the red nose or huge shoes. Whatever the cause of the fear, hypnotherapists are often called in and can cure a phobia in a matter of just a couple of sessions. Celebrities reported to suffer from a fear of clowns include Daniel Radcliffe and Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp is reported to have said:
“Something about the painted face, the fake smile. There always seemed to be a darkness under the surface, a potential for real evil.”Perhaps Johnny Depp should pop in for a hypnosis session?
29/03/2009 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
Coping with children's phobias
A child's fear or phobia can be difficult for a parent to assess. Sometimes it can seem like nothing serious and indeed may fizzle out. However, it is important not to dismiss them. Even those that appear to fizzle out can sometimes rear their head again in a year or two, or even as an adult, and become much more severe. So how can parents decide what action is best if any?
Children are often afraid of things like the dark, spiders, dogs or the dentist, and if left unnoticed, dismissed or ignored, these feelings can develop into worse phobias. So it is important for the parent to speak to the child and talk about their concerns. In childhood, fears are often picked up from close relatives, especially parents, or close friends so it is important to try not to show such fear in front of children or to talk to them about it. If a fear does develop or seem to be becoming a problem, then hypnotherapy is great for children because their imagination is still so active. Many hypnotherapists specialise in helping children. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is also another option that parents can explore.
27/03/2009 | Posted in CBT, Hypnotherapy,
Hypnotherapy for fear of knees
In their career, a hypnotherapist will come across all sorts of fears. One that may sound rather strange but is actually a known phobia is genuphobia - otherwise known as a fear of knees. This fear has actually been highlighted in the media recently.
An article in the Mirror featured a lady who had suffered from this fear most of her life and first recalled it bothering her in her teens. Over the years, her genuphobis got worse and worse, as many phobias do for many people, until it started to affect her daily life. She could not kneel down or go swimming and had lost many friends as a result.
Hypnosis is incredibly good at dealing with phobias, often in as few as just a couple of sessions even if a phobia has bothered a person for years.
The lady in the Mirror's article acknowledged that her auntie also suffered from the same fear of knees and it is likely that her own fear had been picked up from her relative. Many fears that we suffer as adults have been picked up from our parents, close relatives or friends, or just from a simple experience of our own that perhaps we do not even consciously remember. With hypnosis, it is not necessary to discover the reason or founding for the phobia or fear although it is often uncovered during the session.
24/03/2009 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
Using psychotherapy to solve alcoholism
Alcoholism is a fast rising problem in the UK - as the culture of binge drinking seems not to be reducing, despite the government's efforts to tackle the problem.
Alcholics affect not only their own lives but also the lives of their friends, family and others around them. Factors contributing to the problem of alcoholism include a person's personality and character traits, suffering from depression and loneliness, shyness and also inheritance. People born to alcoholic parents are reportedly much more likely to suffer from alcoholism themselves than are adopted children. Being raised in a broken home and the early years, including teenage years, has a huge impact on whether or not a child is likely to suffer.
Psychotherapy is part of the government's plans to tackle depression and anxiety, and is also a method to help people cope and recover from alcoholism. Talking therapies, like CBT and psychotherapy, encourage the patient to look at how they can resolve their problem rather than how they came to suffer from it. Hypnotherapy has also proven successful in helping people to challenge and change their relationship with drink. In helping to understand and combat this rising issue, the profile of psychotherapy is being increased.
23/03/2009 | Posted in Psychotherapy, Hypnotherapy, CBT,
Spice Girl Mel B has hypnotherapy
Former Spice Girl singer, Mel B, is having hypnotherapy to help her get over stage fright, according to recent reports in the media. Mel B is due to start a new production, Peepshow, in Las Vegas next month and is reportedly having trouble with her stage nerves and has hired a hypnotherapist to help her get over them. Thirty-three year old Mel said:
"I'm getting hypnosis. I'm seeing a guy called Anthony Cool, who performs a show at Vegas too. I'm doing this just in case I get any last-minute nerves - you know, in case I can't remember the lyrics or the moves. He's going to hypnotise me as soon as I get there."Hypnotherapy is hypnosis used for therapeutic purposes, and stage nerves is just one of the fears or problems that hypnosis can help with. Confidence, stage fright, motivation, getting rid of phobias or habits, such as smoking, are just a few examples of where hypnotherapy has been known to help. Hypnotherapy is also known for being a fast therapy and often people only need only one or two sessions to get rid of everyday phobias or habits.
