Dealing with trauma

traumaterms
Can Hypnotherapy Help With Trauma?
Put simply, most definitely yes. In the following blog I would like to delve into the very serious area of trauma based therapy and how EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitising and Reprocessing can help lessen if not completely eradicate any stuck memories or emotions in the past, as well as remove any recurring nightmares in the present.

So what exactly is EMDR? The idea that distressing memories could be eliminated and reprogrammed simply through rapid lateral eye movement sounds almost like something that would come out of a sci-fi novel. In fact this very process is one of the most available and scientifically accepted and verified therapies available today; even validated by the NHS. Eye movement desensitisation reprocessing has been used in clinical situations for decades and is used in many cases to be able to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder, (PTSD) as well as conditions which relate to other common traumas and which invariably lead to nightmares and flashbacks. In a typical session the subject will be asked to think of the distressing memory while they rapidly move their eyes laterally from left to right. In most cases the person will experience a dramatic reduction in the intensity of the memory or the connection that they've created between themselves and the past memory and through EMDR they can, in effect, start to look at memory in a more natural way rather than with the heightened emotion that they originally attached to that memory. One of my recent clients said that following EMDR, she was able to evaluate and process what she had experienced in a more 'detached way'

So the question is how does it actually work? When a person is involved in any kind of trauma they become overwhelmed by the experience which in turn doesn't give the brain enough time to process the information at a neurological level. Unresolved, the memory quickly becomes trapped and unprocessed so essentially instead of it being a normal memory which can be stored in a non-permanent part of the brain a person ends up experiencing the distressing memory in all of it's sensory detail over and over again often in the form of flashbacks and or nightmares. By stimulating the left to right rapid eye movement the memory can in effect be brought out of it's trapped, 'fossilised' state so that it can finally be processed correctly, This in turn allows the the memory to lose its intensity and become more like a normal memory. Traditional counselling is not as effective at dealing with this area of psychology because speaking about the memory is only replaying it in the patient's mind and not really addressing the route which very often is at neurological level, overwhelming and very real to the person who is suffering. Repressed memories, especially when it comes to rape victims or people who have undergone specific traumas like a car crash can manifest spontaneously which can be very upsetting and debilitating. Through Hypnotherapy and EMDR these often deeply rooted psychological traumas can be brought out of the frozen state into the part of the unconscious mind where the memory can be trained to experience the event differently or eliminated altogether allowing the person to start functioning again. The removal of the stuck experience can very quickly lead to an elimination of flashbacks and nightmares, or at the very least, help greatly reduce the frequency and intensity of the traumatic thoughts. If you would like to find out how I can help you with this specific area then please click on the link below and request your FREE no obligation callback. All information is treated in the strictest of confidence.

CLICK FOR FREE CONSULTATION

David Faratian




Compassion

compassion-terms
Compassion is one of the most interesting attributes of being human. Scientist Richard J Davidson of the University of Wisconsin did a study and found that compassion, or kindness, is a trainable skill. In effect, you can actually teach yourself to be a kinder individual. You can train your children to be kinder. More importantly, the most interesting thing is that when you display compassion not just to yourself but to others, beautiful and positive things automatically start happening in life.
Firstly, when you display compassion, all your levels of positivity go up and you are much less likely to be stressed with life's little niggles and challenges. This means, in turn, you are more able to deal with seemingly difficult people and situations. Additionally, in another interesting study, when you have high levels of compassion for others, not just yourself, ageing actually slows down and you get older slower.
Compassion is more than just creating a kind world, it's such a powerful attribute of humankind that I believe that we are biologically wired to be drawn to the kinds of people who display compassion. Just consider someone like the Dalai llama and a massive crowds that assemble in front of him, Think also about your own relationships where again studies show that when you exhibit these positive qualities you are far more attractive to the opposite sex. In fact, compassion as an attribute in women is one of the most single attractive attributes of any long-standing and nurturing relationship. The wonderful thing about compassion is that when you generate the feeling not just as your part of your internal state but manage to translate it into actions to communicate to the people around you then you are far more likely to enjoy a productive and happy work life. In yet another study carried out in the US as well as in an independent gallop survey which questioned 10 million employees, they found that the employees who are most engaged and happiest at work are those who can say affirmatively "my supervisor or someone at work cares about me as a person" There are several ways you can train yourself to become more compassionate but one of the simplest ways you can begin the process right now is by simply smiling more. Smile at a complete stranger, or a work colleague and notice their reaction. As long as you are sincere and want nothing in return then you might be amazed at how powerful and satisfying this new behaviour feels.
In the exercise below I will guide you into a more structured exercise for generating greater compassion. This is a daily ritual and takes no more than 3 minutes of your time. If you would like to join in then click on the audio exercise below and take that next important step toward being a better version of yourself.


