Pinnacle Therapy

Why do people shoplift?

Celebrity chef Anthony Worrall Thompson’s arrest, then caution, about shoplifting from his local Tesco has already increased levels of awareness about the complex reasons why people steal.

In his statement, posted on his website he says he will seek treatment and, in his candid interview with the Daily Express, he says he knows there is more to this than a simple act of petty theft. On one occasion, he says, he “paid £180 for three crates of champagne and at the same time nicked £4 of stuff. How ridiculous and how stupid.”

It isn’t ridiculous or stupid. Many people with mental health problems act in a way that puts at risk, or destroys, aspects of their lives that are well-established and seem to be going well: careers or businesses, personal or professional reputations, personal or professional relationships.

These acts of self-sabotage might seem to be trivial; they could be extreme. It doesn’t matter. As Anthony Worrall Thompson’s situation shows, a small theft can be as devastating as engaging in massive fraud. Nor is it important what those acts are: turning up drunk at work, getting into too much debt, missing deadlines, repeated absenteeism, having affairs, and so on. The common factor is that they jeopardise apparently stable and successful situations.

It is the catalysts that are important, the underlying reasons for taking the risk.

Anthony Worrall Thompson has said that he has tried hard to think about why he acted as he did but is unable to come up with a reason. He recognises that self-analysis isn’t working and he is already seeking professional help.

The first step of any form of therapeutic treatment is to find out more about the underlying reasons, asking what the client feels about his or her life in general – and, in particular, what he or she felt just before taking the risky act – to find out if there were any specific areas of insecurity or dissatisfaction that triggered the behaviour.

Shoplifting is rarely as simple as a desperate need to relieve poverty. Its cause is usually highly complex – which is why retailers and police are sensitive in their approach, at least at the first stage.

If you are struggling with self-sabotage and would like therapeutic help, do get in touch. We have therapy rooms in Twickenham, Middlesex, and central London and can be flexible on dates and times. Visit our website to learn more about how we work and the therapies we offer.

How obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) affects people

As its name implies, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) incorporates two important aspects: obsessions and compulsions with the former leading to the latter. The way they interrelate is important but, although the link is obvious when it is explained, it is often hard for outsiders to understand the cause of the symptoms because those symptoms are so dominant.

In our earlier post we explained that we all experience some aspects of OCD to a degree. We all have intrusive thoughts but fleetingly and dismissively. They become a problem, and this is when OCD is diagnosed, when they:

take up an unusual and unreasonable amount of time
cause a high level of anxiety or distress
interfere with daily life.

There are four principal ways in which OCD is expressed:

checking
contamination (which might be physical or mental)
hoarding
thoughts

We hope this chart helps explain what many people with OCD experience (and we are grateful to OCD UK for providing the core information).

Obsessive fears or worries (which you might want to avoid or be reassured about)	Compulsive behaviours (can be overt or covert)
Someone, something or somewhere will be contaminated	Repeatedly, or ritually, washing your hands or body to prevent passing on the contamination
Catching an illness, usually high profile, because you think you have come into contact with germs	Excessive cleaning (not only of rooms) to remove the perceived contaminants
Something bad might happen (to you or someone important to you) if things (often inconsequential) are not arranged symmetrically/in order/at angles	Checking, constantly adjusting, realigning objects until they feel they are right (as opposed to looking right) to prevent something bad happening
Causing physical harm to someone or yourself; causing sexual harm to someone or yourself; behaving inappropriately towards children	Avoiding situations or locations which trigger the thoughts; repeatedly asking partners or significant others if you did/said something wrong
A disaster (flood, gas leak, break-in, fire) might happen	Checking taps, switches, locks constantly and perhaps for a specified (by you) number of times
Writing something offensive or inappropriate in a letter or card	Repeatedly (perhaps hundreds of times) re-opening and re-sealing a letter or card to check
Harming someone with a knife or other dangerous implement	Locking everyday kitchen knives in a drawer so you don’t come into contact with them
Something bad might happen to you or someone important to you	Repeatedly saying (out loud or silently) a word or phrase, or counting up to a fixed (by you) number, believing it will prevent the occurrence

The focus should not, however, only be on the obsessions and compulsions. Just as important are the feelings of people with OCD, including: depression, embarrassment, exasperated, exhaustion, frustration, hopelessness, secretive, ashamed. And they feel these feelings unusually intensely.

These lists are not exhaustive; some people will experience OCD differently and if you, or someone you know, has other fears/worries or behaviours that you think might be evidence of OCD and want advice and/or treatment, do get in touch. We usually recommend cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as it is the most effective treatment for OCD.

And keep an eye out for articles about OCD during the first-ever OCD Awareness Week (it runs from 10th to 16th October this year).

What is obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)?

Everyone has intrusive thoughts. They arise involuntarily and out of the blue and can be upsetting, worrying, offensive, bizarre or violent. For most of us, these thoughts are fleeting and, even if they make us stop for a second to wonder why we had them, they are easy to dismiss and we dismiss them.

Some people find it impossible to ignore their intrusive thoughts. They dwell on them and this, in turn, makes the thoughts occur more frequently, and become increasingly distressing, causing great anxiety. The thoughts might then become obsessive or compulsive and, if the person can’t distinguish between them and the sort of intrusive thoughts we all have, they can lead into obsessive or compulsive urges which, if they are not controlled, turn into obsessive or compulsive behaviour.

So, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety-related condition. It affects about 12 people in every 1,000 which, in the UK, means about a quarter of a million people, half of whom will have a severe form of the illness. It is indiscriminate, affecting people of any age, gender and socio-economic group though it most often emerges in men during their adolescence and women in their early twenties. David Beckham, Cameron Diaz and Megan Fox are understood to suffer from OCD.

A common misunderstanding of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is that it manifests itself as compulsive or repetitive hand washing or checking about locking up or turning off lights. That is how it affects some people but, for many, it can be more complicated.

The obsessive or intrusive thoughts – which can be about themselves or someone significant to them – can themselves be seriously debilitating, overwhelming people’s minds and preventing them from getting on with their lives. Although it is usual for people with OCD to be aware of their obsessive thoughts, and know that they are not rational, they believe there is only one way to relieve the anxiety they cause and that is by performing rituals. Those rituals might be physical or mental but they seldom bring anything other than very short-term relief; usually they reinforce the obsession or compulsion making it worse. Nor do these rituals solve the perceived problem – whatever is at the heart of their obsessive or compulsive thought – which can add to their anxiety.

Most people with OCD will usually be able to continue functioning in other respects. They continue to perform at work, at home and socially – though their OCD is likely to increase in intensity at times of greater stress or anxiety. A minority will, however, find that it takes over their lives.

The good news is that it is eminently treatable and it is highly likely that someone with OCD will recover fully; at worst, treatment will enable them to manage their illness and its symptoms so they can get on with their daily lives.

The most effective treatment is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT); some people might benefit from CBT and medication, depending on the severity of their OCD. CBT is the most effective of the talking therapies because it involves the person to look at themselves as they are now, helping them think differently (that’s the cognitive aspect) while challenging their beliefs by working through behavioural exercises. CBT relies on the person being fully engaged in the process which also contributes to them focussing less on their obsessive or compulsive thoughts and behaviour.

If you or someone you know seems to be affected by OCD and would like to find out more about it, do look at the OCD UK website. If you or they would like to explore treatment by CBT counselling in London or Twickenham, do get in touch.

OCD is likely to be in the news over the next few weeks in the run up to the first-ever OCD Awareness Week which runs from 10th to 16th October 2011 so, in our next blog, we will continue with them by outlining the ways in which OCD expresses itself.

Massacre in Norway triggers lessons in bereavement, grief, trauma and mental health

The massacre in Norway raises many points about mental health, bereavement, grief and trauma.

Let’s look first at Anders Behring Breivik whose actions resulted in 76 people being killed or, as we write this, unaccounted for. While it might have been legally judicious for his lawyer to label Breivik “insane”, using that word says more about prejudice than it does about understanding mental health.

When people retreat from the norm – behaving anti-socially, whether by withdrawing from others or behaving inhumanely towards themselves or others – it is often because they feel out of kilter with the world, or misunderstood by it, or because they cannot manage their emotions. This is not a defence of Breivik’s behavour (clearly extreme and exceptional) but it is an example of what can happen if mental illnesses are not recognised, diagnosed or treated.

While the majority of our clients are well-informed and self-aware, mental illness remains a taboo. Talking about mental health issues with partners, family, friends – or with colleagues at work – is not something everyone has the chance or inclination to do. Keeping concerns private does not often lead to extremes of behaviour – but it can cause significant shifts in behaviour or personality, turning people in on themselves. And that could lead to self-harm, eating disorders, mis-using drugs or alcohol, an over-reliance on smoking; it could cause anxiety, panic, stress, phobias, sleep issues. It can also affect behaviour and performance at work and relationships. Anyone feeling they do not fit in, that others are against them, or that they cannot cope deserves support and encouragement. Yet, as our human instinct is often to shy away from exposing what we think of as private weaknesses or inadequacies, support is often hard to seek.

The Norwegian tragedy also shows how others can be affected, directly or indirectly.

We’ve heard about the guilt that some survivors of the incident feel – that they escaped his attention or were just of out range so they lived but others didn’t. There is anger at the police – for taking what the public considered too long to respond to the incident, and for not having the right means to get their fast. Many who witnessed the incident were immediately traumatised and may remain affected by the trauma for some time. Some parents felt relief on learning their child was safe, but their relief was tinged with sadness at others’ loss. We saw the tearful response of the King and Queen of Norway at the memorial service, shocked and saddened by the individual deaths and by what was the country’s biggest loss of life since the second world war. And we noted the stunned expression on the Norwegian prime minister’s face as he took control of the incident, balancing his emotions with his responsibilities to set a lead for the country and protect its reputation as a tourist destination.

Paramedics who reached the scene described the people they found as traumatised. Those paramedics are likely to have built up resilience that helps them manage their reactions to traumatic incidents but they might need continuing support to maintain that resilience.

And we’ve experienced our own reactions, at a distance from the incident, trying to make sense of it from our perspectives, with many of us reliving grief at lives lost years ago or recently.

All of these reactions are normal – grief is a complex emotion even when a death or loss occurs naturally and is expected. Sometimes it takes an extreme act for people to notice the extent of their own or others’ mental distress – and to give themselves permission to seek help to overcome it.

If this traumatic incident has triggered difficult emotions, changed behaviours, or reopened issues you thought were under control, do get in touch with us for professional, therapeutic support. We offer a range of therapies including EMDR (recognised by NICE as particularly effective for recovering from trauma), CBT, hypnotherapy, psychotherapy and counselling - and often recommend a blend of therapies so each person receives the form of therapy that is best for them.

What is counselling?

To many people, the term “counselling” is a catch-all phrase, a generality that encompasses all the talking therapies without singling out any one form of therapy. This is not necessarily wrong – but counselling is also a talking therapy in its own right.

Many people have innate counselling skills – good friends, for example, who have a knack for listening to what you are saying, posing questions about what you have said and giving you a chance to consider your own thoughts. And so it is with a professionally-trained counsellor, with the essential element of being dispassionate, standing apart from what you are saying and posing more-searching questions without fear of risking a friendship or damaging a long-standing relationship.

A trained counsellor will also not give advice – many friends can’t resist doing so – although a professional counsellor is likely to suggest courses of action for you to consider and might also recommend exercises for you to do between sessions. Professional counsellors will also guarantee you time in private – so you can speak openly – as well as confidentiality – there is no chance of gossip between friends. The structure of formal sessions with a professional is also more beneficial than ad-hoc chats.

For many therapists, straightforward counselling is one of the first therapies they study. They then go on, as have our therapists, to study other forms of counselling, expanding their skills to provide a broader range of services. In our case, we offer a blend of therapies to suit each client, always first discussing options with the client before agreeing an approach.

This holistic approach is called integrative counselling.

Counselling helps people deal with and overcome challenging emotional experiences such as depression, relationship difficulties, redundancy, bereavement, low self-esteem, eating disorders, the rollercoaster that is parenthood, stress – anything that affects your emotional well-being.

In addition to counselling, the therapies we provide at our London therapy rooms are: cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), eye movement desensitisation reprocessing (EMDR), emotional freedom technique (EFT), existential counselling, Gestalt therapy, humanistic psychotherapy, hypno-birthing, hypnotherapy, integrative counselling, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), person-centred counselling, psychotherapy, psychoanalytical therapy, psychodynamic therapy, and sensorimotor psychotherapy.

There is more information about each of these therapies on the What we do section of our website.

If you would like to explore whether counselling for depression, or any other emotionally challenging issue, would be right for you – and which form of counselling is likely to have the greatest effect, do get in touch. We provide counselling in London in two locations : Twickenham and central London (on Oxford Street).

Eating disorders: What the statistics tell us

It’s not hard to find statistics on the Internet about eating disorders – but it is hard to find statistics that mean something to anyone who might be in the grip of an eating disorder, or to people who might be worried that a friend or family member might have an eating disorder. The information they are looking for is not just “so I’m not alone”; it is also “so what do I do about it?” and “how can I get help without others finding out?”.

That is because, for many people with an eating disorder, whether anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa or any other form or disordered-eating, a major part of the illness is a need to keep it secret. Finding reasons to eat alone (which means not eating alone) or not to eat when others are eating (perhaps saying they have already eaten and so aren’t hungry) provides them with the privacy to hide their illness as well as a method for staying in control. It is another unjust twist in this illness that makes people hope others will have gone public on their behalf so they can benefit – without disclosing any information themselves.

As for the statistics, is it reassuring, or worrying, to know that the number of people with an eating disorder only reflects known cases – in the context many people are not open about it and so won’t be counted in the stats? Does it help to know that the majority are young women (typically between the ages of 14 and 25) when you are an older woman (who might have had the illness for decades or weeks) or, indeed, a boy or man (roughly 10 per cent of all cases will be men)?

From a therapist’s point of view, the only statistic that matters is the person he or she is with at the time. To a therapist, this is not a numbers game; it is a serious issue with deep underlying causes, affecting that one person in the clinic right now. The therapist knows it can be overcome with therapy; his or her role is to find the best form of therapy for each individual. Everyone is different so, although there will be similarities in the generalities, the precise cause of the illness will be different for each person; the form of therapy will be specific to each person; the length of time the therapy will last will be specific to each person.

Trawling the web for facts is, however, important as it often indicates that the person looking realises that he or she needs professional help and support – and wants it. So, a second search through the web is often for information on eating disorder symptoms (for reassurance and confirmation) and then for an eating disorder clinic or a counsellor/therapist specialising in eating disorders. As always, and regardless of the underlying issue, it is important to choose a therapist who is well qualified and whose work follows professional guidelines – and who you can trust with your innermost thoughts, feelings and fears.

Our next post will look at the symptoms of eating disorders and the therapies that are most effective at helping people overcome their disordered-eating.

When work doesn't work any more

With employment news hitting the headlines again it is appropriate to reflect on how people are affected when their jobs are at risk or when relationships – usually between those in charge and those who work for them – break down.

Today, the army has told 38 people their jobs will end in 12 months’ time – and it has done so by email. The army’s assistant general chief of staff and the government have apologised for the unacceptable way in which they broke the news to the long-serving soldiers.
This week, the RAF announced that about 50 of its trainee pilots could face redundancy and that it will not take any new students next year, ending the careers of people whose hopes seemed built on strong foundations, and disappointing others who had seen a positive future.
Throughout this month, widespread media coverage has been given to the fact that the future of our libraries is at risk, potentially putting thousands of librarians out of work.
And, again this month, the long-running dispute at British Airways filled more column inches when its recent ballot was declared unlawful, creating more uncertainties for cabin crew whose jobs are under threat.

These high profile cases have attracted sympathy from the public; there is a collective understanding of the disappointment, frustrations and irritations those affected must feel. But, for most people whose jobs are unsatisfactory or at risk, or whose relationships at work have deteriorated, there is no guarantee of understanding from anyone; their bosses, colleagues, family, friends might be too preoccupied by their own work or home lives to provide support.

At work, the highs and lows reverse: when morale dips and motivation wanes, production falls and absenteeism rises. Diffidence increases, tensions heighten, commitment slumps. Managers might not be equipped to manage these new situations or ask for help; respect for them dissipates; their achievements come under closer scrutiny – they, too, struggle to keep up the pace.

The private lives of the people whose jobs are at risk might also fall apart creating tensions, conflict, stress, a withdrawal from normal life and perhaps a drift into risky behaviour.

Professional advice – coaching, counselling, mentoring, mediation, training – can help individuals, individually or in teams, by building confidence, inspiring people, reducing conflict. It can also create a business shift – providing strategic advice on workplace policies, building skills for handling difficult situations or people, devising policies and practices that engender focus, build confidence, strengthen leadership and reshape the corporate culture.

In all four examples highlighted above, professional support and advice could create huge positive shifts for the people - and for the organisations - involved.

The Ashes - Achieving aspirations in a new year

“The best team won.” This is the overriding view of sports commentators, professional and amateur, throughout Australia after the British team retained The Ashes. Magnanimity in defeat is a quality that comes naturally to some and it is striking that it comes so easily in Australia (where coverage of their defeat has included fulsome praise for the British team) and to Australians (who seem to have a sunnier outlook than many Brits) even in the face of adversity. Sometimes it seems as if we, as a nation, find it hard to hide disappointment or acknowledge another country’s success against our own.

Finding a positive side, at home, at work and at leisure, can also seem impossible - yet doing so can help us get through difficulties with ease.

At work, decisions are made that contradict the wishes of many leaving some feel short-changed and, perhaps, a few feeling they can’t put up with their jobs any more. At home, disagreements over small things can turn minor issues into events that have enormous implications – perhaps splitting up relationships, severing contacts, changing lives. In down time in between, staying in control enough to cope with change can lead to an over-zealous approach to exercise, a compulsion to shop or clean, or a withdrawal from society.

Managing emotional reactions, improving performance and building resilience, can however be learned – with guidance from a professional.

