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5 Reasons Hypnosis Works

By the time we become adults we’ve already absorbed many different messages about the world around us. Those messages may reinforce ideas such as change is difficult and that any efforts we make may be in vain. In contrast think about how well children who haven’t yet learnt to be cynics are able to absorb new ideas and possibilities, like sponges. What’s not to like about re-connecting with that sort of state of mind? Hypnosis can help with that....

Why I have a bit of a problem with the slogan “Never Give Up!"

I was watching Louis Theroux interview adventurer Bear Grylls recently and during the programme they visited Bear’s private island off the coast of Wales. In Bear’s office was a sign saying “Never Give Up” and it was clear from what Bear was saying that thi was something of a mantra for him. Bear Grylls inspires countless children to challenge themselves. He’s UK’s Scouting Chief Scout and recently launched a new badge with the “Never Give Up” slogan on it. It’s a phrase many o...

How to feel less fearful

Do you ever wonder why some people seem to be less fearful than others? From the outside some people seem to have the balance about right, others seem to take far too many risks and some people seem to want to eliminate all risk from their lives. And of course the natural balance for each person is different. Some people may aspire to have the nerve to do extreme airborne sports, others may be content for a life lived fixed more firmly to the ground. But what happens when we cannot overcome our...

When is going with your Gut Feeling a good idea?

We’re often told to “just go with your gut feel”. Or as a hypnotherapist might say, “Let you subconscious decide!” Letting our subconscious make our decisions for us works really well when we have lots of expertise about something, lots of experience, including times when we’ve made mistakes and learnt from them. It’s why great professional sports people doing team sports just seem to instinctively know who to throw or pass the ball to and where to move next on the playing field. S...

Why what we say at key moments matters so much

I remember when I learnt first aid the instructors emphasized the importance of reassuring the casualty. And in the practical role-playing scenarios we would dutifully approach our casualty and ensure we told them we were a qualified first aider and could help them and also reassure them that further help was already on its way. But if I’m honest most of the training was about practical things to do, how to apply pressure to a wound, how to use water to cool a burn and clingfilm to keep it cle...

What is Parts Therapy?

One of the ways I love working with clients is through Parts work.Parts Therapy simply works with what many of us intuitively suspect, that we have different internal parts or aspects of ourselves that sometimes take over how we think and feel is different situations in our lives. These parts can be what help us feel confident, calm and in control in some situations and perhaps unfathomably make us feel anxious and full of fear in others. Sometimes we might feel like “we’re working against o...

Is there a way we can Control Time?

If we want to know the time we can of course glance at a clock on the wall, or look at our phone or may be ask Alexa. I’m even old enough to remember the days before the internet,  when if you wanted to know the accurate time you would phone the speaking clock! So that’s clock time, but what about our own internal sense of time? We all carry with us our own internal perception of time, and this perception can vary from person to person as well as according to what we’re currently doin...

Navigating Life Using Your Own Personal Values

I'm a scout leader and recently as part of one of their badges the scouts created an artwork highlighting their own personal values. I’m really glad children these days get a chance to consider the question "Just what are my own values?". I think growing up I wasn’t even aware people had different personal values. It’s just not something that we spoke about at home or at school. I was told about the value of “hard work” and was familiar with the phrase “Some people know the price of ...

You're In Good Hands. The Power of Words.

One of my favourite programmes to watch is “24 hours in A&E”, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about patients visiting a London A&E in a single 24 hour period. I don’t watch it for the gore and admit I sometimes have to turn away when I can see they’re about to zoom in for a close up shot. But what I do like is how the programme captures so well the expertise and empathy of the staff, the fantastic teamwork and also how families can pull together in extraordinarily  difficult circumsta...

How Does Hypnosis Work?

One way of explaining how hypnosis works is that it puts you in the right frame of mind for learning new ways of thinking and feeling better. Within hypnosis you can find yourself able to react positively to suggestions to change the way you think or how you feel about yourself and others. Being in hypnosis can greatly amplify the effectiveness of the work we do together. Whether we are changing your thought patterns, chipping away at a limiting belief, increasing your expectations that things ...

What Can Hypnotherapy Help With?

Hypnotherapy can be helpful for any issue where there's a psychological part to the problem you're seeking help with. It may be pretty clear that issues such as anxiety, panic, binge eating and insomniahave a psychological part to them. They can all be helped with hypnosis, but what about physical problems such as chronic pain, IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), bruxism (teeth grinding and jaw clenching)? These too can be affected by the thoughts and beliefs we have about our physical condition and...

Stick or Twist?