Have a wonderful day,
David



5 Steps To A More Mindful Day

mindfulness-hypnotherapy


Mindfulness is evermore accepted in the mainstream as an effective way to balance the mind and body. More and more organisations and businesses are recognising the benefits of training their employees in the art of mindful living. This acceptance isn't altogether altruistic because it has significant benefits for the organisation by making the employee more productive and efficient.

Here at The Cumbria hypnosis hypnotherapy and mindfulness clinic our entire philosophy when it comes to treating any kind of psychological imbalance is teaching our clients how to be mindful whether dealing with negative behaviours, feelings or emotions.

Learning to become more mindful at work especially in the office can create a more effortless experience of the working day.

When you learn to stop and become more mindful in all of your working activity you can step off the hamster wheel, create some space and allow your natural mental processes to flow rather than to come to a grinding halt, which is often associated with frustration and a growing sense of stress.

Step one - Learn to pause at work. Make this pause as purposeful as you possibly can. Before even coming to work choose to start the day in the right way by learning to breathe before even getting out of bed. Frame a purposeful and productive day simply by imagining it being the way you want it to be.

Step two - Make your daily commute to work one which is free from distraction. If you tend to listen to the radio or are constantly aware of your phone then switch both off and instead concentrate on mindful breathing so that you can arrive at your destination feeling clearer and more engaged. Learn more about exercising mindful driving here

Step three - if you tend to walk between meetings, once again switch off your phone so you are not distracted by emails or text messages. Get used to feeling your feet on the floor and the air entering your lungs. Take the opportunity to acknowledge colleagues as you pass them and smile.

Step four - As you find yourself sitting at your desk staring at your computer screen, turn your gaze away from your screen for a moment and focus on something else on your desk maybe even bring in an object which is symbolically significant to you and makes you smile. Now study this object without any great thought. As you stare allow your breathing to become more regulated and rhythmic. If you want to close your eyes just for a few moments then go ahead and do that. Try to recreate the object in your minds eye or in your imagination. Amplify it's quality by changing its brightness and clarity. Play a piece of music in your mind that you associate with this particular object and note is the effect it has on your body and mind. Now bring your awareness back into the moment open your eyes and continue doing whatever you were doing.

Step five - Use any break time during your day to get away from the office. If the weather is kind to you go outside sit on a bench and observe your environment. In effect give yourself a chance to switch off the background stress which naturally builds up without us even being aware. See background stress like the apps on your smartphone. After a while we forget to switch off numerous apps but they are still running in the background draining the battery. Mindfulness teaches you how to switch off the 'apps' and restore full power to the system.

If you find you cannot incorporate all five steps at once, then build up gradually by practising one skill each day until you master it.

Here is what Simon from Kendal said about his experience with his mindfulness training.

"I have a highly pressured role, I had heard about mindfulness on the radio but had never quite understood what it meant. As far as I was concerned it was some new-age fad which only hippies would pursue. I couldn't be more wrong. Thanks to the training David taught me I was able to establish a framework which has allowed me to feel far more in control, happier and balanced."

Please take a look at other blog posts under this particular category for more information.

Be mindful and have a peaceful day.

David Faratian




Spider season is approaching!


cartoon-spider

Practically every year as summer waves goodbye and autumn re introduces itself with a hint of cooling and wetter weather, I can get my calendar out and circle some key dates. What dates you ask? The dates in question are during September and reflect the start of spider season and dates which invariably result in people calling up a service like mine and seeking help for this uninvited ‘terror’. Spiders suddenly seem to be crawling out of the woodwork and terrifying the nations many sufferers. The truth is of course that spiders don’t just appear in autumn and are always present throughout the year but just like anything we give focus to, we are more likely to notice them if we choose to and certainly more because we believe autumn is the worst time for spiders. Unfortunately when we have had a wet summer the chance of noticing these little visitors is more likely but you know that already so what’s the point of my blog?