Meanwhile, as a new year begins, many of us make new year’s resolutions that are founded more in hope than in experience - and that are bound to be unattainable.

Setting realistic goals – moving at an achievable pace, one step at a time – is more likely to lead to success, whatever the overall aim. Yet many of us reach first for the final outcome – the equivalent of winning The Ashes – forgetting that there are several steps – each Test – to go through before the outcome is known.

Professional therapeutic support can help you work out which steps to take, and how to pace them, to achieve your new year’s resolution so you can face 2011 with as much of a positive outlook as Australians have towards the future of their cricket achievements.

Building pride and commitment at work: taking lessons from sport

With England riding high in The Ashes, a collective sense of pride seems to be sweeping through the nation. Even people whose knowledge of cricket extends no further than knowing it is played in whites on village greens have been caught up in following our team’s success, even if only in passing. At the same time we learned the disappointing news that Britain had failed to be chosen to host the football world cup in 2018.

Both events offer lessons about building pride and commitment at work.

With The Ashes, sports commentators convey the news enthusiastically on every medium – television, radio, print, the Internet – praising individual cricketers’ achievements and the team’s approach. There is no doubt that the team is pulling together and praise is being given to all as well as to each team player separately.

With the world cup announcement, all three leaders (prime minister David Cameron, HRH Prince William, David Beckham) spoke separately, but similarly, about the decision – praising the team who had put together an exemplary bid, criticising no one for their efforts. The overall message was everyone had done more than their bit; no one person was to blame; everyone was in this together.

These leadership approaches – giving praise where praise is due, shouldering the responsibility when things go wrong, communicating clearly to team members and beyond – specifically to build morale, commitment, loyalty, dedication and pride are typical in sport. They are less typical in organisations and businesses – though they are needed there just as much.

When morale is low, commitment, loyalty, dedication and pride plummet; absenteeism increases. Productivity and profits fall which puts jobs at risk, further depressing morale. Meanwhile, managers may be forced to focus on short-term targets, leaving staff to manage on their own, often in a communication vacuum.

This is when businesses need to adopt tactics used routinely in the sporting world – using experts (the equivalent of a team coach) not only to help devise ways of rebuilding individual morale and a collective team spirit but also to provide the hands-on effort needed to work with the team’s members and communicate with staff. We regularly act as team coach for the businesses we work with, rebuilding morale so staff and managers find it easier to work at peak performance.

Trauma leaves a legacy

Two inquests are currently dominating the news – reminding us that traumas leave an unpredictable legacy. It is impossible to know exactly how people will be affected by a trauma – and it is impossible to know exactly when its effects might emerge.

In the case of the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, the inquest highlighted resentments and misunderstandings between specialists – ambulance, police and firefighting staff all had expectations of each other that went unfulfilled, leaving them all feeling blamed for others’ shortcomings. And it made those specialists relive their experiences – bringing some to tears in the witness stand.

As for the death of barrister Mark Saunders, killed in a siege in May 2008, a specialist firearms police officer is accused of playing a game with the evidence he gave at the inquest in September 2009.

What both these situations show is that it is important not just to support people’s mental and emotional health years after they have experienced a trauma; it is also important to help them develop resilience before they experience a trauma including by recognising when they might be vulnerable to pressures and stress, how those vulnerabilities might emerge, and when and how to seek help.

While it might not have been possible to predict a random bombing, it is possible to predict that police, firefighters, paramedics and ambulance staff will face traumas of some sort – and that they will react differently to them. With specialists such as firearms officers, it is possible to predict that some will behave oddly before, during or after a trauma, perhaps as a way of managing their anxieties, the overwhelming nature of their responsibilities, or the difficult decisions they had to make while under pressure.

It is not for us to pass judgement on the way the people involved in these two high-profile cases behaved during their traumas or afterwards – or to imply whether they are innocent or guilty. What we can say is that the way they behaved is entirely predictable, in an unpredictable kind of way, and that organisations can help their staff face, manage and recover from a trauma – if they take professional advice including from mental health specialists.

Stress at work

Today is Stress Awareness Day and MIND (a leading mental health charity) has just released research showing that millions of people take sickies to cope with stress at work – and that they lie to their bosses about the reasons for those sickies. I suspect that most of us have been in this position at some stage during our working life.

Taking a day off might help to some degree – giving you a chance to wind down, or up, or both, whichever is right for you – but it doesn’t solve the problem for the long term. The same pressures will continue; it takes corporate, not individual, action to change the level of stress at work.

For many organisations, facing up to the fact that stress is an issue can be hugely counter-cultural and intimidating. It is often the case that the people creating stress for others are under stress themselves – and they can be as reluctant to be honest about this to their bosses, as their staff are about being honest to them. The merry-go-round of stress goes merrily round with people at every level unable to stop and get off.

It doesn’t have to be like this. While a certain degree of stress is good for each of us – it drives us on, inspires us, encourages achievement, helps us aim high – an unmanageable level of stress can adversely affect individual and corporate performance. At the very least, it increases the number of sickies we take.

More and more organisations realise that they need policies to manage stress in the workplace. Some policies might be relatively easy to introduce (reducing noise, for example) but others require greater corporate effort (training leaders to recognise stress in themselves and others, and how to minimise or overcome it). Getting outside help, including to formulate and implement those policies, is one way for business leaders to reduce their own stress (delegating is an important stress-reliever) as well as the stress their staff feel – so everyone can concentrate on their own, and the business’s, success.

How did you cope on Stress Awareness Day?

Managing trauma in Chile and ordinary life

The world is in awe of the way in which the Chilean government, the mining company, the miners and their families (and, for that matter, the world’s media) have handled this staggeringly unusual crisis. It would be wrong to be complacent while the rescue operation continues but it would be wrong, also, to focus only on the miners' release and the immediate aftermath. The miners who are already above ground are now in medical care; checking their physical health is a priority of course.

So is managing their mental health and the Chilean government has already said it will do all it can to support the miners for the long term which must include understanding and treating their psychological reactions.

What about others? Everyone closely involved in the operation could be affected by this internationally-followed crisis – the rescuers who travel down the mine to assess the health and welfare of the miners before they are transported above ground; the people deciding who should be rescued first, last and in between; the people who built and tested the rescue pod or who created and lined the shaft; the families waiting, uncertain whether the crisis would end in tragedy or joy; wives, partners, mistresses (as reported by the media), children, parents who find their husband, lover, father, child has changed having lived for so long with uncertainty, underground; the head of the mining company; the media observing it all; even the president of Chile. All could be affected by this incident, and in unpredictable ways – or not affected at all and be accused of callousness or indifference. That’s the effect of trauma.

Even the word trauma conjures up dramatic incidents, but a trauma cannot be measured on any scale other than the one by which the person affected measures it. Something others perceive as trivial or inconsequential could have a massive impact for the person experiencing it. No one else should be your judge and jury; if you feel you have experienced a trauma, you’ve experienced a trauma. And that means you could be struggling with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The effect of trauma can come and go, be ever-present, last for life, or disappear soon after it emerged. The good news is that much more is known, now, about PTSD and the way it can be treated. One particularly effective treatment, recommended by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), is EMDR (to continue with the acronyms – this one stands for eye movement desensitisation reprocessing). The effect of EMDR is thought to be similar to REM sleep, during which the brain makes sense of the day’s events, reprocessing the memory and releasing problem emotions and associations.

EMDR could help the Chilean miners and others associated with them, just as it could help anyone who has experienced a trauma, whether the cause of the trauma was obviously dramatic to a wide-eyed world or invisible to everyone but you. The point is to seek help, not suffer in silence believing you ought not to be affected.

Tamara Drewe - Life, richly observed

It’s the hottest ticket in town, this film – with critics finding no fault and with film-goers emerging with smiles on their faces, two hours well-spent and at relatively low cost.

Based on cartoonist Posy Simmonds’ interpretation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, this is modern life in all its, well, harsh reality – wrapped in cotton wool amidst idyllic countryside scenery. It’s easy to sink into escapist, uplifting comedic fiction – which is the point of Tamara Drewe.

There are times – fleetingly – when you see your own life in front of you, flashing an “oh, that was me” thought onto your mind’s private screen before you sink back into the moment. The teenage angst that comes from boredom and unfulfillable dreams; the struggle with self-esteem and under-achievement; the unspoken anxiety about missed opportunities; the mask of ego; the compromise too far in relationships; and the way we retreat from difficult emotions and truths or handle depression and bereavement.

Many people choose films for their idealistic joy and rightly so. They take us out of ourselves, put a spring into our step and bring new energy into our lives – for as long as we let them. It would be wrong, therefore, to over-emphasise the dose of reality that underlies this funny romp through middle-class Britishness. But, if it stirs things up for you, talking them through with a psychotherapist or counsellor could help you regain whatever it is that the film makes you think you’ve lost so that you, too, can aim for what its brilliant actors provide – a welcome, if momentary, happy ever after feeling.

Read The Guardian's sharply-written review of this richly observed version of art imitating life: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/sep/09/tamara-drewe-review

Pain - is it ever all in the mind?

Two blogs ago I looked at the issue of medically unexplained symptoms. Linked to this is the issue of pain. Pain can, of course, be caused by structural damage (such as a broken bone). Often it has a psychological basis – there is no physical reason; it is driven by emotions. The jargon for this kind of pain is tension myoneural syndrome or TMS.

This raises two important issues for the person experiencing pain: the need to rule out a physical cause (so do consult your GP) and then to accept the diagnosis. For many, dealing with a diagnosis of TMS is extremely challenging – because it often strikes people who feel emotionally well and who, because of the way they feel, are convinced that the pain has a physiological cause. Furthermore, research shows that people with TMS focus so much on the physical pain that it stops them from focusing on the psychological pain. In effect, the pain is a way of drawing their attention away from their difficult emotions. It’s not that different from people who comfort-eat when angry – the eating distracts them from their anger, but a long-term solution is to work out the cause of the anger and how to manage it.

So, in answer to the question in the heading of this blog: no, pain caused by TMS is not all in the mind. The pain is real. Nor is its strength an indication of the severity of the emotional cause. We all respond differently and the real issue is the effect of the pain – whether intensely strong, stabbingly intermittent or nagging away in the background – on you.

If an inexplicable pain is affecting your life, psychotherapeutic treatment could well sweep it away by helping you understand and deal with its emotional cause.

A journey into using alcohol as a prop

So, Tony Blair has published his memoirs and confessed that he fell into the habit of using alcohol to support him through the stresses of being prime minister. The revelation immediately generated a debate, among journalists and the public, about whether this was anything worth writing about – many of us think nothing of drinking a whisky or G&T followed by a couple of glasses (or half a bottle) of wine each evening.

As Mr Blair said, it was at the upper limit of what is considered appropriate but an interesting question is whether he underestimated his alcohol intake – just as many of us do when asked by our GP or in surveys.

The difficulty, in a nation where drinking is so much a part of our culture, is that it is very easy to kid ourselves that we can handle what we drink and that what we drink is not too much. I am not implying that Tony Blair was pulling the wool over our eyes or his own; he defined his alcohol intake as “not excessively excessive” and we have to take that at face value.

But what made his confession so interesting was that he recognised his drinking had become a prop. For many, this objectivity is not possible. We drink (or turn to drugs, eating, self-harm) to cover up, disguise or distract us from difficult emotions – without being aware that that is what we are doing.

The first stage on the road to recovery is to discover and unravel those feelings so we can learn how to manage and respond to them. And many of us need not a quick-fix prop but professional support to plan the best route for the journey through our complicated, 21st century lives.

Medically unexplained symptoms

Recent studies have revealed that between one in six and one in three people in the UK consults their GP about what turns out to be medically unexplained symptoms – symptoms that are either not related to an illness or are unusually exaggerated for that illness. The majority of those symptoms has a psychological foundation, though the cause can often be missed.

Take, for example, the case of a woman (let’s call her Sarah) who comforted her aunt through her last days and was with her when she died. Several months later, Sarah began to feel out of sorts. She slept badly, largely because she repeatedly woke to find her left arm a leaden weight, cold and without feeling but causing pain including inside her chest. Worried, she imagined this was a sign of a heart problem and booked an appointment with her GP.

Tests showed no signs of a heart condition but a few questions revealed that Sarah had been unexpectedly affected by her aunt’s death – and she recalled that her aunt had died, from lung cancer, while lying on her left side with Sarah holding her left hand. The GP was reluctant to prescribe sleeping pills – sleeplessness was not the symptom that needed treatment. Instead, he referred Sarah to a psychotherapist where she talked through her aunt’s death and other stresses; the symptoms ceased.

Medically unexplained symptoms can affect all parts of the body and in various ways. About a third of them are musculoskeletal (including but not only back pain), roughly a fifth are abdominal (such as digestive problems), a smaller proportion has ear, nose or throat problems, others experience fatigue, dizziness or simply don’t feel right. Some symptoms can be extreme, such as paralysis or blindness; others are less severe.

Common experiences include people with depression who feel pain more intensely and people with asthma whose asthmatic attacks increase when they are under stress – but there are no hard and fast rules; symptoms and their severity vary from person to person.

We don’t know how the mind, brain or body turns the psychological into the physical; the fact is that it does – and we’ve known this for millennia. The solution is to consider whether the symptoms might be triggered by an underlying emotional cause and, if so, to seek psychological support. [Source: Therapy Today]

The hypnotic effects of charisma

Barack Obama, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, Anita Roddick, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Hilary Clinton, Tony Blair, Mother Teresa, Karen Brady, Carla Bruni Sarkozy, Diana Princess of Wales – and many more great and good – have all been described as charismatic: having charm, magnetism and extraordinary persuasive powers.

And it is the words “great and good” that matter most. You can be great and have charisma; but not all charismatic people are also good. Think of the undeniably charismatic Adolf Hitler.

New research from Denmark shows that charismatic people have a subtle effect on others – which is what helps them win hearts and minds. In a neuro-scientific study conducted by Aarhus University, people in two groups (one of devoted Christians who believed in healing through prayer, and one non-religious who did not believe in that possibility) were asked to listen to three speakers. The speakers were described as a Christian, a non-Christian and a Christian known for his healing powers. Participants were told which they were listening to, in turn. In reality, all three were ordinary Christians.

Leave aside the fact that the study involved Christians. Their faith is not relevant; it is useful as it provides a neat example of how people behave.

Participants’ brains were studied for their reactions to the speakers as the speakers spoke. Afterwards, they were asked to rate each speaker’s charisma. Devoted Christians gave the Christian known for his healing powers a much higher charisma rating. Among non-Christians, there was only a slight difference in their charisma ratings for that speaker.

The brain analysis revealed that the people who rated the Christian with healing powers most highly had deactivated a part of their brain, switching off their scepticism and making them more susceptible to influence. This is a general reaction when with people we trust – we do it with doctors, for example – but it is boosted when we are in the presence of people with presence: we lower our guard, become more trusting, believe more than disbelieve. The study noted that this is also what happens to the brain during hypnosis – which explains why people expect high levels of trust from hypnotherapists.

People who abuse their charisma – leaders of cults, for example – are often described as having a hold over people. And they do – because of the way our brains react to their extraordinary persuasive powers. But, used responsibly, charisma is a valuable tool. It can get you noticed, leading to greater success, and it can help you win friends and influence people. And that all adds up to improved self-esteem and self-belief.

Lucky you if you were born with charisma. If you weren’t, you can acquire it. And if you’ve been drawn towards someone who has abused their charisma, hypnotherapy can help you recover.

Therapy or medication?

Therapy isn’t everyone’s first choice of treatment. For some, taking prescription medication is more attractive. Others try both. Interestingly, a recent American study showed that the most effective treatment was to … give people a choice.

In a study of 1,000 people, about half were allowed to choose from a talking therapy, drug treatment or both. The other half continued with the treatment recommended by their doctor. A year later, almost two thirds (64 per cent) of the people offered a choice recorded an improvement whereas less than half (45 per cent) of those who had followed their original treatment did so.

For those who had a choice, talking therapy came top – one in three (34 per cent) chose therapy only and more than half (57 per cent) opted for therapy and drug treatment together. Less than one in 10 (nine per cent) chose drug treatment on its own.

If we think you would benefit from prescribed medication we will, of course, suggest you talk to your GP. Meanwhile, the fact that we offer so many therapies means we offer our clients a choice. In many cases, we take this a step further and work holistically, recommending a blend of therapies so every client is offered the most suitable treatment for them in their situation.

Having a choice – being involved in the decision-making process – usually means clients are more engaged in their treatment which is more likely to prove successful.

Combat-stress and alcohol mis-use

As news breaks of the death of another British soldier in Afghanistan, it is worth thinking not only of the impact of his death on his family, friends and colleagues but also of the long-term effects of the stress of combat on the troops who make it back home alive.

A recent report, published in The Lancet and summarised in Therapy Today, revealed that today’s troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq have a 22 per cent higher risk of alcohol mis-use than other servicemen and women. The greatest problems were among those serving in combat roles.

Alcohol mis-use is one of many potential effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Whilst the causes of PTSD among our forces are obvious, they are not always so in civilian life where it can be triggered by any event that causes psychological trauma – and that can vary from person to person. For some, it might be neglect, abuse, assault or witnessing a violent death such as suicide; for others, simply hearing about a traumatic event can lead to PTSD.

The good news is that several therapies have proved to be highly effective in treating PTSD including psychotherapy, CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitising and Reprocessing).

If you know someone who appears to be mis-using alcohol, or other substances, be aware that it could be their way of coping with the emotional chaos of a traumatic event – and an expression of PTSD. The first step is to recognise that alcohol mis-use is a symptom – not a cause – and that it can be treated.

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.

Hypnotherapy can help healing

Despite the way hypnosis is often portrayed in the media, on films and television, hypnotherapy is a real tool to help people overcome real issues in everyday life - issues such as weight loss, overcoming phobias and quitting bad habits like smoking and nail biting.

Hypnotherapy is also particularly useful for healing. In no way is it suggested that hypnotherapy should be used instead of conventional medicine and treatments, but it is a valuable alternative treatment that can work alongside conventional medicine. And it is now available on the NHS.

