It is human nature to want everything now; we have so little patience in this world of modern technology where everything is real time and instant, and thus we expect to achieve our goals instantly too.
Hypnotherapy can be used to achieve our goals and two most common goals for many people are weight loss and quitting smoking, however, it is not magic and results are not instantaneous.
For example, if it took you five years to put on five stone, how could you possibly expect to lose all that weight in just a couple of months? Yet clients do think it is possible.
Hypnosis for weight loss is not a diet program, but rather a permanent way to alter how you think about food and consequently manage your weight, without you putting unnecessary stress on your body or your mind.
Similarly, if you want to stop smoking, many clients think they can visit a hypnotherapist and come out as a non-smoker immediately after just a two hour session. For some people, it is actually that easy, but it is not the same for everyone and setting impossible goals for yourself is setting yourself up for failure. Your hypnotherapist will help you to tap into your inner potential and make the changes you need. Expect to take small steps though, and you will not be disappointed as you will achieve your goals.
Swindon Town’s manager, Maurice Malpas, recently tried to change things around for his side, to stop them from sliding down the League One table.
Malpas turned to a sports hypnotherapist to stop the Robins’ from losing again at the County Ground.
The fully qualified hypnotherapist held sessions with the players as the former Scotland defender was determined to stop the five-game run on their home soil.
Players were given both group and individual hypnotherapy sessions.
To stop the usual routine, Malpas also changed their usual pre-match dressing room music to try and stop the poor run.
Midfielder Michael Timlin admitted: “We have ditched the R&B for some music from the 70s and 80s like Billy Ocean and Spandau Ballet.â€
It seemed the efforts may have worked midweek, as Swindon finally got a home win against Northampton, 2 – 1.
Hypnotherapy for sports is not a new tactic and many athletes and teams have used hypnosis in the past to help motivate the players. Naturally, Swindon was bound to get a home win sooner or later, so cynics are bound to say it had nothing to do with hypnosis, and who knows, maybe this particular win would have happened anyway, but many athletes swear by it.
Everywhere we look at the moment, people are feeling the strain of everyday life. It may be family troubles, pressures at work or something completely different, but more and more therapists are seeing clients for anxiety or stress related problems.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and hypnotherapy are both useful therapies when it comes to handling stress, but here are a few tips to help you handle stress:
•   A healthy lifestyle: there are not many of us who really have the time to fit in hours of exercise every week, but to adopt a healthier lifestyle means making small changes to our diet and our exercise levels, as well as getting enough sleep. This help sour bodies to cope with stress
•   Avoid taking on any more: if you are feeling a little anxious or stressed, try to avoid taking on any more. All of us wish to please and do not want to let anyone down, however, this can only add to your stress so learn to say no without offending or upsetting anyone
•   Take time out: it is important to find a little time to relax, even if it is only ten minutes to chill with a cup of hot chocolate and a magazine. If you can, find time to meet up with friends for a cuppa. Having a break will mean you are more productive afterwards and make you feel better. Laughing helps boost your immune system, helping you cope with stress and anxiety
These are just a few small tips to help you, but a therapist will be able to help you spot recurring patterns of behaviour and responses, helping you to prioritise things, look at your situation from a different point of view and help you learn how to cope.
Couples therapy is usually viewed as being completely different from psychotherapy, because it is the relationship that is being focused upon, rather than the individual. However, the individuals within the couple cannot be overlooked.
Psychology is often seen as a medical treatment, being used when somebody has a ‘problem’ and so they are ‘sick’ and need assistance.
However, psychology should not be viewed purely as a medical system, because psychology deals with both problems and changes.
Couples counselling or couples therapy focuses on relationship troubles between two individuals, which inevitably involves both individual problems and relationship issues. For instance, when a couple argues constantly, then individually, they will be feeling anxious, depressed or angry, or a combination of these. This sort of behaviour can often be traced back to unconscious family issues.
The process of couples counselling can a combination of counselling, psychology and mediation, making it particularly effective.
With couples counselling, the therapist will help the couple pick out the problems in the relationship, help them to decide how it needs to change and work towards making these changes. The therapist is helping the couple, and not either individual.
Changes could include the interaction within the relationship, personal problems, communication, sharing responsibilities and choosing life goals.
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.
Yesterday, we wrote about the importance of the client’s role in therapy and their rapport with their therapist. This view is emphasised in a new book by Professor Mick Cooper of the University of Strathclyde, called Essential Research Findings in Counselling and Psychotherapy: The Facts are Friendly.