Spider phobia or as you already know it, arachnophobia, affects 55% of women and 18% of men in the UK. It is a real phobia in the sense that it causes all the symptoms of panic and triggers the freeze, flight and fight response in the sufferer which is hard wired for impending danger and a need to defend oneself from attack. Truth is of course that in our country the number of truly ‘dangerous’ spiders amounts to 0.01 % and even then none of those breeds are found in the typical house spider which is what we are talking about here. When it comes to be scared of spiders our irrational minds, also known as our limbic response builds a picture of the spider being a much bigger entity than it actually is, whether that’s the body, movement, legs, we tend to experience a perception of a creature that belongs more in a 60s horror film rather than reflecting the wholly non threatening insect it actually is. So why is a tiny insect that’s only function is to hide and survive and an insect that certainly has no mission for human domination such a perceived problem. Let's not fool ourselves, spiders are not very attractive and certainly wouldn't win any beauty pageants but they are also not the monster our minds tell us they are. Spider phobia, like most phobias is nine times out of ten born out the unfortunate association we make with them at moment in time, usually childhood when a spider may have caught our eye and caused a spontaneous moment of panic which resulted in the release of the threat hormones cortisol and adrenalin. Now as adults our conscious brains may have forgotten that experience, but since that point when we may have been too young and defenceless to rationalise the startled feelings, we therefore get good at over generalising every future experience which involves an encounter with any spider and those old feelings just reinforce the already negative learning and so the phobia around spiders is born.

But it doesn’t end there. Once a person declares themselves a spider phobic, they begin projecting into the future, creating an anticipation of how they are likely to feel when encountering the next spider even though they haven’t even seen one. In other words, they anticipate anxiety before even having any justification for this belief. Then again, why would they feel any other way. Every single experience in spiders has never been a positive one and they have had no way of rationalising or neutralising these thoughts to create a more positive point of reference and so the phobia seems incurable and debilitating. The end result is more often than not an over anxious person, especially around this time of year, who is constantly on guard and worried. When, God forbid, a person actually encounters a spider then they have to get someone else to remove it or they never enter that room again. This of course is all too common for anyone who identifies with this unfortunate limiting belief.

So can it be dealt with. Can you be spider phobia free, and be cured? The simple answer without any doubt whatsoever is YES. That’s where I come in. Here at the Cumbria Hypnosis Clinic we recognise the fact that spider phobia is a construct of the emotional sub conscious brain. That being the case it is also true that is has been programmed through experience and memory to believe spiders are a threat, therefore the emotional, irrational brain can also be re-programmed through a number of psychological processes to recognise new and more empowering feelings around the encounter, whether in reality or just imagined, with a spider. The sub conscious, responsible for the majority of our independent, thoughts, feelings and emotions can be imprinted with a new set of reference points which teach the individual suffering with the phobia to recognise the thought of a spider is simply not resulting in any anxious feelings, no sense of impending doom and there can even be a sense of feeling more and more relaxed around the very thought of the spider and experience which practically wipes clear the old connection and replaces it with thoughts of confidence and being able to function.

"Since seeing David I have been free from my fear around spiders for more than four years. My husband mentioned it was that time of year again the other day and I hadn't even realised nor was I bothered. Anyone thinking about this, all I can say is give it a go, it worked for me" Jane S (Windermere Cumbria)

What I teach you is set of practical, no nonsense skills, which don’t require any effort, to help develop a sense of independence and confidence around thoughts to do with spiders. This process is highly effective and permanent for more than 85% of the population. If you have been a sufferer or you are currently reading this and want to know more, then please click this link for more information and opportunity to have a free phone consultation. As with every treatment offered by Cumbria Hypnosis I offer the guarantee that if I don’t feel you qualify as one of the 85% then you won’t pay a single penny and so there is absolutely no risk for you if you are not completely sure this is is for you. Remember that any limiting belief you weren’t born with can be changed and removed so why continue suffering…..?


I look forward to being able to explain how I can help you.