Hypnotherapy can be used to overcome emotional problems and mental blocks. It is often said that laughter is the best medicine and that being stressed does not help anybody. Using hypnosis simply as a relaxation and visualisation tool helps to relieve stress and that can allow conventional medicine and treatment to work twice as effectively.

Contrary to popular opinion, people do experience the feeling of hypnosis; they don’t black out or forget everything that was said. It is relaxing and helps the unconscious part of a person to work in coordination with the conscious part and stop us battling with ourselves. In this way, hypnosis allows the healing process to take place.

Hypnotherapy helps mum lose four stone

We have talked in previous articles about how hypnosis can be used to assist weight loss and, indeed, celebrities such as Lily Allen have dropped dress sizes using hypnotherapy.

According to reports in the media this week, one mother has had hypnosis to help her believe she had had a gastric band fitted. It took five sessions with a hypnotherapist to help Marie Corns after she had ballooned in weight to 15 stone and 6 lbs. After hypnotherapy, Marie found she felt full following small portions of food and, in the space of only four months, she lost just under four stone and went from a size 22 to a size 14.

Marion, 35, from Whiston, Merseyside, said: “I have tried every other diet and exercise plan the world has to offer. I’ve tried tablets, Weight Watchers, Atkins, SlimFast, even a personal trainer but none of them helped me. I can remember every part of the ‘procedure’, including being wheeled into theatre, the clink of the surgeon’s knife and even the smell of the anaesthetic. Now if I try to eat a large portion I feel a pulling sensation in my tummy.”

Marie decided to try hypnotherapy after her friend had hypnosis to help her stop smoking. Naturally, when having hypnosis for weight loss it is important that people do follow dietary advice and see a properly qualified hypnotherapist.

Counselling for trauma

Counselling and psychotherapy are associated with traumatic events, but when someone thinks of examples of where it might be used they often think of dramatic happenings such as returning from war or witnessing a murder.

However, trauma can come from smaller incidents too. During a robbery at the Bookers Cash and Carry in Wrexham earlier this month, two members of staff on duty were threatened by the criminals. Although nobody was hurt during the ordeal, events such as this can be alarming for anybody. All staff members at the Felin Puleston Booker site have been offered counselling by the company. One patient from the site was taken to nearby Maelor Hospital with symptoms of shock. A Booker spokeswoman said:

"We take matters of security very seriously and are fully co-operating with the police who are now investigating the incident. No colleagues were hurt and all have been offered counselling."

Psychotherapy and counselling are often used in matters such as this and the earlier the better. Sometimes clients do not even realise how they have been affected until months, or even years, later so it is better to be safe than sorry and take time out to examine how you might feel.

Counselling for our police officers

According to an article in the Express & Star, figures released to them under the Freedom of Information Act have shown that almost 1,000 police staff members in the West Midlands alone have had to take time off work citing stress as the cause in the last three years - with over half of these being front line officers.

Post-traumatic stress is something that perhaps we may expect our police force to suffer, given the things they have to see and do in their day-to-day work life. But other reasons given include depression and anxiety. The figures are from April 2006 to March 2009 and included 959 police force staff from the West Midlands police force, ranging from constables to operations centre offices and telephone operators. West Midlands police explained some of these absences were for external reasons, such as bereavement, and they have a counselling section to help staff.

A retired police superintendent John Mellor, aged 80, told the paper that counselling and psychotherapy didn’t happen in his day. He said:

“I understand that modern police officers like those in my day suffer from stress and it seems everything these days seems to be done to assist them. Back then when officers got sent to incidents such as murders or bad road accidents, which could be causes of stress, they didn’t seem to notice it.”

As a nation, it seems we suffer from stress and related depression much more, perhaps because of the expectations of the society we live in and perhaps because of the publicity surrounding murders and bad road accidents we are more aware of the number. With therapies such as hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and psychotherapy, a greater awareness of our feelings and early intervention, we can use the tools therapists have nowadays to help combat our problems.

Company alternative treatment plans

Many businesses are coming round to the idea of alternative treatments and recognising that, although they do not replace conventional medicine or seeing your GP, they can have beneficial effects and are useful in many aspects of health and wellbeing.

Over the last few years, employers have started to add healthcare programmes to their benefits packages - and many include alternative treatments. Employers benefit from healthier, happy employee and a lower sickness or absence rate. Employees gain access to alternative treatments, or faster health treatments, than they may otherwise have done.

One such company is Avanta which specialises in providing office space to small and medium sized businesses. It has introduced a range of improvements to its staff benefits since it reviewed its entire benefits structure earlier this year.

Amongst new benefits such as salary sacrifice pension contributions, increases to maternity and paternity pay, and medical insurance, is an innovative offer to help its staff to quit smoking. For any member of staff who wants to stop smoking, Avanta is offering an incentive to reimburse them on aids to quitting, and this includes any hypnotherapy treatment.

Not all companies recognise alternative therapies in programmes such as this, but those that do know it is worthwhile, not least because hypnotherapy, for example, is recognised by the NHS as being a valuable aid for many people.

Does it matter who pays for my hypnotherapy?

Some clients may be surprised when a hypnotherapist asks how they are paying for their hypnotherapy session, but money is an interesting topic when it comes to motivation for hypnosis.

In earlier articles, regular readers may have noted that we often talk about how the hypnotherapist is only a guide and the real work for hypnosis is done by the client themselves. Because of this, it is important that clients really do want to resolve their issue; so motivation is therefore key.

In terms of money, if you consider two separate clients who have come to a hypnotherapist to help them quit smoking: one saved their money for the smoking cessation session and another was given the money by their parents. From this simple example, who do you think would have the greater chance of success from the session?

For psychological reasons, the chances are that the client who saved money for the treatment probably has the better chance of success. Self-paying clients generally are more motivated and want the results more. A hypnotherapist wants the results for their client too, and it is not in their interest to take your money if the hypnosis is unlikely to be effective so, usually, if a client who is not paying for their own hypnotherapy comes for treatment, the therapist will ask additional questions to find out whether they really want hypnotherapy.

What does a trance feel like?

Many people feel nervous at the thought of going into a hypnotic trance, probably because of the hype it gets in the media and on television. Much of it is exaggerated. So how does it feel to go into a trance?

Trance is something we all experience regularly, perhaps daily: you go into a trance whenever you focus your attention solely on one thing or one feeling, for some time. Examples of when you may experience a trance include:

being absorbed in reading a good book or watching a great film - the phrase "getting lost in a book" says it all; it demonstrates when we are in trance
being immersed in exercise - again, we have a phrase to demonstrate this trance; we describe it as being "in the zone".
daydreaming - we can experience vivid images and feelings; this is a form of trance.

These are just a few of the normal, every day, things we do whilst experiencing a trance-like state. As you can see, being in a trance is not some mystical dreamy state of mind; it is influenced by what you are focusing on. Being in a trance is a really nice feeling and having a hypnotherapist to guide you into one is no different. A hypnotherapist will help ensure you feel safe and relaxed when you are in a trance.

Mediation for EBay and L'Oreal

Mediation has been agreed upon to try and resolve the ongoing conflict and legal battle between French beauty group L’Oreal and online auctioneer EBay. L'Oreal is making a legal claim against EBay for allowing the promotion of counterfeit goods using the L’Oreal name.

Earlier this week, a court in Paris announced that it had invited them to, and both parties had accepted to enter into, a legal mediation process. This is a high profile case and one which may have repercussions in the future. The French courts ruled against EBay following the case lodged by LVMH and Hermes. EBay is purely a retailer, however, the courts rules the host could have done more to prevent counterfeit goods being sold and that the retailer should bear some limited responsibility.

Mediation in this instance is being used to try to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution or agreement for the longer term over efficient measures to combat the sale of counterfeit goods in the future. With the ever-growing popularity of the mediation process in many cases, we expect there to be more and more news of mediation being used in high profile cases such as this.

Can psychotherapy save a marriage from divorce?

Whether or not psychotherapy and counselling can save a marriage from the brink of divorce is a question that many people tend to ask before making an appointment to see a therapist. According to one article in The Times earlier this month, the answer is yes.

The couple featured in the article were at the point of seeking a divorce. The wife had had an affair that she had ended and wanted to work through their problems but, naturally, mistrust had crept into the relationship. Over six weeks, the couple met with a therapist to discuss issues within their relationship, how to work out their problems and, 18 months later, the couple are happily together.

Asking for outside help can seem difficult for many couples and families, as you are involving a third party in what may be a private and emotional matter for each person. However, as this feature showed, sometimes counselling or psychotherapy can help to understand and survive something that may seem impossible to overcome. When it comes to the point of divorce, this is the make or break crunch point for a couple. If they really want to try to work things through, then there is often little to lose by trying counselling and, if it creates a stronger marriage, then surely it is worth the effort.

London mediation pilot scheme successful

In the Mirror earlier this month, there was an article featuring a mother and daughter, who had taken part in a pilot mediation scheme called the Time Out project. The scheme was designed to help families and was launched in Lambeth, South London.

In the first 12 months, the Time Out project showed a 91 per cent success rate, reconciling 91 per cent of families referred to them. This project actually allows troubled teens to stay in a home for up to six weeks, the only requirement being that they and their family take part in mediation to help resolve their problems. Mediation is a neutral way to discuss problems. It is important to understand and remember that a mediator will not judge or take sides in the disagreements in front of them. They are there solely to help negotiate and find a mutually agreeable resolution.

When mediation is first suggested to people, they often worry about a third party listening in to their talks but, after one or two sessions, most find that it really helps. Mediation isn't just for family problems either, but for any disagreement where two or more parties are involved, whether in a small business, large corporations, neighbours, families or any other situation.

Are men more afraid of embarrassment than of phobia?

Most people have a fear of one thing or another. And a certain level of fear is perfectly healthy. However, when that fear starts to interfere with day-to-day life, or prevent someone from living a normal life, then that fear is generally known as a phobia.

Hypnotherapy is a very swift way of helping people manage their phobias - often in as little as just one session. And hypnotherapists see many people every week for a fear of one sort or another. The most common fear in the UK is of spiders (otherwise known as arachnophobia) but other common phobias include a fear of heights, needles, dogs or insects.

A few of the treatments available to cure phobias include counselling, hypnosis and psychotherapy. If you were to ask any therapist (whether psychotherapist, hypnotherapist or counsellor) most would say that they see more women than they do men. Is it possible that men are more embarrassed or afraid of being seen to be afraid that they are of their phobia? Or is it that men are less afraid of anything than women are?

Perhaps we will never know, but one thing is certain; phobias are nothing to be embarrassed about, whether you are man or woman. So, if there is a chance of curing a phobia in just one session and your phobia is impacting on your life, then you should make an appointment with a therapist.

CBT may help adults with generalised anxiety disorder

In the April issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the results of a controlled, randomised trial showed that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) may help older adults with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD).

Only pilot studies were conducted in primary care, where late life adults often seek treatment for GAD. CBT has been shown to be effective in treating panic disorder in younger patients, GAD and both in addition to being effective for older patients suffering from depression. However, the treatment response rates and effect sizes were lower than for academic clinical trials.

The study took 134 older adults split into two groups, one treated with CBT and one with enhance usual care (EUC). CBT included cognitive therapy, motivational interviews, relaxation training and problem solving training. EUC included biweekly telephone calls and minimal support. The patients were evaluated at the start, after the three months treatment and followed up at six, nine, 12 and 15 months. When compared with EUC, CBT showed significant reductions in the severity levels of worry and in symptoms of depression, as well as improvement in general mental health. The study authors concluded:

"Compared with EUC, CBT resulted in greater improvement in worry severity, depressive symptoms, and general mental health for older patients with GAD in primary care. However, a measure of GAD severity did not indicate greater improvement with CBT ... CBT is useful for older adults with GAD in primary care."

Mediation extended to the playground

In the Yorkshire town of Bradford, secondary schools are to have police officers appointed to visit the schools regularly to help educate pupils at an early age about the pitfalls of crime and to help with day-to-day welfare problems. The scheme is designed to help tackle common school issues such as weapons awareness, truancy and other problems. This new scheme in Bradford is a partnership between several agencies including Education Bradford and West Yorkshire Police and is funded by the police and Education Bradford. It will also help to ensure that mediation techniques are employed as early as possible.

Sgt Dan Greenwood of Safer Neighbourhoods and Partnerships, said: "By treating each school as a community and responding appropriately to their individual needs, we are able to give young people the targeted support they deserve and assist their transition into adult life. It is important that we support the school and assist in enforcing clear boundaries of what is acceptable behaviour and what is not, but utilise restorative approaches to incidents where possible, ensuring that mediation is successfully employed to tackle underlying issues."

Mediation is still a relatively new approach to resolving issues and not something everyone has experienced. By using mediation in schools and to resolve family issues, it will help highlight the positive benefits of mediation and a more peaceful, less time consuming and less expensive way to resolve disputes in all areas of life.

Budget will increase mediation demand

According to experts, the dismal picture of the forthcoming financial year, as depicted by the Chancellor in this year’s Budget, is likely to lead to a large increase in litigation and, subsequently, to mediation too. When financial pressure is on, businesses need to recoup losses as quickly as possible and this is likely to mean an increase in the number of disputes. However, given the expense and time involved, going to court is not always the best way either to resolve a dispute or to continue a business relationship. An alternative resolution for disputes is mediation. A representative for Hammonds lawyers in Birmingham, Erica Simpson, from the firm’s dispute resolution team, said:

“This is a highly effective method of resolving disputes. It is a structured negotiation which is assisted by an independent third party and normally takes place over the course of a day. Clients are more comfortable with it than with more formal dispute resolution procedures as they have control over the process and are familiar with negotiation."

And mediation can help salvage business relationships which would flounder if the dispute proceeded to trial. Ms Beaton said: “As it is a relatively quick process and does not need as much preparation as would be needed if a more formal method of dispute resolution were undertaken, it is cost effective which is in the interests of every client.”

Courts are increasingly encouraging cases to try mediation before continuing to court - and look favourably on those who have at least tried the mediation route with the full intention of trying to resolve a matter in a more amicable manner without proceeding to court. Mediation is becoming increasingly popular and it is easy to see why.

Hypnotherapy at London Zoo

London Zoo has been offering help to arachnophobes through its Friendly Spider programme. The programme uses hypnotherapy and information to help cure those afraid of spiders in just one session. A fear of spiders is one of the most common phobias in the UK.

Dave Clarke, the zoo's head keeper of insects, said:" "The Friendly Spider programme is a great course for anyone with a fear of spiders. Every year we help more and more people to conquer their phobias, and every year we receive really positive feedback from those who are pleasantly shocked by how much it changes their lives".

Hypnotherapy for fear of spiders, and many other phobias, works in just one session and is one of the reasons that hypnotherapy became so well known. After just one session, most clients go home searching for spiders in their bathroom or house to discover that they are no longer bothered by them - and are able to move them by themselves without the usual feeling of panic or fear.

Mandy Moore had hypnotherapy for tension

The singer and actress Mandy Moore was reportedly so nervous when she released her new album, Amanda Leigh, that she decided to seek help from a hypnotherapist to help overcome the mental tension she was feeling. Last weekend on Sunday 26th April, Mandy Moore also held a special concert in Los Angeles for 300 fans to mark the release of the album. Before taking to the stage, Mandy underwent hypnosis to overcome her nerves.

Stress management is something that we all have to cope with in some way or another, whether it is through stress of special occasions like Mandy, family problems, issues at work or with finances or anything else. Hypnosis can help people to take time out and relax.

If stress management is something you feel you might need help with every now and then, a good hypnotherapist will be able to teach you some self-hypnosis techniques to help you relax and manage your stress yourself. We don’t all release new albums and have to take to the stage like Mandy Moore, but our modern day lives means we all have our own levels of stress to cope with.

How to spot a good psychotherapist

In the area of counselling and psychotherapy, there are around a hundred different codes of practice and complaints procedures in the UK. In recent years, there have been many attempts at working towards a central process for handling complaints but this was derailed last year, effectively ending the final goal of a national register for therapists. The vast majority of psychotherapists are genuine, however, the one or two bad eggs receive much publicity in the media and naturally give cause for concern to many clients who need counselling or psychotherapy services. So it is important to make sure that you feel comfortable with your psychotherapist and know what to look for. Here are a few pointers to watch out for:

your psychotherapist or counsellor should welcome any questions and answer them openly and honestly.
you should feel safe and secure at all times.
everything in your session should be absolutely private and confidential.
a good therapist should never judge you. At no point should a psychotherapist or counsellor ever react negatively to you, only therapeutically.
take into account the psychotherapist’s qualifications and feel free to check them with the examining body.

There are actually few psychotherapists or counsellors who abuse the system, but by following these pointers you should be able to feel confident about your choice of therapist.

Hypnotherapy for bulimia

Bulimia is a problem that affects many young people, particularly women although men can be affected too. The actress, Natalie India-West, who has just clinched a major acting role in a forthcoming film The Goodfellow, said:

"It started when I was at school, I was getting really into my dancing in a big way, the pressure of it was huge, I desperately wanted to be thin. Because I couldn't starve myself I thought if I make myself sick then hopefully I might lose weight, because it worked I thought 'oh great', but little did I know the consequences it would have on my life".

Like many bulimics, Natalie was secretive and tried to hide her bulimia but she became weak and suffered nosebleeds and, at just seven and a half stone, she finally faced her problem and underwent hypnotherapy for her bulimia and treatment. Hypnotherapy can be used to help eating issues like anorexia and bulimia, and many more.

Mediation saves money for businesses

Despite its growing popularity in recent years, mediation is still a relatively unheard of term for many people who, although they may have heard the term, still remain unaware of what it means and what it does. It helps raise awareness, therefore, when respected spokespeople promote the use and benefits of mediation.

One mediation expert in the Isle of Man has been helping raise awareness in Sheffield by giving a talk about how mediation can save businesses money. Using mediation services can help companies to save millions of pounds by helping to make sure that their staff members and workforce get along together in the workplace.