21/03/2009 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
Psychotherapy to cope with recession
Under a new government plan, many people across the UK are to receive help to cope with the effects of the recession through psychotherapy and counselling. A new advice centre linked through doctors surgeries, NHS centres and the job centre is to refer people to qualified psychotherapists for help and treatment.
This move reportedly comes from the government's fear that many people will become mentally ill and therefore long term unemployable from too much worry and stress and therefore psychologically affected by the recession, putting a huge cost at the feet of the credit crunch.
Many people become depressed and anxious when they lose their job, and a new job is often the answer to this. However, the depression and anxiety itself can become a barrier to finding new employment.
At a time when two million people are out of work, psychotherapy could be the answer to helping people stay afloat and find their feet. Around six million adults are estimated to be suffering from depression or anxiety in the UK. Talking therapies, such as psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), are methods that encourage people to look at the solutions to their issues rather than examining the causes of the problems.
20/03/2009 | Posted in CBT, Psychotherapy,
Cure your phobia for your child
Not all parents may be aware, but it is incredibly common for a child to inherit their parents' phobia as mum or dad unwittingly passes on their anxiety and fear of one thing or another. It is not uncommon to hear somebody say that their parent is also afraid of the same thing but this fear is not genetically passed on as some may mistakenly believe, but rather this generational fear is passed on because the parent shows it to their child in their earlier years. Even if a fear is just a fear, and not the more serious phobia that can affect your daily life, it can grow to affect your child's life in a much more serious way, so if you really cannot hide your fear completely, then perhaps you should consider tackling your fear before it affects your child.
One of the best, and fastest, ways of tackling a fear or phobia is by using hypnosis. Hypnosis in a therapeutic sense is called hypnotherapy and is nothing to be afraid of. Hypnotherapy is delivered by a professional, qualifed hypnotherapist and can usually rid a person of a fear, even a lifetime phobia, in just one or two sessions.
17/03/2009 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
Benefits of CBT for prenatal depression
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can be an effective therapy for women suffering from prenatal depression. The Daily Mail recently told the story of public relations executive Tina Barrett who suffered from prenatal depression for the whole nine months of her pregnancy. Thirty-two year old Tina was quoted as saying:
"I just wanted to shut myself away from the world. The pregnancy wasn't planned. Ideally we'd have waited a few more years, but Craig - a graphic designer - and I wanted a family and we didn't even consider not having the child. But I couldn't understand why I didn't feel as ecstatic as everyone around me, why something just didn't feel right. I didn't want to look at the pregnancy books people gave me or go to ante-natal classes. I've always been an optimistic person, but once I became pregnant I didn't feel like me any more."
Prenatal depression, also known as antenatal depression, is experienced by just as many women as postnatal depression, yet is relatively unrecognised. Half of these sufferers also go on to suffer from postnatal depression. In severe cases, some develop psychotic tendencies and potentially that can place the baby at risk.
Many doctors recognise that treating a depressed, pregnant woman can pose certain problems as antidepressant drugs during pregnancy is not a good idea and this is where other treatments need to be explored. CBT is one of the treatments that can be highly effective and helps people to identify their behaviour issues and change their beliefs.
13/03/2009 | Posted in CBT, Psychotherapy,
Quit smoking on No Smoking Day
It has arrived, the 2009 National No Smoking Day, the day on which hundreds of thousands of people across the UK will pledge to quit smoking for at least one day - and, for some, it's the day after the last cigarette of their lives.
According to the New Scientist, hypnotherapy has the highest success rate of any method to quit smoking, which is quite a claim. Using hypnosis, a hypnotherapist can help a person to:
- stop feeling the desire to have a cigarette;
- stop their physical body from craving nicotine;
- have a feeling of being in complete control.
They say that it takes just a few weeks to change a habit but, using hypnosis, many people stop smoking in as few as one session. In times of recession such as these that will save a person a lot of money as the price of cigarettes continues to rise.