Regards

David Faratian (NLP Practitioner and Clinical Hypnotherapist)


Overcoming fear of needles

Fear of Needles hypnosis


The fear of needles, whether visiting a dentist or simply needing to give blood is a very common phobia and one rooted in negative childhood experience. Trypanophobia, the technical name for this limiting belief creates the typical fight or flight response around any perception of a needle being used to either inject medication or draw blood. One such sufferer, Molly age 23, a teacher from Barrow recently came to see me about her fear. Molly like so many sufferers had managed to condition her anticipation of anything blood or needle related into an over generalised anxiety. When this happens there is almost a reflex release of adrenalin with the mere thought of the trigger picture, which in turn becomes a learned behaviour. Through a number of layered desensitisation processes Molly was taught how to own the feeling of anxiety instead of resisting it, and thereby helping her to recognise the feeling so that it could be brought under her direct conscious control.


You can learn about Molly's experience with hypnotherapy
here. In this interview Molly was happy to explain how the journey she went on with hypnotherapy (EMDR) was seen as a last resort, having tried everything herself beforehand to combat the anxiety through talking and sheer self will, Molly realised she was preventing herself from even visiting a doctor and therefore needed an alternative solution. Hypnotherapy was that solution and as we discover form Molly she was able to notice the benefits of treatment following her first session, and indeed she was noticing changes in attitude toward her anxiety on a weekly basis. The most dramatic revelation that the phobia had essentially been cured was seen first hand when Molly attended her final session. Feeling she was drained of energy Molly asked her doctor for a way to measure her blood glucose levels. Molly was provided with a blood sugar self test kit which she brought to her session. Remembering that a few months previously Molly hadn't even been able to speak about blood or needles, now here she was pricking her finger to draw blood with no signs of anxiety or fear. This demonstrated how powerful an empowered subconscious can be when dealing with any limiting belief. Once Molly had created her new point of reference which gave back her control the phobia essentially broke down at that stage.

The power of hypnosis, as one of the many tools used here at the Cumbria Hypnosis clinic, to deal with any phobia is becoming more and more accepted within the mainstream as an effective treatment for many generalised anxiety disorders. If you have arrived at this page with a general enquiry or a more specific problem then you may be able to find the solution you have been looking on this site. The process for contact is simple. Please fill in the enquiry form by following the
following link and request your free callback when you can explain your issue and have a chance to ask any questions which have not been covered in this article. For a full list of treatment follow the link here.


David Faratian




Anger in the workplace

angry-woman

Recently one of my male clients who we will refer to as Graham from Windermere in Cumbria approached the Cumbria hypnosis habit change clinic for help with his anger. Anger management refers to the techniques that people can use to control their feelings of extreme emotion and how they use these techniques to avoid situations which can trigger anger in certain situations and with certain people.

Unfortunately for Graham he was being challenged by his frustration around the behaviour of some of his work colleagues. The problem with anger management in the workplace is that negative behaviours can very quickly threaten not only important relationships but also can threaten the very livelihood of the person suffering with the anger issues. Generally speaking, problems with anger in the workplace are dealt with directly through the employer by sending the individual concerned to an anger management class. Through these classes, and with most anger management therapy, the individual is trained how to identify the triggers, and at the same time given strategies to neutralise the trigger. Indeed hypnotherapy and the coaching that we offer here at the cumbria hypnosis clinic can successfully teach an individual how to deal with these unproductive feelings, and to control the reactions at a subconscious level which can lead to more healthy responses rather than reactions. With the exclusive methods which we teach here at the clinic you are taught to rid yourself of the in a cause of unwanted anger. This method is powerful and the complete system and can be used to get the most successful outcome out of any situation involving anger. Hypnosis and hypnotherapy can give the tools necessary so that you can express your emotions in a healthier and safer way thereby avoiding unnecessary conflict and damaging outcomes whether in personal relationships, in work scenarios, or simply in terms of the self inflicted stress that anger can cause.

Since treatment, Graham has felt empowered so that his anger no longer feels like an automatic response over which he has no control. In his own words;

“At times all I could see was red and from that point onwards anything could happen. It really scared me. David has told me how there is no point resisting the emotion and through his strategies I have learnt to bring the emotion immediately under my control before it has chance to take over. What’s great about this therapy is that I don’t need to really try to calm down now it’s just the way I am. Since seeing David I am sleeping better and feel I have far more energy to channel into my life.”

With our clinic helping people across Cumbria, including Windermere with flexible appointment hours, this service may have and answer to your problem with anger. Follow this link for more information about the service OR click here to request your
free 20 minute consultation.