Making use of mediators means that any cases or disputes can be resolved quickly - and in a much more cost effective manner than by going through the courts. Of course, solving workplace or employment disputes is not the only means by which mediation can save companies and courts much time and money. Mediation can also be used in family matters and in any case where two or more parties have a dispute.

Mediation has seen success all over the world and continues to grow in popularity, with courts taking a dim view of those who refuse to participate in any form of mediation.

Checking hypnotherapist details

Thanks to the popularity of complementary therapies, hypnotherapy is considered a popular profession and therefore quite lucrative. With the recession and redundancies, many people are looking for a new career and it is expected that the recession will show an increase in the number of hypnotherapists as people see it as a way to retrain to a new profession. Naturally, there is nothing wrong with this, however, when you want to see a qualified hypnotherapist to help you overcome your phobia, increase your confidence, quit smoking, lose weight or any of a wide number of issues that hypnotherapy can successfully help you with, you want to make sure that who you are dealing with is both properly trained and qualified. It is important therefore to use a hypnotherapist you are comfortable with.

Seeing a hypnotherapist in their home is not something everyone is comfortable with and this is why many people choose to go to a company that employs hypnotherapists for this sort of work, provides the therapy rooms and also completes the proper checks on a hypnotherapist. There is little regulation in the UK and anybody can set themselves up as a hypnotherapist. It is therefore important that you seek ease of mind by using a hypnotherapist who has done a certain number of hours training, continues to train and keep up to date and has had the proper checks done.

Tim Allen for mediation

Mediation is being used today in all sorts of cases and hit the headlines recently as a judge referred a case involving Tim Allen to mediation. The lawsuit alleges that 55 year old actor Mr Allen stole the idea for Wild Hogs, the successful 2007 comedy movie that also starred John Travolta, William H Macy, Martin Lawrence and Ray Liotta. Mr Allen is being sued by Battle One Productions Inc. who claim the idea was actually pitched to Tim Allen’s personal assistant back in 2002. The productions company is claiming over $25,000 in damages. Mr Allen’s defence claim that not only is this untrue but the company waited too long to lodge a complaint. It is expected that the matter should be brought to a close using the mediation process where a neutral third party will liase with both parties. This case is just another example of how mediation can be used to find mutually agreeable resolutions for two or more parties without the lengthy process and expensive matter of going through a court battle. It is not just about business or politics but can be used in small court cases, family or divorce matters and even to resolve neighbourhood disputes as we have seen in recent articles.

Vanessa Raw on hypnotherapy

British triathlete Vanessa Raw was recently featured in The Times in an interview about her being named a member of the British Olympic triathlon academy squad. The triathlon is a gruelling event consisting of a 1,500-metre swim, then a 40km (25 mile) cycle, and finally a 10km run and is certainly not for those faint of heart.

Vanessa Raw told the Times she has great expectations for the Olympics in 2012 and is using hypnotherapy to help her focus and improve. She said:

“I’m in hypnotherapy at the moment and I get to visualise London already. The more I think about it, the more excited I get. I’m pretty fired up now. My plan is to win the event. I think it’s a reasonable expectation.”

Using hypnosis to train for sporting events is not unusual. Many footballers, boxers and athletes have used it in the past. Using mental imagery and goals helps them to focus. Most athletes will admit that the mental attitude is just as, if not more, important than the physical aspect and it can make the difference between winning and losing. So, let’s see if hypnotherapy works for Vanessa Raw.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How can hypnotherapy help weight loss?

Many people have become much more interested in the idea of using hypnotherapy for weight loss after the media and hype surrounding Lily Allen’s recent weight loss using a hypnotherapist. The singer dropped two dress sizes and said that thanks to hypnotherapy she had found all the motivation she needed to get to the gym, enjoy her workouts and avoid the foods that had previously been her downfall. So can hypnosis really work to help people lose weight and how?

Hypnosis works in many instances for weight loss because losing weight is not just about stopping eating. Many who suffer from being overweight are overeating for emotional reasons. For example, many eat because they feel stressed, have low self-esteem or use it as a coping mechanism. Hypnotherapists help people to replace these negative thoughts and negative cycles with healthier ones, which help us to make healthier food choices. New, positive processes are established that reinforce feeling good about oneself, such as going to the gym or coping in other ways - taking a long bath or reading a good book. In this way, people lose weight not because the hypnosis did anything to them physically, but it stopped the emotional need to overeat.

Get fit with hypnotherapy: Part 3

In earlier parts, we discussed how hypnotherapy can help with sports performance for athletes and even for people who simply wantto get more from their workout. We also talked about the different benefits that can come from hypnotherapy sessions with a hypnotherapist or sports psychologist, and subsequently from ongoing self hypnosis techniques. So, if this is an area you feel you might be interest in, where should you start?

There are many CDs and scripts available for purchase, however, although it is possible that hypnosis can be induced in this manner, it is a much better choice to begin by seeing a professional hypnotherapist. The hypnotherapist can tailor a hypnosis session to an individual, whereas a script or CD is designed for the masses. Everyone is different. A hypnotherapist can help you to reach a deeper level of hypnosis, suitable for your needs, and is able to make sure the session is right for you.

In the hypnotherapy session, the therapist will first of all have a chat with you to talk about what you want to achieve from the hypnosis. The first stage is then what is termed an ‘induction’, which is when the hypnotherapist helps you reach hypnosis. This is very calm and relaxing; there is no swinging watch or swirling image to watch as you might have seen in the media. Once in hypnosis, you are given a few suggestions to help you. You are likely to be aware of every word, few people actually reach deep hypnosis where they don’t hear every word and in most cases it is not necessary anyway. Generally, you’ll need a few sessions but you should continue to get the most benefit in sports performance, although this can be done through self hypnosis techniques that your hypnotherapist can show you.

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.

Get fit with hypnotherapy: Part 2

In an earlier article, we discussed how hypnotherapy can be used to help those who wish to improve their performance in the gym, on the field in their chosen area of sport or even in the workplace. Here are just a few of the benefits that you can get from practising hypnosis, either with a hypnotherapist or, after a few sessions, with your own self hypnosis techniques:

relaxation: this is the first point that many people make when they have had their first hypnosis session, how relaxing they found it and how nice they felt afterwards. Hypnosis is a very relaxing feeling, however, it doesn’t end there. When it comes to the area of sport, an athlete will have nerves. These feelings of nerves can be good to a certain point but they can work against you.
visualisation: perhaps surprisingly, visualising yourself achieving your goal, working harder or better and getting what you want makes a big difference between an average and better-than-average performance in any area. By picturing something, you are making that image more powerful and life-like and hypnosis can intensify this image much more than we can in our conscious mind alone.
improving performance: the one we all want. It has been shown that hypnosis can help control pain and most athletes are familiar with ‘getting in the zone’ and that sports performance is as much about mental willpower as it is about the physical aspect. Our best performances happen when our mind and body are in sync and hypnosis can help with that.

Neighbour feuds use mediation

A new mediation service has been offered in the town of Bury to help solve problems with neighbourhood feuds. This mediation service has been set up by the local council's anti social behaviour team, The Whitefield office of Contour Homes and the Irwell Valley Housing Association - to help those neighbours who are no longer speaking due to a fall out or disagreement.

Ann Walton from Contour Homes commented: "This scheme is quite unique because it is bringing together housing experts from different organisations. All parties are 'loaning' their experts free of charge in order to provide an impartial service to people living in Bury. Essentially the service is for neighbours who have fallen out and are at the stage where they can no longer talk to each other. Our trained mediators will work with all parties to find a solution that is agreeable to everyone".

As with all mediation services, it will be impartial. Whatever happens during mediation is not reported or noted to any other individual or organisation; it is strictly confidential. For any mediation to work, all parties must agree to take part. Mediation has proved successful in business matters and families as well as neighbour issues. It is a much cheaper and quicker resolution than taking any legal action.

Get fit with hypnotherapy: Part 1

When it comes to using mental techniques to improve our fitness, athletes can use a variety of methods but hypnotherapy is probably the one method that men are least likely to give a chance. However, when used properly, hypnotherapy can be a great way to improve working out, sports performance and even attitude and performance in work.

For those who may be feeling a little sceptical at this point, this is perfectly natural but take a moment to consider that Tiger Woods has reportedly been using self hypnosis techniques since the tender age of just 13 years old. A variety of Olympian athletes have made use of hypnotherapy to help them to overcome their own self-doubt and mental limitations and to visualise their success in their field.

Hypnosis is not just for the serious athlete though; if you simply want to get more out of your workouts at the gym then it can help the normal person too. Hypnotherapy is certainly not the way it is portrayed in the media. There is no swinging fob watch, clucking like a chicken or imagining you are the king of England. Sports psychologists and hypnotherapists use hypnosis techniques in a very different way.

Estate mediation hailed success

The mediation solution being offered on an estate in Kingston, Surrey, has been noted as a success by the local police. Conflict on the Knollmead estate between residents and local youths was originally managed by a dispersion order issued by the local council, however, it was soon noted this was not an effective long term solution and so a mediation service with a local company was offered to bridge the gap. The two groups, residents and youths, met separately with the team of mediators and agreed to take part in a mediation process. Two sessions took place to listen to each group first before brainstorming took place to find possible solutions before a written agreement was designed to solve the conflict moving forward.

Lead mediator Mike Morris said: "The willingness to talk and listen honestly to each other revealed a strong commitment to express feelings but also to explore practical solutions. I was impressed with the ability of these two groups to explore an effective solution. They are to be applauded."

Mediation is constantly being used in different situations all over the UK, at group levels, in business and also in smaller situations such as domestic issues between families or neighbours, and is proving a successful, cheap and quick resolution in many cases.

One month countdown to No Smoking Day

Just one month from now, on 11th March, it will be No Smoking Day and last year, over 1.2 million people made an attempt to give up smoking on No Smoking Day. All over the UK, various promotional items advertising No Smoking Day and the benefits of giving up smoking, both to the smoker and to those around them, are appearing in places like nurseries, health centres and more.

For those who really want to stop smoking, it is worth taking a few minutes to consider their reasons why.

The reasons you want to give up smoking are what can drive you and there is no real reason for you to wait another month before you quit. There are all sorts of ways to help you get motivated and keep off the cigarettes, including nicotine patches, counselling and of course hypnotherapy.

Quitting smoking is probably one of the most famous treatments that hypnosis is known for, as it has helped people to quit smoking for life after just one session. One of the keys to its success is the client's reasons for quitting. There is little point visiting a hypnotherapist to stop smoking if you don't really want to stop. If you are doing it to keep your partner or family quiet it is unlikely to work. Hypnosis can't make anyone make life changes that they really don't want to make so, if you really don't want to stop, it will be a waste of your money and the hypnotherapist's time. However, you do not have to believe in hypnotherapy for it to work. So, no matter how cynical you are of hypnotherapy, if you really want to quit smoking then hypnotherapy could be the answer to your prayers.

Hypnotherapy for self-esteem

Many people are suffering from stress, feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. It is possible that these feelings are being felt more profoundly because of the current economic crisis. When we feel this way, it is possible to feel that life is passing us by.

Self-esteem is part of feeling self-confident and, when we lack in self-esteem or self-confidence, it can be hard to look for ways to help without thinking of years of drugs or psychotherapy. Hypnosis offers one alternative to these solutions.

Hypnotherapy has long been associated with helping people to increase their self-confidence, and consequently their self-esteem. Relaxing with hypnosis can help us get away from our day-to-day troubles and help with stress management. Hypnotherapy is notorious for being a quick therapy, partly because the hypnotherapist helps the client to change the way they think or feel themselves. The results all come from the client; the hypnotherapist simply helps them to find their own way.

When stress management becomes an issue, or someone is suffering from low self-esteem or a lack of confidence, there is no reason why just one or two sessions of hypnotherapy cannot help a person to turn their life around.

Mediation for anti social behaviour

A local mediation service has teamed up with the Wandle Housing Association to help train eight local residents to become community mediators. The idea of this new scheme is to help tackle things like anti-social behaviour in several London Boroughs. The volunteer residents complete a 40 hour training course and learn how to act as mediators and support other residents.

Mediation is expected to become a valuable part of the service to tackle anti social behaviour. It is hoped that, should this pilot scheme prove successful, then there is the possibility that it might be rolled out across London and possibly even the whole of the UK.

Key skills for mediators include being able to communicate effectively, listen to different parties without making judgment and facilitating discussions leading to mutually agreeable solutions. Mediation is a great service for helping people to resolve issues and disputes. The mediator is a neutral party and does not offer advice, but merely helps the disputing parties discuss their issues openly with a view to reaching a resolution. Mediation has proved successful in areas such as business matters, family disputes and neighbour issues. Mediators help in a wide range of scenarios and, as a result, mediation is becoming much more popular.

Mediation to resolve strike action

There has been much talk in the media about the oil refinery strikes happening across the UK and, this week, a mediation service was called in to help with the negotiations. In strike action, the employers and employee representatives (often a staff union) negotiate to reach a mutually satisfactory conclusion. However, with emotions often running high, it can be difficult to work through the discussions and reach that conclusion. That is where mediation is particularly useful.

A mediator is a neutral third party who sits in on the negotiations and is there to help facilitate the discussion. They do not take sides or offer advice and mediation is often quicker, cheaper and easier than going through court proceedings.

In cases such as this strike, where speed is of the essence, mediation can be very useful. However, mediation doesn’t just have to be used in extreme cases like these oil refinery strikes. It can also be particularly useful in family or neighbour issues as well as business matters. Mediation in recent years has gained popularity and is being used more and more frequently.

Psoriasis and hypnotherapy

Psoriasis is a stress-related problem. For many people it means red, scaly skin that can bleed easily. This skin condition is often found in the knee, elbows, back and trunk areas of the body and the toe and fingernails are often prone to pitting. It can affect almost anyone. The cause is unknown but it is thought that genetics do play a role; sufferers of arthritis are also often prone to getting it.

The problem varies wildly in its severity from one person to another and, in very rare cases, can be life threatening if huge areas of skin are open to infection. For some sufferers, other factors aside from stress are known to make the condition worse such as injury, cold weather and a low immune system. Where stress is a large factor, regular hypnotherapy can reduce the stress levels. Hypnotherapists will also often teach self-hypnosis so the patient can practice regularly at home for themselves.

How CBT helps phobias

More and more people have heard of how phobias can be cured through the use of hypnotherapy. However, not as many are familiar with the work of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CBT is useful for many mental health issues and likewise phobias.

Treating a phobia with CBT usually involves a gradual exposure to the item or situation in questions, which allows the sufferer to face their fear themselves. It is not necessary to know or understand where the fear originated from in the first place. Occasionally, in severe cases, some anti-anxiety medication can be used.

Usually, a sufferer will book a series of sessions with a psychotherapist for CBT, which could be anything from six to 12 sessions although results have been seen in fewer sessions that these in some cases. The most important thing about a phobia is not to beat yourself up over it but to identify that you do have a real problem and summon up the courage to face it and to seek help, whether that is through hypnosis or CBT. You are not the only one to suffer from your phobia, no matter how rare it is.

Diet alone may not be enough

If you, like many others this year, are trying to lose weight as one of your New Year’s resolutions, then perhaps you have already given up on the diet, switched to another diet or are steadfastly holding resolute to your guns. No matter what you are trying, if you find that you are always falling off the bandwagon after a few months and yo-yo dieting as an unhealthy consequence, then perhaps you should consider that diet and exercise alone are not enough.

Sometimes there are other factors involved, such as childhood, the way you think about food or approach it, sugar needs and emotional issues. These are not necessarily huge problems but they affect your relationship with food. In order to make sure that a diet is effective, it might be necessary to consider combining the diet with an alternative therapy such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) or hypnotherapy, which can help you to examine your feelings or thoughts about food and how your life is affected by it and can help you to change unhealthy patterns into positives. For instance, everyone has vulnerable moments in their day to day lives when they are more susceptible to food. Sometimes simply identifying these can help. CBT is a good way to talk through these issues and look at strategies to help you overcome problems. Hypnotherapy on the other hand can help you to change your ways at a subconscious level so you are no longer fighting with your conscious willpower.

Curing a phobia

A phobia is not just a fear, but a really strong fear that generally affects someone’s life in an adverse manner. The fear could be of anything, however, some fears are more common than others such as snakes, spiders, vomit, the dark, going out, thunder and lightning, heights, needles and many more. Other less common phobias could be buttons or Velcro. A psychotherapist at the South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust, Peter Kolb, recently told the Surrey Comet newspaper:

“We are all afraid of things but this is a reaction which is out of keeping with the item. The worst case I have seen was someone with a bird phobia. If she was anywhere near a bird she would perspire unbelievably. There was hair matted on her face. People have to realise that these people are petrified. Some years back there was a woman with a spider phobia who climbed out of a window and actually fell to avoid a spider. People have tried to get out of their cars while they are moving because a wasp has got in. It’s a level of fear that takes precedence over everything else. They are so afraid of that item that it overlays other things that the rest of us would say are very hazardous.”

There are different methods that can be tried to overcome phobias. Sometimes a phobia can be removed completely and other times it will just be reduced to a more healthy level. For instance, a fear of snakes is perfectly natural to some degree. Methods that have had proven success rates in the past include hypnotherapy or cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which have been known to cure a phobia in as little as one session.

Overcoming a vomit phobia

Phobias are quite commonplace and, indeed, they affect approximately one in 10 people. However, most people hide their phobia rather than seek help to recover from their fear. In a recent article in the Surrey Comet, one 25 year old student avoids alcohol and always leaves a party early, because she has had a fear of vomit since she was aged five. Thanks to this phobia, she also refuses to eat out in case of food poisoning and will not go anywhere where somebody might throw up, such as the local pub. She told the paper:

“I realised I had the phobia after an incident at school. A child was sick, and then another was. I started to panic and they took me outside. I didn’t understand why I was so frightened. But every time from then on I would panic. I started to hyperventilate and sweat. I would feel I had to get out. Now I try to avoid social situations where people might be sick. Even seeing it on screen at a cinema can make me feel very nervous.”