We all have our favourite motivating phrases, some are handed down to us as we’re growing up and some we just seem to pick up along the way. We might shout them to ourselves or find ourselves repeating them to our own children to prevent them giving up on something. “Never give up!” and “Try, try and try again”, are great mantras to live by to ensure when we start doing something we give it a good enough go. They help ensure we don’t give up at the first knock back or just because we...

Is it time for you to take off in a new direction?

I’ve had a few careers in my time and looking back I could have made each transition a bit (or a lot) easier for myself, both in terms of recognising when it was time for a change and in settling into my new path once I'd made the decision....

Did you know visualisation can improve performance – and it’s not just for athletes?

You may have noticed various athletes during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics running through their performances in their minds, both before and after their events. Both mentally rehearsing the perfect future performance and replaying a great real life past performance can help improve future performances. Even studying great performances by others and playing these back in your mind can be helpful....

Understanding why we eat too much is the first step to successful weight loss

Weight loss can sometimes seem complex because the reasons we overeat are so personal. Any successful weight loss journey needs to address our individual reasons for overeating. Understanding why we overeat before embarking on weight loss will give a better chance of success. And there may be more factors at play then we realise....

Hypnotherapy for Needle Phobia

If we haven’t already, many of us will be invited over the next few months for our COVID19 jabs. Most people will be looking forward to their appointment. However if you suffer from needle phobia, part of you may be dreading the moment when the email or letter finally arrives. Have you yet considered hypnotherapy to overcome your fear? Whether you know where your phobia comes from or you have no idea, hypnosis can  be helpful in ridding you of your fear and enabling you to get your first ...

How to ensure you have the right goal when coming for hypnotherapy

Sometimes when people come to me for hypnotherapy they don’t know where to start. They might come with a list of issues that seems overwhelming to them. They may talk about needing hypnosis to be more confidence, being less anxious, getting more sleep or losing more weight. And it’s my job to help them evolve their list of issues into a goal and then to choose the very first stepping stone we can take together towards that goal....

EMDR can be a powerful tool to help with Anxiety and Addictions

I often use a technique called EMDR with clients. EMDR stands for the less than succinct "Eye Movement Desensitiation and Reprocessing". EMDR is a therapeutic technique that was originally found to be useful for alleviating the symptoms of PTSD. Since then therapists across the world have discovered it can also be effective in helping with a wide range of symptoms including Anxiety, Pain, Phobias and Addictions....

Can calling this mug “happy” put us in a better mood?

If I were to propose that starting to call this mug “happy” can help you feel more positive, does that sound quite or maybe even extremely unlikely?...

Having the right number of choices is key to breaking negative thinking loops

Within my practice I incorporate principles and techniques from many well researched therapies, including CBT. One of the aims of CBT is to help us to become aware of when we are stuck in negative thinking loops and to help us to find the exit paths from those loops....

Why virtual therapy may be one of those rare cases where you can both have your cake and eat it

Sometime progress in things is gradual and then every now and then it seems to quicken in leaps and bounds. So it has been with online or virtual therapy. Virtual therapy sessions have steadily been becoming more and more popular for a number of years. Some therapists only work virtually others see clients in person and virtually. And then the coronavirus pandemic arrives and, perhaps unsurprisingly, online therapy took one giant leap forward....

Finding new ways of looking at things

I’ve always loved solutions to problems that are found by looking at the problem in a different way. Bill Gates the technology entrepreneur turned philanthropist was talking about how he’d realised the reason his polio vaccination programme was failing in Nigeria was because of inadequate maps. Basically they were relying on old colonial era maps with inaccurate borders and so anyone living on a regional border was at risk of being missed from the programme. Region A thought region B were co...

Why even the Drugs Companies acknowledge Positive Thinking is good for your health

The effects of Positive thinking are real. The drug companies know it and take account of positive thinking in every single clinical drugs trial. A recent BBC news report reminded me of the importance of positive thinking. If I’m honest, for years I used to roll my eyes when people talked about the power of positive thinking. I didn’t buy into it, possibly because I wasn’t practiced in its use and so didn’t have the evidence it worked. Now I know differently....

What is Regression Therapy?

Regression Therapy within hypnosis is re-connecting with events in the past in order to re-frame how we hold those events in our mind, so they no longer have a negative impact on how we’re feeling today. These can be events we consciously remember or those which we’ve forgotten....

Is it safe for me to go and see a therapist at the moment?

These are unprecedented times for all of us. We are being asked to adjust into a new way of being and living for the foreseeable future. We have been asked to socially distance ourselves from our friends and families; we can understand the reasons but may still have more questions than answers. We are having to learn to live with uncertainty. It’s early days and we need to learn to be patient with ourselves, whilst we figure out just how we do that....