Mind Over Weight

hypnoband


Recently one of my clients, Claire from Ulverston in Cumbria came to see me for her years of struggle with her attempts to lose weight. She had literally tried everything she could think of and like so many people had spent hundreds of pounds searching for her holy grail. She had attempted numerous diets, traditional and a few unconventional ones which she had found on Facebook and the internet but each and every attempt had resulted in the same outcome which was short term weight loss and a sense of optimism followed very quickly by an abject sense of feeling dismayed and disheartened: “I felt like a complete failure and just went straight back to eating again, putting all the weight back on again” Claire is not alone, however. Her story, like 90% of people worldwide is one of failure to lose weight with diets long term. Why is it so hard? The answer is pretty simple really. The body was not designed to be starved. When you put your body into a famine all you end up doing is stressing the system and the body kicks in to recovery mode. What this means is that once you starve yourself the body makes you feel more hungry, more irritable and more focused on the foods you shouldn’t be thinking about rather than anything else, which then compels you to grab the first opportunity to eat as much as possible thereby undoing all of the work you may have already put in. The body will keep this up until the balance is restored and the ‘emergency’ of no food is over.

And yet the dieting industry which is worth billions of dollars happily pedals the false dream of the perfect body as long as you keep trying again and again. The perfect business model for the big name weight loss companies, which I don’t even have to mention, but not necessarily the perfect solution for those they sell to. Diets are artificial, they are boring and they are unsustainable long term. This is our starting point in this discussion. So is it a lost cause? Is the idea of controlling your weight the impossible dream? Well, yes and no. You see if you are always comparing yourself to the airbrushed models in Vogue or Cosmopolitan then you are setting yourself an unrealistic challenge to become something which doesn’t even really exist. If however you can condition yourself to be happy with a balanced and healthy body, where you are simply comfortable and happy in your own skin then very quickly your resistance around what you think you should and shouldn’t eat can become less important. If you can accept and understand that food is merely a function of your life and NOT the be all and end all then you can relax more and live with less stress about your body.

So if you don’t achieve weight loss through dieting then how do you do it? The clients I work with learn to control three key areas of their lives, which once dealt with help reshape their entire philosophy around food so that they cannot only control the weight but more importantly can learn to lose weight naturally without sacrificing anything in their lives. Claire told me “ This was like nothing I had ever done in the past, because at no point did I feel like I was having to give up anything or having to use will power”. What Claire had identified was the one main difference between experiences with diets and the gastric band hypnosis process which I teach. In diets you have to choose what you can and cannot eat. With gastric band hypnotherapy, using a variety of cutting edge mental strategies you do not need any effort or willpower because our starting point is that food will always be around you therefore why fight it? You can try denying yourself but you will always want the thing you are trying to avoid so just stop resisting and realise your environment will not change BUT you can! Once food doesn’t tempt you in quite the same way, your behaviour based on your emotions will start changing. The autopilot of the body also known as the subconscious can readily train your ability to know when you are full and can be trained to feel full quicker. Claire’s experience illustrates this: “ I had always known that gastric band operations existed, but I didn’t want to put my body through dangerous surgery and I certainly wasn’t willing to spend £8000. Once I was shown how to achieve similar results using hypnosis, I was amazed at how quickly I was feeling full and how much more food was left on my plate” Once you can have more subconscious awareness of feeling full quicker with less food then through sustained automatic balanced eating, the body begins to more efficiently process burning off existing fat and preserving less new fat. The metabolism can, in effect, return to normal and function more efficiently, doing its job properly after having maybe spent years speeding up and slowing down according to any yo-yo dieting attempts.


“I would recommend this service (Cumbria Hypnosis Habit Change Clinic) to anyone who is struggling with diets. It Takes all the effort out of losing weight, gives you confidence and enables you to live your life to fullest without sacrificing anything.” Louise (Barrow-in-Furness)

The mind and body working in balance can result in dramatic and long lasting weight loss, once you have been able to engage with the creative part of brain. The reason why this approach works, is simply because it does not rely on resisting your environment and yourself, instead it is about reframing your perceptions of food and how much you actually need to eat to have the energy you need to get from one mealtime to the next without running back to the fridge an hour later. If you want to find out more then visit our dedicated page HERE

Cumbria Hypnosis serves Cumbria, South Lakes including Ulverston, