Dad quits smoking for children using hypnotherapy
One father of two was featured in the media this month after he quit smoking using hypnosis for his two young children. Fifty-six year old Chris Carter from Woodley has two children aged two and six years old and, having been a cigar smoker for 35 years, he decided it was time he put his family first and improved his health.
Methods such as chewing gum, nicotine patches and going cold turkey using willpower alone do work for some smokers but for many, these just mean bad moods for days on end before finally giving in to the pull of smoking again.
Using hypnosis, Chris Carter quit smoking with the help of a clinical hypnotherapist. Quitting smoking is one of the most well known reasons for using a hypnotherapist although other issues it can help with are becoming better known nowadays, especially now it is available on the NHS.
Curing someone of their smoking habit can be done in as little as one session using hypnotherapy - but only if the smoker has decided they really do want to quit, because hypnosis cannot make you do anything you don’t want to. As the recession continues, hypnotherapists are seeing more clients who want to quit smoking because it is such an expensive habit as well as being dangerous to your health.
31/05/2009 | 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,
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,
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,
New York school uses mediation
A New York high school has been able to co-ordinate over 200 peer mediations to help students resolve their issues. Retired police detective, Mary Ann McGovern, has been helping Schenectady High School through the Center for Community Justice’s peer mediation plan for the last 12 months. McGovern said:
"Peer mediators are a group of trained, dedicated students who help their fellow classmates resolve their own issues. We do not give advice or judge. We just guide the mediation process".The mediation programme now covers all three middle schools. One year ago, they incorporated the "incident reduction plan" because the school was rated the 16th most violent in the state. There are now 40 trained mediators, trained in mediation techniques and communication. Trained mediators sign an oath of confidentiality and receive training before helping in mediation cases and at least two mediators handle each case and are monitored during the mediation. McGovern added:
"The program is a valuable tool for crisis intervention. Mediation is an alternative way to resolve conflicts, giving students a forum to have their voices heard and a chance to own and resolve issues that negatively affect them".Mediation guides conversation and facilitates negotiation to help people reach a resolution in a quick and peaceful manner. It has become increasingly popular in recent years and is helpful in all sorts of cases.
20/02/2009 | Posted in Mediation,
Helping children through a relationship breakdown
Earlier this month, The Sun newspaper wrote about the importance of children when parents are having personal relationship troubles. At times like these, children can be scarred, not only in terms of their memories as they get older but they can also carry these problems into adulthood. It can damage them and help prevent them from forming proper relationships with other family members, friends and even from finding the right sort of relationship with partners in the future.
When you are experiencing personal problems, you often feel low in confidence, tired – both physically and emotionally, and the last thing you might feel you can cope with is the additional pressure of coping with your children’s needs. However, how you handle your children now can affect the rest of their lives.
There are many ways that counselling or mediation can help, even with just a few simple and straightforward tips:
- Do not pretend that nothing is wrong. Tell them that you are not getting on but be sure to emphasise that it is you both love them (so long as that is true).
- Re-iterate constantly that it is not their fault.
- Ask how they feel.
- Tell the school what is going on.
- Do not blame your partner.
Family or partner counselling or mediation is not there necessarily to try to keep a failed relationship going, but it can also help you negotiate your way through the hurt to make necessary arrangements for dealing with your children and helping them through it too.
23/10/2008 | Posted in Counselling, Mediation,
What is family mediation?
Family mediation is often done in the months following divorce or separation. It is a way of helping couples search for their own solutions to any disputes they may be experiencing. It is not some form of psychiatry, as some believe; it is simply being able to discuss issues in front of an impartial third party to help people find solutions they might have missed, without things getting too heated.
Family mediation is growing in popularity and is now used for many issues such as disputes between children and their parents, upset or angst over caring for seriously ill relatives or elderly relatives, children becoming homeless through family arguments, or even disputes over contact with an absent parent or grandparents.
So what happens during family mediation? Both parties explain their concerns to the other in front of a family mediator. The mediator is not on anybody's side but is there to help both parties. Occasionally, the mediator might suggest ways of solving the issue, to discuss the options, but will never tell either party what they should or shouldn't do. In addition, the mediator might provide information on legal matters but, again, will not and cannot give advice on what to do. So, if legal advice is needed, the mediator will recommend seeing a solicitor. In some instances, it is useful to see a solicitor when agreement is met, or between sessions, so that each party can be certain that whatever is agreed is fair to them.
