Have you ever considered using hypnotherapy to enhance the positive personality traits or successes that you already have? People will often call on my services when something has gone wrong for them, perhaps affecting their ability to live the successful life they desire. This is the core of my work, but I also use hypnosis to enhance existing success.

You may pride yourself on your confidence, perhaps you are great at relationships, or you may excel at a particular sport. Whatever is working for you now can work even better for you in the future by using hypnotherapy to harness that success and then increase it’s presence. Hypnosis can also help you to reflect that same success in other areas of your life so you can experience it across a broader range of activities.

I have just published my latest testimonial given to me from a recent client who was addicted to gambling.  Of course, I   won’t share the detail of the case with you but I can say that the addiction was serious and the consequences of the gambling, had it continued, would have been heart breaking.  The testimonial reads:

“I can honestly say you have changed my life.  I haven’t gambled once since I saw you.  I’m back in control.  It’s an amazing feeling.  I have money in my pocket all the time now.  I can’t thank you enough for what you have done.  It’s not only stopped me gambling but I feel different, a lot happier.  My wife can’t believe the change.  I am not a gambler any more.  It’s amazing”.

I saw this person once before the testimonial was sent to me.

The power of hypnotherapy never fails to surprise and delight me.  It’s true to say that not everyone will get such dramatic results after only one session and that often a number of sessions are required before the desired outcome is achieved.   The extremity of the results achieved will always differ from person to person.  Some people will experience just enough change in order for them to tip the balance of control back in their favour, and for others hypnotherapy really can be like flicking the off switch to an unwanted behaviour or feeling.

When I get this kind of feedback from my clients it acts as further testament to my belief that carefully constructed and personalised hypnotherapy really can be life changing.

Hypnotherapy is used to alter a person’s negative thought and behaviour patterns.  Not all of these thought and behaviour patterns are voluntary.  Some of our unwanted behaviours, like loss of sleep or interrupted sleep, occur without us going through any conscious decision making process.

I have worked with many people who wake up during the night and can’t get back to sleep and others who find it difficult to drift off to sleep in the first place.  Sometimes the loss of sleep is exacerbated by stress and worry and sometimes there is no obvious reason at all for it.  It can often be the case that a person simply gets into the habit of not sleeping, for example, ex shift workers commonly fall into this category.

The result of not getting enough sleep can range from feeling exhausted in the morning and tired and listless through the day, to devastatingly affecting our ability to function normally, be it at work or at home.  There can be serious social, family and health implications.

Hypnotherapy can work in a multiple of ways to resolve sleep issues.  As always, the treatment delivered depends on the individual and his/her specific circumstances and needs.

Where loss of sleep is habitual, hypnotherapy delivers to the subconscious mind techniques and visualisations that will retrain the mind to be able to drift off to sleep and stay asleep through the night.  Often a combination of suggestive therapy and neuro linguistic programming is used to achieve this.  In other cases there may an underlying cause for the lack of sleep, stress being a common one. In these cases the cause of the problem will be addressed as well as the immediate sleep issue.

In my experience, if your loss of sleep is habitual, 2 sessions of hypnotherapy is usually enough to get you back to sleeping soundly through the night.  If there is an underlying cause, such as stress, then depending on its severity and complexity, 1 to 3 additional sessions may be required.

Before you embark on hypnotherapy to resolve your sleep issues you should always pay a visit to your doctor who will assess your symptoms and rule out any causes that require medical attention.

Some people I see for hypnotherapy have previously experienced what is known by hypnotherapists as the ‘trance state’ and know what to expect. Others may have a friend who has experienced hypnotherapy and will expect to have the same experience as them, and some of my clients have no experience at all but have heard that hypnotherapy works.

If you don’t know what to expect then the prospect of the unknown can be somewhat unnerving. The reality is that the ‘trance state’ is a wholly relaxing and enjoyable experience. I often describe it as a ‘massage of the mind’. The majority of people will dip into some form of hypnotic state several times a day, typically when day dreaming or drifting off to sleep at night. If you have ever driven a car on a familiar route and seemed to arrive without any recollection of the journey then you would have just experienced a hypnotic state.

The actual experience of being hypnotised is difficult to describe, feeling as if you are neither asleep nor awake. The state is characterised by a voluntary pleasant state of relaxation, sometimes described as an altered state of consciousness which enables the reception of desired beneficial suggestions given directly by me to your unconscious mind. Of course everybody experiences hypnotherapy differently. Many of my clients describe their experience as ‘feeling so deeply relaxed, I know I can move but I just don’t want to’.

I always explain to my clients that they are in full control throughout the session and should anything be suggested that they are uncomfortable with or perhaps not ready to accept, they are able to terminate the trance. In saying that, as a hypnotherapist it’s my job to ensure that the content of each session is driven entirely by the client’s needs and is consistent with their value set and as such is gladly received.

The science behind weight loss is simple.  If you consume less calories than you burn you will lose weight.  If you consume more calories than you burn you will put weight on.  So it makes sense that if you follow a calorie restricted diet, the chances are you will lose weight. So, if it’s that simple why do so many of us struggle with being over weight?  The problem comes when the diet is dropped, normal eating patterns are resumed, and all of the weight, and often more, goes back on.

I’m sure this will be a familiar cycle to many of you and when it happens it can lead to feelings of despair and exasperation.  So why is it that although you know that consuming too much of the wrong kinds of foods is going to result in unwanted weight gain, you still do it?  You just seem to be unable to resist the temptation of those unhealthy foods.  Why would you undo all that good work and sabotage all your good efforts?

The answer is, that it is likely that your relationship with food is driven by learnt behaviours that are deeply rooted in your subconscious mind.  For example, it stands to reason that if perhaps you were repeatedly pacified or rewarded with food as a child that in adult life you will seek to self pacify or reward yourself in the same way.  It felt good then so it will feel good now, so you reach for a bar of chocolate or biscuit from the cupboard.  What is happening here is that your subconscious mind is sending you the message that if you eat that chocolate or biscuit or whatever it is you have the urge to eat then you will feel better.  The reality is that temporarily you may well feel better but soon after you are likely to either feel guilty or disappointed in yourself knowing that you have sabotaged what you really want, to lose weight.

This is where hypnotherapy steps in.  It breaks down the learnt misguided beliefs about food and reframes your emotional relationship  with eating. There are many ways of doing this and many possible outcomes which of course will be guided by you.  Some people just want to stop eating a particular food whilst others want to change their preferences across their whole diet.  Whatever it is you want to change about the way you eat, hypnotherapy takes the pain out of making these changes.  Quite simply it makes what has previously seemed like an impossible feat, easy.