This phobia has had a real effect on her life. The nameless student is too embarrassed to tell boyfriends and relationships do not last long because she is so closed. This story might sound surprising and yet it is not uncommon. A vomit phobia is not that unusual although, for the sufferer, it can feel like they are the only person in the world with this condition.

Therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) or hypnotherapy have been known to cure phobias even as extreme as this in just one or two sessions, although sometimes a little longer is required for severe cases.

Credit crunch leads NHS to turn to psychotherapy

As predicted in earlier articles, it appears that the credit crunch has indeed led to a general increase in levels of anxiety and depression. According to recent reports, the NHS is expected to search for psychotherapists able to help those feeling adversely affected by the current economic climate. Thanks to the credit crunch and consequent recession, many people are losing their jobs or struggling to cope with rising debts and in many cases, this can result in feelings of depression or anxiety. Permanent secretary Hugh Taylor from the Department of Health told the Sunday People newspaper:

"A long downturn would have some impact on mental health associated with unemployment and particularly debt. We are already making investment in psychological therapies and increasing the number of therapists.”

Reportedly, the government is expected to invest around £173 million to ensure that all hospitals have access to psychotherapy by 2011. Psychotherapists are able to counsel people at any stage of their lives. In some cases, it helps just to talk about issues and to gain a new perspective on problems. With modern life, psychotherapy is becoming increasingly popular.

Hypnotherapist cures Labour MP’s fear of heights

Since a visit to the Eiffel Tower at the age of 22, Labour MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey Derek Wyatt discovered he had a fear of heights that made him feel sick and, ever since, he has tried to avoid being more than about 10 feet high. This fear stopped MP Wyatt from going up ladders, using open lifts or even driving up narrow roads when abroad in France or Italy. Not only that but Mr Wyatt loved to ski and had to cover his eyes when being taken up the side of snowy hills and mountains. When the opportunity for a Christmas skiing trip in Canada came up, the now 59 year old MP decided he had had enough and made an appointment to see a hypnotherapist. He told Kentnews:

“If you’ve got children who want to be taken skiing, it’s not much fun if you can’t join in or have lunch with them at the top.”

The hypnotherapist initially booked Mr Wyatt in for four separate hypnosis sessions, each of which would last around 90 minutes. However, after one session of hypnotherapy he told Mr Wyatt he was cured. When it came to the skiing trip, Mr Wyatt went on the largest ski lift in the world and did not feel even a wobble. He was delighted with the hypnotherapy and went on to add:

“I had hoped the hypnotherapy would work, but at my age I’d try anything to get over my fear. I was delighted when it did. I know people who have been helped to quit smoking and all sorts of other things, so I’d certainly recommend it.”

Four years smoke-free thanks to hypnotherapy

In the Killeen Daily Herald last week, the newspaper reported the story of a gentleman called Chris Everett who started smoking with his parent’s permission at school and his addiction followed him for the next 45 years. The story is not unusual in itself as particularly at that time many people started to smoke whilst at school and have struggled to kick the habit ever since. What made the story slightly different was that Everett was a registered nurse and, despite knowing all the health and financial risks, he could not kick the habit until a doctor’s nurse made a comment during an appointment. The nurse said she had kicked her smoking habit using hypnosis. Everett told the paper:

"I looked at her as if she was an alien. I asked her if she had any info and she went into her bag and came out with this number that she told me to call. But I really just thought of it as this clock or pendulum swaying back and forth."

Despite feeling sceptical, Everett made an appointment with a hypnotherapist and went for his hypnotherapy. He listened to her speaking, closed his eyes and said he had thought that it could not possibly work. Four years on and thanks to hypnotherapy, Everett has remained smoke free for four years and is saving the money he otherwise would have spent for a dream trip to Paris and Rome later this year. Quitting smoking using hypnotherapy doesn’t mean you have to believe in it; it can still work and often in as little as one session.

Britain worries over finances

Website ReallyWorried.com shows the UK Worry Index, the resulting index devised from a survey of over 1400 people. According to this index, the global financial crisis means that the cost of living is now at the top of this UK's worries. The survey showed people are worrying more about money than they are about their health and drinking more than the previous year too, possibly in an effort to cope with worry.

Resorting to alcohol can breed more problems and this could be made worse as the survey showed 38 per cent bottle up their feelings. Talking about problems or looking at ways to change our patterns of thinking can really help and counsellors are finding that the credit crunch has meant an increase in the number of patients seeking help and solace from the stress.

Parents also worry their kids may become a victim of bullying. Youths aged from 16 to 24 worry the most as one in six apparently worries for around 12 hours a day. The worst day is Monday and after midnight is the time we worry the most.

Earlier this month The Sun quoted Phillip Hodson, a spokesperson for the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, as saying:

“It is alarming to realise from this research just how many people in Britain are chronic worriers. Worry is the central component of all anxiety disorders and most depression. Worry is the paralysing emotion that leaves us like rabbits trapped staring into the headlights. And it’s not only in the mind. The physical side of worry triggers a range of other symptoms from tics to indigestion and from obsessions to insomnia. “While it’s true that "born worriers" may never be cured, it is a darn sight more difficult to keep on worrying once you share your concerns with others who may already have found some good answers and who make you turn your fears into a realistic story with a beginning, a middle and, hopefully, a happy ending.”

Counselling, psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and hypnotherapy are great therapies to help cope with the stress and worry so it is unsurprising that therapists are seeing more people for help with their day to day lives.

Four stone weight loss with hypnotherapy

Sixty-eight year old Maureen Foster from Tamworth, Staffordshire was featured in the Tamworth Herald earlier this week as a result of her losing weight with hypnosis. Maureen has lost over four stone in weight and reduced her dress size from a size 22 to a size 12 using the process of hypnotherapy. Maureen told the newspaper:

“I've tried all the different diets and I've lost weight every time, but I've always put it back on. This is the only one that I've kept the weight off – it's not a diet, it's a way of life. I was a size 22, I had been as low as a 14 before, but I'd never been able to maintain it – now I'm a size 12. I've always struggled with my weight, all my life. But now it just feels normal."

Maureen had tried every diet in the past but, thanks to hypnotherapy, she has lost weight and hasn’t eaten a chocolate or biscuit since and has found that she no longer wants them. In this case, Maureen was lucky to find that a hypnotherapy CD worked but in many cases these aren’t always perfect because they are made to suit a broad range of people. When you see a hypnotherapist for weight loss, they can tailor the session to suit you perfectly so sometimes even if you tried a hypnosis CD and it didn’t work, seeing a hypnotherapist has a much higher success rate, often in just one or two sessions.

Lily Allen and hypno-diets

The magazines and media have been full of celebrity gossip about Lily Allen this week as the singer has been showing off her new figure. Lily Allen has returned from her New Year trip to the US looking slimmer than ever, having reportedly dropped two full dress sizes using the latest trend in America - to use hypnotherapy for weight loss. The media has named this the"hypno-diet".

Susan Hepburn, a Harley Street hypnotist, said, "It's very big in LA and New York and it's becoming increasingly popular in London. During sessions, I taught Lily to favour healthy, low-fat meals instead of junk food. And to see that alcohol isn't a confidence booster, it's just extra calories that sabotage your efforts to get a good body".

Using hypnotherapy for weight loss is not new. However, giving it a media-friendly name like 'hypno-dieting' and seeing celebrities such as Lily Allen, Geri Halliwell and Sophie Dahl promoting the benefits does bring it into the public eye, showing how people can manage their weight without developing eating disorders.

Avoid a new year divorce with mediation

According to a report from The Times Online, it isn’t just your body that might be flagging following the Christmas period but your relationship might need a little tender loving care too.

The Family Mediation helpline has stated that thousands of UK couples worry about separation in the New Year period and indeed divorce lawyers state that the first working day in the new year often sees a flurry of activity as couples file for divorce.

Mediation is the process of allowing a neutral third party to help bring together two parties in order to find a mutually satisfactory outcome to any dispute. Contrary to popular opinion, it isn’t just for corporate companies or legal disputes, but can also be used in relationships especially where children are involved.

To help avoid divorce, couples should take a little time for themselves. This doesn’t have to be an expensive time, sometimes just watching a film together or going back to places where they dated can help to rekindle memories of happier times and to remind them why they got together in the first place. It is important not to resort to blame tactics, but to take a more constructive approach and see how you can proceed together as a couple from hereon in.

Mediation can often help couples to see things from outside the relationships. A mediator does not take sides, but simply helps to reach workable agreements and avoid a trip to the courts if at all possible.

What if I don't know what the problem is?

Though many people worry that this question seems silly, it is a very common question from people considering treatments such as psychotherapy. If you were to speak to a counsellor, a psychotherapist or a hypnotherapist, they would all tell you that they often see people who do not know what the problem is.

A client might be a little depressed, upset or under the weather and be unable to pinpoint what is troubling them. But they know they are not happy with their life. A good therapist will be able to ask you questions, or use relaxation techniques such as hypnotherapy, to help you find the specifics yourself. If you are still concerned, try asking yourself the following questions before you visit a therapist for your first session:

if you were briefly to describe your life, how would you describe it?
how do these feelings affect your life and in particular, your home / work / social life?
what thoughts stay with you? Occasionally, small niggles stay with us throughout our life and hold us back, preventing us from meeting our true potential.
how long have you felt like this? Do you remember when it started and what was happening in your life at that time?
what are you proud of in your life and what makes you feel good? This question is important as it is necessary to remember the positive aspects as well the negative.

By thinking about these questions first, it might help you and your therapist find the root of your issue more quickly - and give you something to start with. Whether you would prefer psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, CBT or any other treatment might depend on your preference - or you can seek advice on which would be best for you.

How can hypnotherapy help with physical problems?

To understand how hypnosis and hypnotherapy can help people with physical issues or problems it is important first to consider how our emotions affect us. Every single person on this planet experiences emotions and has what is called a mind-body connection. Emotions come from our brain and our brain is active in creating our emotions. If the brain is working and active, then so is our nervous system so, when you feel an emotion, the nervous system is affected in some way. It follows, therefore, that the rest of your physical body is also affected as the nervous system controls our body.

Some emotions, like laughter and joy, have a positive effect on our body. Others, like jealousy and anger, have a negative effect. These emotions can positively and negatively affect our immune system and other aspects of our physical health. Think about when you get stressed; how does your body react? Some people experience skin problems like acne, others experience a tension in the neck or back - these are physical reactions to an emotion. Although the body is quite resilient, it can only take so much.

As hypnotherapy works on the subconscious level and on our emotions, it can help to negate the negative effects of our emotions on the body and help us with physical problems caused, or exacerbated by, our mind and emotions. A hypnotherapist simply helps you to help yourself.

CBT effective for recurrent depression

According to recent research from the Netherlands, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is most effective when it is used for recurrent depression, especially on those who have suffered four or more bouts of depression. The research has been published in this month’s publication of the British Journal of Psychiatry and suggests that GPs could look at patients' past history of depression to identify the ones who would benefit most from CBT treatment.

The Netherlands study took 208 patients suffering from depression whose ages ranged from 18 to 70 and were receiving treatment from their GPs. Some continued with their usual GP treatment, some were given psycho-education and others were given CBT combined with psycho-education. All patients were continually monitored over a two year period. For those with three or less periods of depression, all three methods appeared to work equally as well as each other. However, for those with four or more previous bouts of depression, CBT plus psycho-education proved the most effective.

The researcher is quoted as saying:

“We found that in patients with three or fewer prior episodes the three treatments perform equally well, whereas in patients with four or more episodes, CBT plus psycho-education performs clinically better than usual care. This effect is assumed to be attributable to the CBT component of CBT plus psycho-education, since psycho-education did not differ from usual care (although a favourable interaction between psycho-education and CBT cannot be ruled out completely).”

Quit smoking like Ben Affleck did

Ben Affleck quit smoking using hypnotherapy. The Pearl Harbour star told Oprah Winfrey on her show earlier this year that he had quit smoking after 20 years during which he smoked a minimum of one pack a day and had tried several times to give up. He said:

"I thought I would give it up at 25 and then 30, but that came and went."

Now, with his millions of dollars, there is no doubt that he had all the chances to quit smoking - and he had tried other methods. However, if was his childhood friend Matt Damon who persuaded him to try the same hypnotherapist he had used. To date, Ben Affleck has not smoked a cigarette for more than two years. Matt Damon had also been smoking for a long time – 16 years in fact – and after three hypnosis sessions, he quit without a glance back, as he told the Jay Leno show:

"I should have done it years ago. It's amazing, I didn't even want cigarettes anymore".

These two are not the only celebrities to have quit smoking using hypnotherapy, despite having millions in the bank to be able to afford any treatment they want. Ellen Degeneres, Drew Barrymore, Charlize Theron, Winona Ryder and Samuel L Jackson also stopped smoking using hypnosis. Ellen Degeneres even quit smoking live on her show as she had a impromptu session with a guest hypnotherapist. No matter how rich or poor you are, quitting smoking is difficult - but help is available if you really want it.

Freud’s contribution to hypnotherapy

There is much debate about who invented hypnosis and how it was discovered. Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) is known for having invented psychoanalysis. He is generally credited with introducing the idea of dual consciousness to the western world i.e. the idea that we have both a conscious and subconscious mind and this underlying thought is the basis of hypnosis. Hence he made a great contribution to the development of hypnosis and subsequently hypnotherapy, the use of hypnosis for therapeutic benefit.

Nowadays, hypnotherapy is becoming more and more mainstream and many hypnotherapists do work for the NHS with referrals from GPs for patients who need to quit smoking or lose weight, although this is still fairly rare albeit often successful. Hypnotherapy is mainly thought of as a way of curing phobias and quitting smoking, but it can also be used for many other emotional and physical issues. If you are unsure if hypnosis can help you, make an enquiry with a hypnotherapist at a reputable clinic and a good hypnotherapist will be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Counselling and hypnotherapy

When a hypnotherapist undergoes training, a lot of what they learn comes from a wide range of counselling methods and techniques. Naturally, these skills include learning to listen properly and, in the case of hypnotherapy, listening well helps the hypnotherapist to understand what you want to gain from the hypnotherapist session, or sessions. A good hypnotherapist will form a good rapport with their client, build a working relationship where need be in the case of longer term hypnotherapy and be empathetic to your needs.

Gone are the old days of authoritarian hypnosis. Nowadays hypnotherapists have adapted to a more modern role and part of their role includes counselling methods. However, this does not mean that you should expect a hypnotherapist to use specific counselling methods as there is a wide range of methods available to them and a qualified hypnotherapist will be trained and qualified to help you feel comfortable, able to talk and enable you to feel confident about the hypnotherapy work you do to help you overcome your problem or issue. For many issues, hypnosis is a very quick technique and often just one or two sessions will be required but your hypnotherapist will be able to advise you on this.

Mediation settles Channel 4 dispute over Richard & Judy phone-in dispute

Through a mediation process, Channel 4 and the phoneline operator Eckoh yesterday reached an agreement and dropped legal action against each other in the Richard & Judy phone-in dispute.

A spokesperson for Eckoh said: "Eckoh announces that they and Channel 4 decided to resolve their differences through mediation rather than through the courts. Following a successful mediation held on December 1, both parties have reached an agreement and all matters relating to this dispute are now settled”.

Channel 4 has said that Eckoh breached their contract in an effort to recover the £1 million fine it received from Ofcom when viewers were not able to have a chance of winning the Richard & Judy You Say We Pay competition on the show last year. Eckoh had denied any liability and issued a counter claim against Channel 4. No other details have been disclosed about the agreement reached via mediation between the two parties. Mediation can be used as a process to reach a mutual agreement between any two parties, whether that is companies, as in this case, or individuals, as is usual in family mediation.

Sports celebrities and hypnotherapy

The benefit of hypnotherapy in sport is outstanding and includes helping athletes to stay calm, maintain focus, get rid of distractions in their minds, improve their mental stamina and increase their motivation. Here are just a few sports celebrities who have used hypnotherapy to help their career:

Tiger Woods has used hypnotherapy regularly and was introduced to it at just 13 years old. He has said:

"We worked on a way to visualize the target and pull it back into my hands and body and let my subconscious react. That’s what’s best for me. It is inherent in what I do now."

WBC heavyweight champion Frank Bruno has used hypnosis to perform at his peak.

In 1996, Steve Collins defeated WBO Super Middleweight title champion Chris Eubank, which he said was due to using hypnotherapy in his mental preparation work. He said he had worked on his mental attitude to programme himself to throw two punches to every one punch from his opponent and statistics from the fight show around 300 punches from Eubank versus more than 600 from Collins.

If you want to be at the top of your game, whether sports or business, hypnotherapy can help you get the results you want, making you a winner.

Caesarean section under hypnotherapy

In Iran, obstetricians have recently performed the country’s second ever caesarean section operation using hypnotherapy instead of anaesthesia. Obstetrician, Roya Khodai, said:

“The patient was subjected to hypnotherapy upon entering the operation room and was ready to have the C-section after 30 minutes.”

Khodai said the c-section took around 30 minutes and the baby was born without any notable complication. She also added the mother’s vitals were controlled throughout the surgery, although an anaesthesiologist was available in case of any unexpected issues. The only complication reported apparently was a small amount of blood loss that was brought under control immediately, and both mum and baby are in good health.

Khodai also commented that hypnosis is considered effective as an alternative to anaesthesia for patients in minor surgery - caesarean sections are classed as a major operation - and is ideal to overcome complications relating to the use of anaesthesia.

Hypnotherapy is being used more frequently in operations, and is also successful in helping people to overcome emotional and physical problems such as quitting smoking, weight loss, phobias, and many more. Many women are turning to hypnosis for a natural, pain free labour without medication.

How does hypnotherapy help with the menopause?

For many women, the menopause is a particularly difficult phase of life. Some turn to hypnotherapy to relieve symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia, hot flushes, stress and more.

It works because hypnosis helps people put mind over matter. Because the mind is capable of telling the body how it should and should not feel, it can help alleviate symptoms.