His work is also supported by a group of colleagues, including Barry Duncan, a highly regarded American psychologist. In 2004, they stated that
“clients, not therapists, make therapy work”
Professor Cooper’s advice to those who are considering visiting a therapist is summarised below:
•   Ask therapists for any thoughts about why you may be facing your difficulties and what they believe may be able to help you. If your own thoughts radically conflict, then you might find it difficult to establish a good rapport
•   Consider a therapist to help you concentrate on your own strengths. For instance, if you believe you are good at understanding the reasons behind your own behaviour, then choose a therapist who can help you develop these skills rather than one who prefer to focus on emotions or on the behaviour itself
•   Be sure that you work with a therapist that you like and who makes you feel respected. A good working relationship is an important factor in therapy, whether that is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) or psychology. After all, the best indicator of the outcome of your treatment is how much you can actively involve yourself and this is more likely with a good working relationship
A new review of research launched last week in Telford at the Annual Conference of the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy challenges the idea that it is the therapist that plays the most important part in influencing treatment results.
Professor Mick Cooper, from the University of Strathclyde has written a book, Essential Research Findings in Counselling and Psychotherapy: The Facts are Friendly, which states that the most important factor is in fact a motivated client.
Another indicator is the relationship and rapport between the client and their therapist, according to Professor Cooper.
The government has recently committed £170 million over the next 3 years, which will be used on including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in its Improving Access to Psychological Therapies initiative.
Professor Cooper, of Strathclyde’s Faculty of Education, said:
“Many clients will benefit from CBT but there is a danger in putting too much emphasis on the type of therapy that a therapist provides, rather than the therapist’s ability to relate to his or her client in caring and understanding ways, and the needs and preferences of individual clients. Rather than moving towards a therapeutic ‘monoculture’, we need to be able to provide people with a range of therapies and therapists, so that they can choose the one that best suits them and build on their particular strengths.”
For some, this may seem a surprising question but certainly an intriguing one, and one that comes up more often than you might have thought.
In films and on television shows, people have seen examples of hypnotists making people ‘forget’ things and firstly, this needs to be clarified. This is called ‘posthypnotic amnesia’. It does not, as you might think, remove a memory as this is impossible. It simply ‘hides’ it from your consciousness but it is still there and not everybody can achieve this, so it is quite rare.
Therefore, the simple answer to this question is no. Even if somebody could achieve posthypnotic amnesia, which cannot be guaranteed, the memories are still there and will still influence their life and their actions. The most important thing about bad experiences, no matter how painful they are, is that we should learn from them.
Yes, your bad relationship might be painful and yes, you might wish to pay any amount of money for that pain to be removed, however, you do not have to stay in pain, you just need to learn from your experience and move on – and hypnosis can help you with that.
Hypnotherapy is remarkably good at help people to cope with pain. There are several techniques that will help you to distance yourself from a traumatic or painful experience. This hypnosis will mean that you can take away all the positive benefits of the experience without having to keep the raw pain. Like time would normally help us to detach the emotion from our memories, so hypnosis speeds up this process.
There are many people who dread this time of year. It is the time of year when people start to feel the effects of Season Affective Disorder (SAD).
SAD symptoms include feeling depressed, hopeless, anxious, feeling as though you have no energy, oversleeping, losing interest in otherwise favourite activities, weight gain and difficulty concentrating. They only apply during the autumn and winter and tend to fade during warmer, sunny days.
A doctor can advise if your own symptoms are actually related to SAD and they might run tests to rule out other possibilities, however, there is no test to officially diagnose SAD.
For those who do suffer from SAD, the most effect treatment is an increased exposure to sunlight and many people purchase a light box, which imitates natural light.
Another option that not everyone thinks of is psychotherapy or cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT can help to pick out and change the thought processes that contribute to the symptoms, such as depression. CBT is all about spotting negative thought processes and helping us to replace these with more positive thoughts.
SAD is a long term illness, however, psychotherapy and CBT can often help sufferers to cope with SAD.
Research has shown that a fear of the dentist is surprisingly common. In fact, a survey conducted by the British Dental Association showed that approximately 25 per cent of the British population has a fear of dental procedures or the dentist.
Sometimes, just the mention of a dentist, the sign of a dental practice or even just a simple advertisement for toothpaste is enough to give a person a feeling of anxiety.
It is therefore not surprising that these people avoid the dentist so much that their oral health is suffering and they are desperately in need of a dentist. Often, a person will put up with much discomfort and real pain rather than visit the dentist, as their fear and reaction is so great they would rather struggle on. When they come to a hypnotherapist, it is often as a last resort, because they have no other alternative than to visit a dentist.
Hypnotherapy can cure this dental fear in just one or two sessions and completely release someone from their phobia. A fear of dentists is a common condition seen by a hypnotherapist.
Either a dentist or a doctor can refer someone to a hypnotherapist, so that they can have the dental treatment they need without their usual feelings of panic, anxiety or palpitations at the thought of or when visiting the dentist.