It is not as easy as reading the information on how smoking affects your health or watching the adverts broadcast by the government because, to stop smoking, a person has to really want to quit smoking. Hypnotherapy works because if a person does want to stop, the hypnotherapist helps that person to make sure that their unconscious self agrees with their conscious being. We've all had that feeling where we don't want to do something but somehow just cannot help ourselves and this is when our conscious and unconscious selves are not in sync. Using hypnosis, we can make sure this inner conflict does not happen and that is why it can feel so easy to give up smoking after hypnotherapy.
11/03/2009 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
CBT could cure insomnia
In a recent article we talked about the research done at the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University. Researchers involved in the study concluded that around five hours of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) could cure insomnia for most people.
CBT used in this research is based on psychological interventions encouraging the sufferers of insomnia to break their cycle of worry to sleepless nights and return to their normal sleeping patterns. The CBT methods start with using basic notes on what can promote sleep, so helping the sufferers avoid things like taking short naps in the daytime because they felt tired and encouraging them to start waking and going to bed at the same each day and night.
The therapy also included changing the sufferer’s habits to avoid caffeine, exercise or eating close to bedtime and teaching the sufferer how to relax, such as focusing themselves at night to avoid going over their day to day worries and problems.
CBT is known as a talking therapy, much like counselling or psychotherapy, and many people can feel quite cynical about it. However, the results are difficult to deny. This study showed 70 per cent of sufferers benefited greatly, including those who had been on sleeping pills for 20 years or so.
09/03/2009 | Posted in CBT, Counselling, Psychotherapy,
Using CBT instead of sleeping pills
It seems that the recession is not just upsetting many people financially. It is also causing an almost national epidemic of insomnia. Worries about redundancy, savings, mortgages and debt are causing countless sleepless nights. Research from one medical website showed that almost half the 1,000 survey respondents confirmed they were not sleeping as well as before the economic crisis.
Although the current economic climate may be exacerbating the problem, insomnia is not a new problem. Around one in 20 adults takes some sort of sleeping pill - even though many say that pills can often cause more harm than good as patients find it hard to sleep without the pills when they try to stop taking them.
Another answer could be CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). Loughborough University conducted research into the matter and their Sleep Research Centre concluded that around five hours of CBT can actually cure insomnia for most people. CBT is a therapy that examines the way that we think or feel about situations or objects and how we react to them. Various techniques are used to help us change the way we feel or think about these and to adapt to more helpful reactions.
06/03/2009 | Posted in CBT, Psychotherapy,
Agyness Deyn uses hypnotherapy to quit smoking
Queen of the catwalk, Agyness Deyn, has told the media that she is trying hypnotherapy in an effort to quit smoking for good. The 26 year old model, whose real name is Laura Hollins, has said that she is really determined to give up smoking because, as she put it:
"I feel like I'm playing mind games with nicotine. It's like being in a bad relationship."
It is always good to see stars and celebrities setting a good example for those who admire them, by quitting smoking and other bad habits, as the younger generation will follow the example they set.
Hypnotherapy is known to be particularly effective and has been made famous particularly by its success rate with smoking cessation. Just one or two sessions can be enough to help a lifelong smoker quit smoking forever without a backward glance. The only pre-requisite is for the client genuinely to want to quit their bad habit. Hypnosis can help with many other bad habits too, such as unhealthy eating habits, binge drinking, nail biting and many other issues. It is important to seek help from a qualified hypnotherapist who you feel comfortable with.
04/03/2009 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
Demand for mediation grows with recession
During a recession, many people are affected in a negative way. Unemployment is rife with up to two million people currently out of work, and even those who are lucky enough to still have a job probably have a family member who is out of work or are worried about their own job. Money worries are high and as a result, stressed out couples are likely to take it out on each other and on those around them. With little money to spare, it can be difficult to spend quality time together too.
As a result, mediation is in great demand. Although divorce law is meant to be recession-proof, thanks to property problems and negative equity running high, many couples cannot afford to consider divorce. Mediation is one answer that is certainly much cheaper than a divorce. Mediators can help with all manner of family issues, not just couples that feel they're reaching the end of the road. The mediator is a neutral third party, not there to judge but to facilitate communication and negotiation to a mutually agreeable solution.
01/03/2009 | Posted in Mediation,