07/10/2008 | Posted in Mediation,
Divorce mediation
Divorce mediation can help couples to make decisions to reduce the likelihood that the divorce will decrease the couple’s assets and in a way that will reduce any negative impact on children. However, divorce mediation does not suit every troubled couple.
Divorce mediation requires both people to be honest about their situation and want a positive outcome from it. If one party is intent on hiding assets, making the other person feel miserable, or wants to take an unfair advantage of the other, then divorce mediation will not work.
There are many advantages to divorce mediation. First, it is cheaper. The couple usually splits the fee as well. Without mediation, each person pays their own lawyer, so between them they will pay twice as much. The main advantage is that the couple get to decide the divorce outcome. The mediator’s goal in divorce mediation is to ensure each person agrees at each step of the process. Together, the couple decide when to file for divorce, how to divide property and parenting time with children, and everything else. Without mediation, a judge decided for the couple and they are stuck with that. If a couple believes they can work together reasonably to finish their marriage, then they should most definitely consider divorce mediation.
25/08/2008 | Posted in Mediation,
Hypnotherapy helps with fear of food
There are many common phobias that people are aware of, such as a fear or needles, dogs, hospitals, heights, flying and spiders. However, another fear that affects a growing number of people is the fear of food. Perhaps this phobia is fueled by the constant exposure in the media of the perfect body with images of celebrities and skinny models.
As we have seen in recent television documentaries, even children are affected by the media, and children as young as three or four are experiencing problems with food. Some children insist on eating nothing but one or two types of food, others make themselves sick after every meal. Sometimes it is not even a conscious thing and doctors and physicians can fail when they try to tempt the youngster into eating; temptation is often not the problem.
For example, there was a case of a child who refused to eat anything but chicken and chips. WIth the help of CBT-based hypnotherapy, it was discovered that the issue stemmed back to a dairy intolerance when eating made the child, aged just three at the time, throw up. Unconsciously, the child associated eating with being sick and the first meal she ate without throwing up was chicken nuggets and chips. From then on, she refused to eat anything else for years. Hypnotherapy can help discover the origin of these habits and fears, and help alter behaviour to regain a more normal eating pattern.
08/08/2008 | Posted in CBT, Hypnotherapy,
Overcoming corporate stress
Many business people recognise stress as their top complaint. But they do not necessarily realise how much stress can contribute to health problems until it is too late.
Although stress starts at work, it affects home life and other areas quite quickly. For example, it can interrupt normal sleeping patterns, cause weight loss or gain, and cause a lack of concentration. This can cause issues at home for the person's partner, children, family and friends.
Hypnotherapy is often used to relieve stress and many companies have seen success by incorporating hypnotherapy into their employees' routines and corporate benefits. Hypnosis helps, not just by relieving the stress but also by teaching the patient's mind how to deal with stress.
The physical problems we feel from stress are caused by a reaction in our mind. Sometimes a patient will have no conscious or concrete idea of why they are stressed. So the hypnotherapist can work with them on an unconscious level to help discover the reasons and how best to deal with them. It is not only a case of learning how to deal with new stress but also how to release the old stress of the past. Hypnotherapy can help people to do that.
06/08/2008 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
Hypnotherapy cured bedwetting
This weekend, the Times told the story of one boy's experience with bedwetting and how it was cured using hypnotherapy. The boy, aged nine, grew up with a normal background but was still wetting the bed at the age of seven. The problem was causing him embarrassment and making him withdrawn, at school and socially, as happens with many young children.
Using hypnosis, the boy was cured within three months after years of suffering and many different treatments.
Bedwetting, also known as nocturnal enuresis, is very common in children, especially in boys under seven years old. Children are particularly receptive to hypnotherapy because they are still used to using their imaginations. To them, guided imagery can be a little like storytime.
When looking for a hypnotherapist, be sure to use someone who has experience of working with children. Most hypnotherapists offer a free initial consultation for you to assess whether you and your child feel comfortable with the hypnotherapist, and for you to ask questions about the process and its suitability for your child.
09/06/2008 | Posted in Hypnotherapy,