For example, in the case of hot flushes, oestrogen has been proven to play a part in setting the temperature of the body in the brain. So, when oestrogen levels are low, the brain believes the body is getting hot and starts to cool the body down through sweating and releasing that heat. As hot flushes are just a small malfunction in the brain, hypnosis can help train the mind to influence the body to cool down the hot flush.

As reported recently in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, a group of 51 women took part in a trial. For the 26 (half the group) who received hypnotherapy, they had a 68 per cent decrease in hot flushes and most of them also foundthey had fewer uncomfortable side effects f(such as loss of sleep and difficulties in social interaction). The study's lead investigator, Gary Elkins, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor, said:

"This study validates that this type of treatment is effective in decreasing hot flushes. There is a real need to study emerging mind-body interactions to treating these ailments because many times, medications are not an option".

After the success of this research, the researchers now intend to recruit 190 post-menopausal women to take part in a five year study so that they can analyse the physiological response to hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy and eating disorders

Many people who have had eating disorders say that hypnosis helps them to find out how to deal with the psychological and emotional part of the illness. Clients learn new eating habits and gain control over their life again. Binge eaters and those with bulimia feel more in control and those with anorexia learn how to see themselves and feel better about themselves. Comfort-eaters learn how to deal with their emotions instead of turning to food.

A common method in hypnosis, used for many things, is mental imagery. Hypnosis is when your mind is in a heightened state of concentration, with the hypnotherapist guiding the client towards helping themselves. Mental imagery is used to allow the client to envisage themselves improving throughout the hypnosis sessions.

Often, self hypnosis is helpful, too, and the hypnotherapist will teach the client how to use self-hypnosis so the client can use it whenever needed, when the hypnotherapist is not there.

Clients often need four to eight sessions, though some might benefit from more depending on the severity of their eating disorder. Each session lasts around 50 minutes. Before having hypnotherapy for an eating disorder it is best to seek advice from a medical professionals - to ensure that a client is doing what is good for them. There are no side effects with hypnosis.

CBT for OCD

Later this month, many health professionals and members of the public who have been or are affected by OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) will meet at the Imperial College London for the 2008 OCD Conference. This annual meeting, organised by OCD Action, a UK charity, helps to inspire and educate its attendees and give an opportunity for people to realise that they are not alone.

An estimated 1.8 million people in the UK are affected by OCD and public awareness has increased recently when public figures such as Justin Timberlake and David Beckham discussed its effects on their personal lives. OCD is just one of the areas where CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) can help. CBT can help to control OCD and help people to face their fears and help them to understand their anxiety. Many people have found they can cope with obsessive compulsive disorder using medication and/or CBT.

OCD Conference 2008: Saturday 22nd November; 09.30 - 17.00; Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ Fee: £75 (health professionals), £30 (public), £20 (members of OCD Action and supporting charities) To register: visit http://www.ocdconference.org.uk or telephone 0870 360 6232

CBT for anxiety disorders

Occasionally, it is normal and indeed healthy for a person to experience a certain level of anxiety. However, when this becomes excessive or an irrational fear that interferes with that person’s daily life, then it has become an anxiety disorder and needs treatment. Indeed, an anxiety disorder will last at least six months and may become worse if not treated as soon as possible.

Anxiety disorders are often treated with medication or psychotherapy, and occasionally a combination of both. Psychotherapy will involve talking to a professional, such as a counsellor or psychologist to discover the cause of the problem and how to treat the symptoms. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is useful when treating anxiety disorders according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Techniques from CBT can focus on changing current patterns and ways of thinking or beliefs that are associated with the anxiety.

CBT can include self talking, attention training, challenging how we think and what we fear or believe. One component of CBT is exposure, which means purposely facing the fear to allow desensitisation to take place, although this is only ever done once the client is ready. CBT is known for being a relatively quick therapy.

How does hypnotherapy help childbirth?

Every pregnant woman wants a comfortable birth, swift recovery and a healthy baby - and many consider hypno-birthing. Here are the main ways that hypno-birthing can help with childbirth:

relaxation – hypnotherapy will help the woman to relax and this gives greater bloodflow to the womb which helps birth.
overcome fear – pregnant women hear a lot of horror stories about what can happen and this can cause increasing anxiety. Fear can really change a birth as it causes tension, restricts blood flow and hence increases pain; so hypnosis can help a woman to stop being so fearful and have a more natural birth.
relaxes the baby – if mum is relaxed so is baby; on the other side of the coin, a tense mother releases adrenalin and hormones into her blood stream which distresses the baby - and, if the baby is distressed, medical staff are more likely to intervene.
postnatal recovery – if mum is relaxed and blood flow is increased, then the blood flow will help tissue recovery and give a good milk supply; stress is known to restrict milk production so a mother who has had hypnotherapy has a headstart.

Hypno-birthing is becoming more popular with women having weekly sessions leading up to the birth.

Blackpool man has hypnotherapy after acomplia

A Blackpool man was featured in the Blackpool Gazette recently as he told the paper how he had suffered suicidal thoughts after he had been prescribed a controversial weight loss diet drug, Acomplia, otherwise known as rimonabant. Gordon Pothecary came off the medication two months ago and, after reading of the worrying side effects in the papers this week, was shocked to discover the drug had been linked to suicide. The drug has now been banned in the UK.

Mr Pothecary, of Hornsey Avenue, said: "It did make me have suicidal thoughts. I would never have acted on them but it did make me think I would be better off not being here anymore. I felt I couldn't see a way out. I'd been taking another drug called Oralstat for about two-and-a-half months and I lost about 1.5lbs to 2lbs a month, but didn't suffer any side-effects. I went to see the nurse and she said they were changing my medication on to this new one. I lost about 12 or 13lbs in the first few months. It gradually got worse and worse, my stomach felt all tensed up, I was short-tempered. My moods were terrible. I would fly off the handle at the smallest things. All those side-effects I read about sounded very familiar: low mood, depression, anxiety, irritability, nervousness and I couldn't sleep."

Mr Pothecary is now having hypnotherapy to help him to ease the symptoms and to get back to his old self and will shortly be starting counselling.

He commented: "After I came off it and started having hypnotherapy, I did feel better. Now I am gradually getting back to normal.”

Hypnosis can help to ease both physical and mental symptoms and many people use it for weight loss.

Mark Owen has hypnotherapy

Mark Owen, of Take That stardom, is having hypnotherapy, to help him quit smoking, as he is desperate to give up his smoking habit before his second child is born. Mark, aged 36, has smoked since his teenage years but now wants to stop smoking for his two year old son Elwood and his unborn child with his fiancée Emma Ferguson. After 20 years of smoking, Mark has found it very difficult to give up. Mark said:

“I was on 15 a day, more when I was working. The first two days were the hardest [but] I keep getting angry and snapping for no reason. I keep eating too, anything, just so I can put something in my mouth.”

Hypnosis is one of the best ways to give up smoking as it can help you at a subconscious level. Many stars have turned to hypnosis for help with phobias, weight loss and to quit their smoking habits. For the change to work, you must really want it and sometimes a life-changing event such as the birth of a new child can give you the incentive you need.

Top tips for stress management

Everywhere we look at the moment, people are feeling the strain of everyday life. It might 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 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 helps our bodies to cope with stress.
avoid taking on any more: if you are feeling 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 10 minutes to chill with a cup of hot tea 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 also helps boost your immune system, helping you cope with stress and anxiety

These are just a few general tips to help you. 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 learn how to cope.

Couples therapy

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 argue 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 they need 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.

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.

Advice to find the right therapist for you

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 prefers to focus on emotions or on the behaviour itself;
be sure that you work with a therapist who 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.

The importance of the client and therapist 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 who 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 ... a motivated client.

Another indicator, according to Professor Cooper, is the relationship and rapport between the client and their therapist.

The government has recently committed £170 million over the next three years, in its Improving Access to Psychological Therapies initiative, which will be used on treatments including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). 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".

Psychotherapy for seasonal affective disorder

There are many people who dread this time of year. It is when people start to feel the effects of Season Affective Disorder (SAD). Symptoms include feeling depressed, hopeless, anxious, 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 diagnose SAD.

For those who do suffer from SAD, the most effective 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. It is all about spotting negative thought processes and helping us to replace them with more positive thoughts.

SAD is a long-term illness. However, psychotherapy and CBT can often help sufferers to cope with it.

Fear of dentists – Part 2

Research has shown that a fear of dentists 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 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, encountered by many hypnotherapists. 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.

Fear of dentists – Part 1

The origin of a fear of dentists (or dental phobia) often lies in a person’s childhood or, at least, in a past experience. Occasionally, the fear has been inherited from a parent, as is often the case with phobias. Sometimes, it may even have been caused by an unhelpful comment from a dental nurse or dentist during a dental procedure. Many people associate a visit to the dentist with a feeling of vulnerability or a loss of control, however, often they can conquer these fears with the knowledge that advances in modern technology make their fear unjustified; the vision of healthy teeth and gums is compelling.

Hypnosis can be of great benefit in cases such as these. Nobody is born with a natural fear of dentists; they have learned this fear and reaction. This means it can be unlearned and we can re-program our reaction in just one or two sessions of hypnotherapy. Although sufferers of this phobia, like many other phobia sufferers, already know in their own mind that their fear is mainly irrational and unnecessary, they are not empowered to conquer this fear. This is where hypnosis can help to rid the person of their fear forever.

Post-surgical hypnotherapy

A common problem with surgery is the pain we feel afterwards. Recovering from surgery can be painful and take some time. Other side effects could include infection or bleeding.

A hypnotherapy study was published in the Anesthesa & Analgesia journal in 2002 to determine if hypnotherapy could play a role in handling the side effects from surgery. It talked about how past research had only focused on the pain element but this study looked at how the hypnotherapy was given and whether it could help with other side effects. It involved researchers analysing results from 20 studies, all of which were controlled and all of which used hypnosis with patients having surgery. It concluded that hypnotherapy was very effective at treating post-surgery side effects and, from all the 20 studies, those who received hypnosis had a better outcome after surgery than 89 per cent of those in the control group that did not have hypnotherapy.

The study concluded that hypnotherapy is beneficial when it comes to helping people deal with post-surgical side effects and their healing and the researchers involved in the study were said to

“strongly support the use of hypnosis with surgical patients”.

Can hypnotherapy improve my finances?

Hypnotherapy can do and help an awful lot of things, but directly improving your finances is not one of them. However, it can improve your finances indirectly.

How much money you earn and the way your finances are organised depends on things such as:

how you approach money and feel or behave towards money
how you feel about yourself, your self-image and how you deal with your self-image or try to improve it
your ability to motivate yourself in order to learn new skills, try new things and develop beliefs
your level of self-confidence
the amount of control and self-belief you have and how you believe this affects your lif.

Each of these affects the others and the most important one is the final point. How much control you believe you have over your life will directly impact on what you do and your finances and hypnosis can be used to help you develop your self-belief and self-perception. For example, clients have improved their self-belief and used this to gain more job interviews and opportunities than they had ever done, or believed they could do, in the past. Their self-confidence has shone and they have been able to share this with others.

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.

Improving sports performance

Hypnotherapy has been used by famous athletes to improve their sports performance. This seems to be backed up by a new Australian study, whose results suggest that the faster speed achieved by athletes when they take performance-enhancing drugs is in their mind.

The research compared athletes on a placebo with those given a growth hormone drug. Those who had taken the dummy pills ran faster, jumped higher and managed to lift heavier weights than those who were on the hormones. The results suggest what hypnotherapists say is true – if you think that you will perform better, then you will.

Many professional athletes have used creative visualisation to boost their performance for years and one of the methods that hypnotherapists use is visualisation. However, visualisation in hypnosis is much stronger, because the person is completely relaxed and focused on the visualisation - so they concentrate harder and the memory is stronger. Dr Aimee Kimball, the director of mental training in sports medicine from the University of Pittsburgh, said:

"If you visualise being stronger, running faster or winning, you are priming your nervous system to do just that. Studies have found that the method can enhance physical performance significantly, sometimes by 20 per cent or more".

Cognitive behavioral therapy and anxiety

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, has helped many people since its introduction to the public. The cognitive part means changing thinking patterns that have been supporting the person’s fears and the behavioural part helps people to react differently to anxiety-provoking or problematic situations. CBT helps people to confront the problem situation and to desensitise themselves so that they are no longer anxious.

For example, CBT can help those with a social phobia understand that they can get past their belief that others are judging or watching them. Those with a fear of germs or dirt are encouraged to get their hands dirty and wait a little while before washing them. The waiting period is gradually increased. Once they have done this a few times, the anxiety reduces. It can also help with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by asking the client to recall their traumatic memory in a safe environment, reducing the fear it brings. CBT therapists also teach relaxation methods and relieve anxiety. Often, it can take some time for a person to feel relaxed enough to encounter the situation or object and they may have to begin firstly through only tapes or pictures. To be effective, CBT must be tailored to the individual’s needs. It is drug free, there are no side effects and therapy often lasts about 12 weeks.

What can hypnotherapy help with?

As regular readers will know, hypnotherapy is a powerful tool using hypnosis for therapeutic purposes. But many people still associate hypnotherapy with stopping smoking and curing fears and that is it.

Hypnotherapy can be used for so many different things that the list is almost endless and hypnotherapists are finding new uses for it all the time. It can be used for almost any problem or situation where the body and the mind both come into play. Here are just a few of the issues that hypnotherapy has been used to help:

sports – improving performance, anxiety, coaching, overcoming concentration problem, increasing focus, motivation;
business – stress management, assertiveness, motivation and direction, problem solving and communication, public speaking, confidence;
education – increasing concentration and focus, improving memory, exam nerves, study techniques;
personal – increasing confidence or self-esteem, curing phobias and fears (whether of spiders, flying, heights, thunderstorms), anxiety and depression, insomnia, habits, addictions and other unwanted behaviour (nail biting, bedwetting, smoking, alcohol, drugs), sexual or relationship issues, eating disorders, shyness and blushing, pain management;
health - chronic pain, hypno-birthing, IBS, snoring, dermatitis, asthma, nausea from pregnancy or chemotherapy.

Hypnotherapy promotes better health, well being and better life. For years, it was helped thousands of people in their every day lives.

CBT fighting bulimia

Bulimia nervosa is characterised by binge eating, ie eating unusually large amounts of food and then purging oneself, usually by making oneself vomit or by using laxatives or diuretics.

Unlike anorexia, where the weight can fall dramatically, those suffering from bulimia can have a normal weight for their age, however, they do have a similar fear to those with anorexia - they fear gaining weight and are unhappy with their size. Their behaviour is often done secretly because they feel disgusted or ashamed, and hence bulimia can be difficult to spot. Also like anorexia, bulimics often have psychological issues like depression or anxiety.

Bulimia nervosa often results in physical problems such as oral or teeth-related problems, or issues with electrolyte imbalances and gastrointestinal issues.

Psychotherapy has proved effective in handling bulimia nervosa, especially cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. CBT can be tailored to treat bulimia in an individual case and can change the binging and purging cycle, slowing it down and eventually removing it completely as a result of changing the person's attitude to eating.

New study reports hypnotherapy can help arthritis sufferers

The findings of a study from Bangor University were presented on 11th September 2009 to The British Psychological Society's division of health psychology annual conference. It stated that people suffering from arthritis can alleviate their pain by using hypnotherapy and mental imagery.

Rheumatoid arthritis is progressive and a disabling disease affecting just under one per cent of the adult population in the UK. It is very painful and can affect a person’s ability to do everyday tasks. Despite medical treatment, many still suffer with high pain levels and often turn to alternative treatment - including hypnotherapy - to lessen their fatigue and pain.

The study from Bryan Bennett and colleagues at Bangor University asked 42 patients to visualise their pain and attempt to manage it. The results showed that the imagery techniques and hypnosis were effective at reducing pain and tiredness. Bryan Bennett commented:

"All the participants were asked to identify what areas of their life were important to them but were negatively affected due to the rheumatoid arthritis. By doing so they were taking an active part in their own therapy. By employing the techniques they were taught, they were able to self-treat when necessary - allowing them to control their pain and enabling them to get on with enjoying life".

Pain is not the only side-effect of arthritis. The diagnosis itself can be devastating, leading to people feeling many negative emotions such as anger and depression. This in turn can lead to insomnia, mood issues and a lack of appetite. Furthermore, many wonder what their future may be like, and what medication they'll require, and this can lead to losing the self-image they have held of themselves.

Techniques such as visualisation and positive affirmations are effective, as is self-hypnosis as it helps to focus your mind on your body and immune system. A good hypnotherapist will be able to teach you self hypnosis techiques so you can then continue to use it at home.

CBT helps dialysis patients with insomnia

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, otherwise known as CBT, is a type of psychotherapy. According to a recent study reported in Reuters, it seemed to improve the quality of sleep in dialysis patients. CBT is a non-drug therapy and the investigators from the study said that it seemed to be quite effective with dialysis patients suffering from sleep problems. Dialysis is the procedure to remove toxins from the bloodstream when a person’s kidneys are failing to do it sufficiently for them.

According to the study chief, Dr. Hung-Yuan Chen from National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, told Reuters: “Sleep disturbance in dialysis patients is a "puzzling and prevalent complaint. However, only hypnotics are available for clinicians to solve this problem at present".

CBT has proved effective in the past for insomnia in the elderly and also cancer patients and those with chronic pain. The study included 24 patients, with 14 randomised to have one hour per week in a psychiatrist-led CBT session. Almost 80 per cent in the CBT group had improved changes in sleep patterns, and also had a decline in a blood protein called interleukin-1-beta, which has been linked to inflammation. The results after four weeks, although impressive, were not statistically significant according to the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.

Hypnotherapy helps pole vaulter to Olympic gold

Those who were glued to the television for the Beijing Olympics might be interested to know that the Olympic Gold pole vaulting medallist, Australian Steve Hooker, had his fear of pole vaulting cured with hypnosis just a few years ago. Hooker soared to his Olympic Gold in dramatic style earning him an Olympic title and an Olympic record 5.96 metres on his final try. He is also the first Olympic champion from Australia in pole vaulting. Hooker said:

"The whole competition was mentally and physically the hardest thing I have done in my life. It was more boxing than pole vault. I should have skipped the second jumps altogether. They were not working for me. I should have gone straight to the third."

Hooker explained that dreams of Olympic competition were impossible for him in recent years as he was close to quitting in 2001. Only a few years ago he was unable to cope with the mental demands of the tough discipline and had even been throwing tantrums in training. He added:

"I would run through a lot and not take off and it got to the point, by the end of it I thought about giving it in. It was so mentally draining going to training not knowing if I would be able to jump or not. I was throwing poles, cracking tantrums, I was in a miserable bad mood. Your whole life, it really brings it down when it's really what you want to do and you can't do it just because it's not clicking in your brain.”

Hypnotherapy, combined with visualisation techniques, got him back on track. He told The Australian newspaper:

"I would talk to her at the start of the session and say, 'I want to talk about lowering the pole vault in my last couple of steps and jumping off the ground.' I would tell her the cues I wanted to work on, so she'd work it into the things that she was saying while I was under hypnosis.”

The results came gradually for Hooker but, when they came, the results were outstanding and well worth waiting for, Hypnosis ensured that Hooker now has no trouble with the mental aspects of his sport.

The mind-body connection and IBS

IBS, otherwise known as irritable bowel syndrome, can cause serious problems for sufferers who want to get on with their daily life. It can give bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, constipation or flatulence. Around 15 per cent of the UK population is affected, although only half tend to seek medical help.

As we accept more and more, the mind and body are intricately connected - and the gut even more so, as there are more nerve cells in our intestines than in our nervous system. IBS sufferers can testify that emotional upsets aggravate the condition and so learning to minimise stress can help them; emotional retraining can help to control it. Early studies from a small number of specialists have indicated that the mind-body approach is more effective than each singularly.

Psychotherapy and hypnotherapy have both been shown to contribute to controlling the condition and relieving the symptoms. In hypnotherapy, patients usually visualise their colon functioning properly. In cognitive behavioural therapy, or short term psychotherapy, patients can change their symptom-provoking thoughts, such as thinking that a certain situation will cause their symptoms to reappear or thinking that their colon will always cause them problems.

In a UK study of 204 patients, where over two thirds of patients were helped with hypnosis, 81 per cent maintained their improvements for up to six years afterwards. Stress reduction or relaxation techniques have proved just as helpful as avoiding certain foods.

Chicken nugget addiction cured with hypnotherapy

After an amazing 18 years of eating only chicken nuggets and chips, student Carla Laban has a healthy diet at least, thanks to hypnosis. When Carla was two, chicken nuggets were the only good that did not make Carla throw up violently. From that point on, Carla would skip breakfast every day and have nuggets for both dinner and lunch. This meant she was eating around 30 nuggets daily, at an average cost of £5 per day. Thanks to hypnotherapy, Carla is now starting to eat pasta and vegetables. Carla said:

"I can remember having chicken nuggets and chips for the first and thinking, 'I can eat this without being sick. Before that, I couldn't eat anything without having a panic attack and my throat tightening up. I couldn't even stand the smell of other food. I used to get ill quite a lot. While classmates would have a cold for a week, I'd have one for four. People thought I was being fussy. They didn't understand that I physically couldn't eat anything else."

Despite exercise to combat the unhealthy diet, Carla was still ill. When Coventry-based Carla was preparing for university her family arranged for her to see a hypnotherapist to wean her off the chicken nuggets. Thanks to hypnosis, she now eats more varieties of food and is still improving. The hypnotherapist started by helping Carla to make a small shift from nuggets to chicken goujons. Next, she moved to chicken pizza and slowly onto other food types. All sorts of phobias can be cured with hypnotherapy, including food phobias, however, each person is different.

CBT over the phone

A new telephone-based scheme was launched last week to help depression sufferers in the Shetland and Western Isles. NHS 24 has established the pilot scheme, NHS Living Life, which is expected to increase the region’s access to psychological therapies. Around 3,000 people per year are expected to use the service, which will run from 1pm-9pm, Monday to Friday.

The main aim of the service is to help people over the age of 16 to use Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CBT is a form of psychotherapy that helps alter ways of thinking and behaviour that are unhelpful to the client. It is ideal for use during periods of distress or depression. NHS 24 Interim Chief Executive, Doctor George Crooks, said:

“While medication is frequently prescribed, there is a broad awareness that psychological therapies such as CBT can provide long-term benefits to patients.”

CBT has been increasing in popularity in recent years and in many cases has been successfully combined with hypnotherapy, which is also a relatively speedy form of treatment. There are many people suffering from depression who are unable to access treatment because of a shortage of face-to-face qualified therapists, particularly in rural areas, and this scheme will hopefully allow people to be ‘more in control’ of their mental health.

Hypnotherapy for infertility

Around one in six couples seeks help to conceive. Just because they haven't conceived doesn't mean they can't conceive, but the more frustrated the couple feel the more difficult it can be. There are many medical reasons why a couple cannot conceive but, if medical reasons have been ruled out, then hypnotherapy is an option.

Hypnotherapy for unexplained infertility is a very popular and successful treatment in the USA. It works by focussing on the emotional aspects of trying to become pregnant, being pregnant or becoming a parent, and helps the couple deal with the stress the problem causes.

The underlying essence of it is about helping the mind to influence the body. Although we don't yet fully understand our mind- body connection, most of us have come to accept the concept and understand how powerful it can be. Our bodies are influenced by our emotions, thoughts, even our beliefs. Emotions can affect the hormones, which control ovulation and therefore pregnancy. So, if you have trouble conceiving and can't find out why, hypnotherapy is a potential solution.

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.

Eva Mendes had hypnotherapy to cure her spider phobia

Since a young age, Hollywood actress Eva Mendes suffered from a panic fear of spiders. The actress said:

“Ever since I was a little girl I had this problem. When I would see a spider, some sort of psychological blockade would activate, and my reactions were indescribable fear and I would go crazy. I would call somebody to kill it, and after that I would have to see the dead spider in order to believe that it was no longer there. When I would see a spider at night, and I could not call anybody to kill it, I could not sleep all night. In those situations, I was psychologically lost."

A fear of spiders is incredibly common and is otherwise known as arachnophobia. Eva decided to give hypnotherapy a try. Eva added:

“I do not know exactly what they did, but it definitely helped. Now when I see a spider, it does not bother me at all. My life is a lot easier.”

Eva found hypnosis very relaxing and after a few hours of hypnosis, she was cured. Eva said of the hypnotherapy:

“You lay down, relax, and then go through a few different kinds of relaxation. When you finish, you have the feeling that the whole process took three minutes, but in reality it lasted an hour.”

This description of hypnotherapy is pretty typical of most hypnosis clients. Hypnosis is a state of relaxation and hypnotherapy is when a hypnotherapist talks to you whilst you are in hypnosis to help you for some therapeutic purpose.

Can psychotherapy be regulated?

Earlier this month, there was much talk in the media about the government’s new proposals to regulate all talking therapies, including psychotherapy. This would not just be for NHS-funded therapies, but they propose to regulate every therapist in the UK. The government would like the Health Professionals Council to govern all therapies. Many professional bodies say it will be unworkable and are furious at the plans. The College of Psychoanalysts said:

“Under proposed new government guidelines, most forms of psychoanalysis could become illegal.”

As Lord Alderdice (the NHS psychiatrist who introduced the private member's bill for state regulation back in 2001) put it, any prescriptive code of skills or techniques is unlikely to be appropriate as the relationship between the 100,000 therapists in Britain and their clients is unique. Few therapists agree on anything, but one thing that is usually agreed upon is that one form of treatment is rarely correct and should be ‘imposed’. The reasons for looking into regulation are fair enough. Most therapists, including psychotherapists, take a complaint to their governing body seriously, however, many consumers are unsure of to whom they should complain if they have a query. It is certainly more difficult to regulate psychotherapy than other therapies such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) where it is a quick therapy, easy to teach and easy to evaluate (you are either cured of a phobia or not). Psychotherapy is much more difficult to regulate. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy believes regulation in today’s society is essential.

“But,” says Philip Hodson, its chief spokesman, “we have been told that it will be regulated by the HPC and if that is the price of regulation then so be it. I understand the disquiet of therapists, but there are some who argue that there should never be regulation of talking therapists. It is as if we are some kind of super-profession, fit to be our own judge and jury.”

Paramedic swims Channel after hypnotherapy

After a 20 year break from swimming, 38 year old paramedic Mark Ransom, successfully swam the English Channel last month in just 12 hours and 23 minutes. In the process, he raised over £1,000 for East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices.

Mark, from Bury St Edmunds, had to wait two weeks to do the challenge as the swim had to be put off due to bad weather. He had hypnotherapy before the challenge to get rid of his phobia of sharks and, following the success of this swim, he added that he wouldn’t rule out trying a similar challenge in future.

Hypnotherapy is ideal for phobias, whether they are physical habits like smoking or nail biting, something with a deeper root cause, or irrational fears such as Mark’s fear of sharks, or fears of spiders, dogs, heights or anything else. Having hypnosis to overcome phobias is relatively quick, and can usually be resolved in as few as one or two sessions.

Hypnotherapy for stress and relaxation

There are numerous benefits to learning how to relax in our modern world, constantly exposed to noise from mobile phones, television, computers and radio. Relaxation is not just about watching television, having some me-time, relaxing in the bath or going out for tea. it is about quietening our mind’s chatter and really feeling the silence for a short while. Hypnotherapy can help us relax, when the rest of our world is driving us on, bringing us long-term and short-term benefits:

people who have lots to do in a single day usually find they are more laidback and can handle life easily and better than they had done.
stepping back and taking some real time out for yourself allows you to de-stress; without such a high level of stress, life feels happier and healthier.
hypnotherapy helps people to slow down generally and enjoy their life more, whilst still doing everything they used to; as a result life can become much easier and simpler.

When a person interacts with many other people in life, they can often unconsciously take on their problems and stresses. Hypnotherapy allowed them to stay connected to the general life flow.

Hypno-birthing

In recent months, the media has been discussing the state of British hospitals and in particular the maternity ward. One study suggested the UK maternity service is worse than that in eastern Europe. Indeed, the number of caesareans has doubled in the last couple of years with intervention rates around 28 per cent. The normal rate, according to the World Health Organisation, should be 10 to 15 per cent.

We are short of around 3,000 midwives and 600-800 obstetricians according to the Royal College of Midwives. Almost 10 per cent of first time mums don't get the chance of NHS antenatal classes and some areas do not even offer them now. Is it any wonder that pregnancy worris many women?

With hypno-birthing, a woman attends an informal course that teaches different aspects of birth, including the physical, mental and spiritual aspects. The mum-to-be learns how to relax and stay in control and many women find birth a pleasant experience with little or no need for medical intervention.

Can hypnotherapy help me?

The different uses for hypnotherapy seem to be expanding every year, and we seem constantly to discover new ways of using hypnosis. Hypnosis as an alternative therapy is still new and not entirely understood, even by those who use it every day, because it deals with our minds. Our minds have always been an enigma even to ourselves, we still know so little about our unconscious mind.

The exposure of hypnotherapy seems to be increasing even more this year, as celebrities such as Chris Martin, Nicole Richie, Lily Allen and more have been hitting the headlines with hypnosis this year. People have also seen it in use on Celebrity Fat Club and Paul McKenna has now moved to LA to promote work over there.

Many people may be intrigued by hypnosis, but still wonder what it can do for them so here is a short selection:

get rid of old habits: things like smoking, nailbiting, overeating, drinking, blushing or any other habit that we want to stop. With hypnosis, there are no drugs or side effects, just positive results;
phobias: this isn't just creepy crawlies but also fear of dogs, needles, flying, dentists, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, water and many more;
develop new habits: hypnosis can help you instill new habits like increasing confidence, motivation and public speaking as well as healthy eating, studying, networking, talking, even romance!
pain management: this is a media-grabbing one. Hypnosis can be used to help stop pain, but is almost too effective. It has even been used in surgery or childbirth as an alternative to anaesthesia. It is very important to seek medical advice before using hypnosis to remove pain as pain shouldn't be removed without ensuring if there is a physical problem that needs resolving first.

Another benefit of hypnosis is that you can use self-hypnosis to reinforce benefits yourself, ask your hypnotherapist to teach you.

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.

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.

CBT for menopause depression

Depression is notoriously difficult to deal with, and even diagnose, according to recent media reports. Some symptoms of depression include:

lack of motivation
inability to concentrate
feeling sad
feeling hopeless
mood swings

These symptoms are also symptoms experienced by women going through the menopause. CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy is a way of learning to cope with depression and has been used by many women to help them cope with the menopause. CBT is a way of teaching and learning new habits and behaviours and these new habits and behaviours can be used to help stem the depression and feelings of sadness. CBT can also help teach people how to communicate better with others. A feeling of being misunderstood can be a contributory factor to depression so this can also help patients overcome their depression.

CBT for insomnia: sleep without the medication

If you are taking sleep medication prescribed by the doctor, then you should consult your doctor before coming off any medication. Many of the new medications prescribed have few side effects, but if you want to get off the medication and try natural remedies or alternatives, then a responsible therapist will always advise you to speak to your doctor before stopping the medication.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a form of psychotherapy, which has proved very effective in the past for many people suffering from insomnia. CBT works, as the name suggests, by modifying behaviours or patterns that have become a habit, whether knowingly or not. For example, the therapist may work with you to try altering things such as waking up at the same time each day, avoiding short naps, minimising light and noise in the bedroom and getting out of bed if you're having trouble sleeping after 15 minutes.

Dependent upon your circumstance, situation and personal preference, CBT can also be combined with hypnotherapy, which can prove to speed up the process.

What Not To Wear star uses cognitive hypnotherapy

Star of BBC's What Not To Wear programme, Lisa Butcher, started writing a new column in The Sun from July. In the column, Lisa talks about how she used cognitive hypnotherapy to help to boost her confidence when she first started working in front of the camera. Lisa said:

"When I started work on What Not To Wear at the BBC, the clothes I wore were important, but that was not enough to give me the confidence I needed. I discovered a solution in cognitive hypnotherapy/ neuro-linguistic programming... I went to two sessions and that was enough to build up my strengths and deal with my anxieties."

Hypnotherapy is generally acknowledged as being more effective when combined with cognitive behavioral therapy. As Lisa discovered, it is very effective and results can be achieved in very few sessions. Hypnotherapy is ideal for use with anxiety, confidence, stress or relaxation issues, insomnia, and many fears and phobias. As we have talked about in our earlier articles, many hypnotherapists offer a free consultation to give clients the opportunity to ask any questions they may have prior to a session.

Using hypnotherapy for motivation

Everyone is aware of using hypnosis to help them quit smoking, increase confidence, release their fears or lose weight. If you think about all these different effects, they are all changes to your life. Ultimately, you need motivation to make a change or you wouldn't change.

However, even with motivation, even with wanting to change, change is not easy.

Hypnotherapy helps with motivating you to change - from the inside, really motivating your unconscious self so that it is easy to make that change. You may need motivation for other changes, so think of all the things hypnosis can help with simply by focussing on your motivation for the task in hand. You might need motivation to set up your own business or to work on a particular task at work. Hypnosis will focus your mind and help you to concentrate.

You can only work on one change at a time - to help your unconscious mind to absorb the changes you need.

Hypnosis helps remove those littles voices in your head that stop you from achieving your goal. Voices saying things like "you don't deserve it", "you're not good enough", "you have no time" and more - you will know which unhelpful phrases you hear yourself say to yourself.

Don't let a lack of motivation stop you getting or doing what you want in life.

What is mediation?

Mediation is when two parties involve a neutral third party to help them overcome or resolve a dispute or argument. The third party is not advisory but there to help the parties come to a shared understanding of the situation and to work towards an agreed resolution. Mediation is also sometimes called alternative dispute resolution (ADR). It can be undertaken by couples, two companies, or even two countries. Some examples of disputes which may be dealt with or helped by mediation include:

Family:

marital disagreements
prenuptial agreements
separation / divorce
financial distribution
parental / custody issues
elderly care issues
sibling conflictsWorkplace:

Workplace:

wrongful termination
harrassment
discrimination
grievances

Disputes involving the following issues:

landlord/tenant issues
builders/contractors/homeowners
contracts
medical malpractice
personal injury
partnerships
youth/peer mediation
violence prevention

Mediation is often cheaper than going to court, quicker and more effective. It is also more private and discreet.

Hypnotherapy and public speaking

Hypnotherapy is known for helping with many fears and phobias such as of spiders or heights. However, it can also help with things like a fear of public speaking.

Many people may think that this is just the same as helping someone to build up their confidence. However, there are many confident people out there who would tell you that they have or had a fear of public speaking. Some get through it simply by forcing themselves and, with time and practice, they improve and feel better about it so the fear dissipates.

However, some simply cannot and will not speak in public. They may experience physical symptoms such as shaking, sweaty palms or a nervous voice, some may even throw up, so what do you do in this circumstance? Simply avoiding public speaking can be impossible, particularly in work situations. Such a fear can hold you back from getting on at work, possibly even preventing promotion. Hypnotherapy can help.

Hypnotherapy is a very quick and effective therapy and, when combined with a therapy such as CBT, its chances of success are very high. Using hypnosis, it is possible to break old habits and patterns of behaviour that seem impossible to solve.

Symptoms of depression

Depression is more common than you might think, however, it is also often misdiagnosed when people feel down or are going through a tough period in their lives. Here is a list of common depression symptoms. Many people do not experience them all but if you have a few of these it might be worth seeking some help. Depression does not always mean treatment through medication. Often, other therapies can also help, such as psychotherapy, CBT or hypnotherapy.

Low mood almost all day, every day
Loss of interest or enjoyment in activities you normally like
Feeling weepy, bursting into tears uncontrollably
Feeling guilty, worthless or useless a lot of the time
Lack of motivation, even for the simple thing sin life
Lack of concentration, even to watch tv, read or work
Lack of sleep or waking up early and unable to get back to sleep
Lack of energy, always tired
Going off sex and affection
Poor appetite resulting in weight loss
Too much appetite resulting in weight gain
Often irritable, restless and agitated
Symptoms are generally worse in the mornings
Physical symptoms such as more frequent headaches, chest pain or general aches
Preoccupation with death or suicide, thinking about it a lot

The more of these symptoms you are experiencing, the more likely it is that you are suffering from depression and should see a GP.

Music star had hypnotherapy for nerves

Earlier this month, country music star Adam Harvey had his fans on the edge of their seats during his Australian tour. He and his support act, Catherine Britt, performed an unforgettable show in Melbourne, leaving everybody wanting more. Harvey took the centre stage, entertaining his audience from the moment he started singing, with the whole theatre singing and dancing along with him. Both singers joined together to perform the finale songs, ending the show on a high.

Afterwards, in an interview with the Star newspaper, many were surprised to hear that Harvey had, for many years, suffered from nerves which reached an unbearable peak when he started supporting artists like Gina Jeffreys and Kasey Chambers about 10 years ago. Harvey decided to go for hypnotherapy and said that, since then, he has not suffered from nerves at all. Harvey said:

"I enjoy being close to the audience. For a performer, it’s a relaxing feeling. I ended up having hypnotherapy and ever since then, I’ve never felt nervous."

Since then, Harvey has gone on to become a six time Golden Guitar winner and nerves have not been a problem.

Top uses for CBT

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, is a relatively quick form of treatment, often requiring only 10 to 15 weekly one hour sessions. The exact number of sessions depends on the person and the problem, as CBT requires active participation by the individual.

Many people are unsure what CBT does. It is a behaviour therapy, meaning that it aims to correct negative or unwanted patterns of behaviour or thought. Here is a list of the top uses for CBT:

stress
schizophrenia
anorexia
bulimia
chronic fatigue syndrome
anger management
insomnia
OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
depression
phobias

Many therapists like to combine CBT with other therapies, such as hypnotherapy, which often helps to speed up the process.

Atomic Kitten Liz lost weight with hypnotherapy

For those who saw Celebrity Love Island, it was painful to watch as 27 year old Atomic Kitten's blonde bombshell Liz McClarnon competed with fellow celebrities Lady Isabella Hervey and Rebecca Loos in competitive weigh ins.

According to Liz, she was not short of self confidence but the competitive weigh ins left her feeling humiliated and self conscious. Liz told Now Magazine:

"I was uncomfortable the whole time and hunched my shoulders to hide my body. When I got home and saw the pictures, I knew I had to do something. It wasn't just my weight that bothered me, but my lack of confidence. I didn't want to be that hunched, shy girl."

Liz turned to her mum, a qualified hypnotherapist, for help and to stop her old junk food addiction. Before the hypnosis, Liz said she used to eat lots of chocolate and around four packets of crisps each day. She said that after just the one hypnotherapy session, her food habits started to change and it was easy to do so. The hypnotherapy helped her to lose more than one stone and she has now dropped from a size 12 to a svelte size 8 figure. Hypnotherapy can really help with weight loss as it can help you to change old habits.

The origins of hypnotherapy

Many cultures claim to be responsible for the creation of hypnosis and hypnotherapy, so its exact origins are unclear. However, many attribute it to Franz Mesmer who is often credited with the technique of originally putting people into a trance - mesmerising them. The term mesmerise and hypnotise are often used interchangeably which is how Frank Mesmer's name is so strongly associated with the origins of hypnotherapy.

Frederick (Franz) Mesmer was born in 1734 in Germany and later moved to Austria to work as a physician. He believed the stars and planets had an invisible magnetic energy that affected not just the water on the earth's seas but also the liquid within humans and animals. He started by placing magnets onto clients and stroking their body to transfer his "animal magnetism" from his body to theirs, channelling the energy by using a wand. He later thought that it was his own ability to transfer his magnetism that cured his clients.

He had many medical successes that he credited to his own hypnotising ability. What many people later believed is that, during the hypnosis, he was giving direct suggestions to the client so they would heal themselves. Mesmer's healing successes and flamboyant act was popular with his fans, but his strange tactics were naturally unpopular with the scientific professions. In 1778 he was struck off the medical register and left Vienna. He moved to Paris and continued, building a greater following, including Marie Antoinette. King Louis XVI in 1784 ordered an investigation into whether Mesmer had discovered a new bodily fluid and, when this could not be proven, Mesmer was driven out of Paris. He went back to Vienna and lived out his days relatively inconspicuously. He died in 1815 aged 81.

So there you have it. This is how hypnosis, although known by a different name and in a different guise, was possibly discovered.

Combating bulimia with CBT

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is generally thought of as being one of the most successful psychotherapies for bulimia, or bulimia nervosa. Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder where the sufferer will often binge on extremes of food and then force themselves to throw it up to prevent themselves from gaining weight. Many sufferers report a feeling of loss of control whilst bingeing and the purging is often their way of gaining back that control.

CBT, especially when combined with hypnosis, is a very effective and quick therapy. When dealing with bulimia, CBT aims to interrupt the old thinking processes associated with the issue, such as the preoccupation with food or weight, the 'all or nothing' thought process and the low self esteem that generally comes with bulimia. It also aims to interrupt the 'binge-purge' cycle.

Many therapists will ask their patients to keep a food diary and give feedback on the meal plans, triggers of thought processes, etc. CBT and hypnosis are used to challenge these old patterns. Around 50 per cent of bulimics are able to stop the binge-purge cycle using CBT. From the remaining 50 per cent, many show partial improvement and only a small minority do not respond. Sometimes, bulimia is a symptom of a food-obsessed family background so occasionally, family therapy is also recommended to decrease the chance of a relapse.

How hypnotherapy can help insomnia

When you are having trouble sleeping, it can affect all areas of your life. You feel tired, lethargic, can get run down and become ill, feel ill-tempered and emotional and take it out on your family, friends and work colleagues. Hypnotherapy is often a great help in curing insomnia, especially when combined with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

One common theme, usually present with those who regularly suffer from insomnia, is that they are thinkers and over-think or over-analyse situations. Hypnotherapy can help to break the over-thinking and old sleeping pattern. A good therapist will also teach you strategies to help reduce over-thinking and learn to let go. If you are suffering from insomnia or having difficulty sleeping, why not try hypnotherapy?

A virtual gastric band to lose weight

In the last year or so, publicity about the fitting of a gastric band around your stomach to help you lose weight has heightened and many people have undergone the procedure, despite its £7,000 plus price tag. Now imagine that if you were overweight and hypnotised, you could wake up convinced you had had the procedures and could experience all the sensations of the gastric band, including the steady weight loss without actually having had the surgery.

For one British-run clinic in southern Spain, they have been finetuning hypnotherapy combined with cognitive behavioural therapy to do just that. The patient undergoes six relaxing and pleasant sessions over a two week period, including one deep hypnotherapy session where they have the gastric band virtually-fitted. Just like when you have a real gastric band fitted, the patients even re-visit the clinic over the ensuing months to adjust the virtual gastric band to suit the weight loss rate agreed.

The use of hypnotherapy and CBT has been publicised widely as ideal therapies to combine, each underpins the other, working in conjunction with each other for some amazingly effective results in all sorts of cases. Even the BBC has run several documentaries on the use of the two therapies. Indeed, the medical profession has now come round to accept the idea of the mind-body link, and it may well be the answer to our global obesity issue.

In the case of the virtual gastric band, if nothing else, the client saves the £7,000 fee, the hospitalisation and surgery, no risks of MRSA, anasthetic or DVT (deep vein thrombosis) and more. As hypnotherapy grows in popularity and becomes more widely accepted, because people now feel it is not taboo to talk about it, we may well be seeing a real increase in acceptance from the medical profession.

Hypnotherapy cures gambling addiction

A local newspaper in Huddersfield, reported this week that hypnotherapy cured a compulsive gambler of his addiction, against all the odds. Gambler Tony Mays, aged 38, has quit his gambling habits and sold his Village Bakery business in Marsden, to move to France for a new life with his wife Zoe. Mr Mays said it took just three hypnotherapy sessions to cure him completely. After the third session, he said:

“I knew instantly that I would never bet again. I couldn’t even bring myself to buy a lottery ticket”.

Mr Mays said he started gambling, at the age of 13, in the arcades whilst living in Blackpool. He continued:

“I’d probably known since the age of 20 that I had a problem, which I tried to hide. It wasn’t the money that was a problem – I didn’t get into debt or put my career or business at risk – it was the amount of time it took up. I felt guilty that Zoe was always waiting around for me and I felt tired all the time. I must have spent around 30 hours a week in the bookies. It was compulsive to go every day.”

When his mother died from cancer one year ago, Mr Mays decided to change. During his three hynotherapy sessions Mr Mays also learned to self-hypnotise and claims it has also helped him to get fit and lose weight.

“Over a year on, my former gambling colleagues still can’t believe the change. When we went back to Blackpool I had absolutely no desire to gamble, I just wanted to tell all the lads playing the machines to get treatment".

The effectiveness of hypnotherapy in smoking cessation

Earlier this year, the results of more than 600 individual studies on more than 72,000 people were combined to get an overall success rate from several methods of smoking cessation. On average, each one had a success rate of about 19 per cent. As you might expect, the highest success rate was among the group of people with serious heart problems, with a 36 per cent success rate - although even that was a disappointingly low rate.

Across the board, however, the most successful treatment was hypnotherapy. Patients were given suggestions whilst in a relaxed hypnotic trance and the success rate was 30 per cent.

Next was combination therapy with a success rate of 29 per cent. More than one therapy, such as exercise and breathing methods or cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) combined with hypnosis, was used. Old fashioned methods, such as having stale cigarette smoke blown in your face, was surprisingly successful at 25 per cent. Acupuncture followed with 24 per cent. GP advice was the least successful. Some people were successful with just sheer willpower - at six per cent. Self-help books or magazines came in at nine per cent and nicotine gum at 10 per cent.

Hypnotherapy can be very effective when giving up smoking and many people are surprised at the level of success that can be achieved in just one session. According to the British Society of Medical & Dental Hypnosis, the latest hypnosis techniques have been up to 60 per cent successful from just one session.

However, for hypnotherapy to work on anything, you must want it to work and want it enough. For example, if you really love smoking and you are only going along to hypnosis because your partner asked you to, then it is not as likely to work.

Hypnotherapy and weight loss

Even if you don't believe that hypnotherapy can help you to lose weight by itself, there is no doubt that many people find it difficult to stick to a diet or exercise plan. This is where hypnosis can help. It can help to retrain your mind to increase your motivation, make that motivation feel more real for you and keep it in your mind.

Hypnotherapy can help you to think like a leaner person and develop new habits as well as discard old ones. This does not, however, make it the easy option and you should be wary of wild and exaggerated claims that it is some sort of magic. It is a shame that there are not more scientific, properly monitored studies into hypnosis and its effect on weight loss. Mott (1982) said:

"although hypnosis is sometimes referred to as a method of treatment, it is more accurate to regard hypnosis as a facilitator of a number of different treatment methods".

Previous studies have shown that hypnotherapy works best when combined with a behavioural weight management program and works best when the hypnosis is tailored to the individual rather than just a group programme, which is why many people prefer to visit a hypnotherapist rather than use a CD recording. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) helps to identify problematic behaviours and retrain and adopt new behaviours. If you are interested in how hypnotherapy can help you to lose weight, ask for details.

Obesity in 2010

In recent years, obesity has become a favourite topic in the news, with many articles and much publicity on the damage it can do to our bodies, our nation and our children.

A government report published earlier this year predicted that, by 2010, more than 12 million adults and a million children will be classed as obese. The problem is getting worse and we need to do something about it now.

Just going on a diet does not usually turn out to be a permanent solution for many people; to combat obesity requires a change in lifestyle. However, willpower and motivation play a huge factor.

Hypnotherapy is often used for weight loss and obesity so hypnotherapists are likely to see an even larger increase in the number of clients wanting hypnosis. Over-eating is an emotional need or want, rather than a physical one, so it makes sense to tackle the problem emotionally.

Many people associate eating with a comfort or habit or they overeat when they experience emotional turmoil of some kind, or a regular emotion such as boredom or upset. For this reason, other therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) are ideal as this therapy focuses upon habits and behaviour and works to replace them with more positive habits.

Many people like to find a hypnotherapist who is able to combine the best techniques from more than one therapy to suit the individual. For example, CBT can be combined with hypnotherapy and has proved very effective.

Are we handling depression incorrectly?

An article in the Daily Mail last week talked about how using the wrong drugs could actually be causing depression rather than helping it. There has been some concern in the media recently that family doctors diagnose depression too easily - for example when we feel tired and find it hard to get out of bed in the morning.

According to a new book by Professor Jane Plant, a London University College scientist, called Beating Stress, Anxiety and Depression, many of the two million people in the UK who take antidepressants are actually misdiagnosed.

"A study by an American psychiatrist found that more than 10 per cent of patients diagnosed with mental illness are actually suffering from an underlying physical condition, such as a heart murmur or a mineral deficiency such as calcium or magnesium that causes depression-like symptoms," says Professor Plant.

Many believe that, within the NHS, there is too much emphasis on a one size fits all approach and feel that other methods should be taken into consideration, such as using alternatives where possible: counselling, psychotherapy and other forms of stress management.

For example, many people suffering from anxiety react well to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as this looks at their existing patterns of behaviours and triggers and trains them to react and think differently, so they can avoid anxiety at different situations. CBT is often combined with relaxation therapies, such as hypnotherapy, to make it even more effective. It's also a relatively quick therapy and there is no need for drugs.

However, even the alternative treatments should be considered for individual cases. For example, CBT would not be as helpful for someone with post-natal depression as this is considered a hormonal issue and is best treated by support, counselling or psychotherapy where needed. We live in a nation where we are sometimes too hasty to turn to drugs, our doctors are overworked and alternative treatments and therapies are often still overlooked by many.

Hypnotherapy for achievement in sport

When you take part in any physical activity or sport, many people start to find reasons for failing before they've even set out. Your mental state is an important factor in anything that you do, and that includes sport or athletics. Yet, it is still one of the most neglected areas in sports training.

Is it really possible that hypnotherapy can be used to help train your mind to help you achieve your physical goals?

We need to learn to use our minds in a positive way and we tend to get what we focus on. We need to learn to expect success rather than failure and this makes a key difference in anything we do. Hypnotherapy can help you to change your focus and your approach, to make you feel more confident, set realistic goals, reduce anxiety and maintain a positive attitude.

Hypnotherapy has been used in sports therapy for many decades and is still little known. Famous sports stars have used hypnotherapy: for example, Tiger Woods had hypnotherapy for his golf. Many of them, however, prefer to keep their use of hypnotherapy quiet because of the myths and misconceptions about hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy is a highly effective method of improving your mental attitude and focus. Like anything else, and just as it is in sport,practice and preparation improves performance. When times are tough, when you're feeling mentally or physically exhausted, your hypnotherapy sessions will kick in. You will be able to shake off discouragement and anxiety and focus on the matter in hand. Concentration and technique will be easier to find. A hypnotherapy session for sports enhancement can be customised to the individual and, when combined with CBT techniques, it can be even more effective.

Cognitive behavioural therapy

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, otherwise known as CBT, is a form of psychotherapy most effective in a face to face consultation with a therapist. It is a form of counselling based upon individual assumptions, beliefs and behaviours and modifying those by developing new behaviour. The technique is easily adaptable to individual clients by identifying key areas, associated feelings and thoughts. It is commonly used in conjunction with relaxation methods and distraction techniques.

For this reason, it is an ideal therapy to combine with something like hypnotherapy. By doing this, the client gets the advantages of both therapies. Hypnotherapy, when combined with cognitive behavioural therapy, is incredibly effective and many clients feel the benefit after as little as just one single session. The use of hypnotherapy and CBT separately have both been shown to work very well with children and adolescents as well. CBT is commonly used for anxiety disorders, mood problems, trauma and post traumatic stress disorder. Cognitive behavioural therapy can also be used as a stand alone therapy if necessary.

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.

Top five hypnotherapy myths

The publicity of hypnosis has been poorly presented over the years and as a result many people have misconceptions about hypnosis and confuse hypnosis with hypnotherapy.

Hypnosis is the state of relaxation achieved. Hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis for therapeutic benefit.

Many people feel apprehensive when they go for their first hypnotherapy appointment because they aren't sure what to expect. Here is a list of five common myths about hypnotherapy:

The hypnotist can make you do anything. False. Hypnotherapy relies on you being willing and a reputable hypnotherapist would not want to make you do anything you did not want to do.
You are asleep or unconscious. False. You will not be asleep or unconscious. In fact, you are only relaxed and will hear everything that is said.
You won't be able to open your eyes. False. You can open your eyes at any time you want to.
It is dangerous. False. Hypnosis is a safe, controlled method of relaxation and therapy, and a safe way for you to access your subconscious mind.
It is guaranteed. False. Hypnosis is not magic and, although it has a very high success rate and works quickly, like anything in life - and every form of therapy - it is not 100 per cent guaranteed.

If you are considering hypnotherapy, be sure to choose a qualified hypnotherapist with a reputable company and feel free to ask questions so you are reassured that hypnotherapy, and the hypnotherapist, are right for you.

Omagh victims would benefit from psychotherapy

Yesterday, one of the UK's top psychiatrists told the Belfast High Court that the families of the victims of the Omagh tragedy had received inappropriate treatment. This is week six of the trial and Dr Nicholas Cooling, a psychotherapist and psychiatrist of more than 25 years, suggested to the court that, had the right treatment been available, many of these families would have been able to move on.

Dr Cooling said that many of them suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and chronic depression and the counselling that they had received had not been beneficial. Dr Cooling recommended that therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy with psychotherapy would have been much better than the counselling they had received.

"Unfortunately the help available was not effective. None of these people had any effective psychotherapy intervention," he told the court.

Psychotherapy can be extremely effective when dealing with deep issues, in particular where distress is being caused from past situations including traumas.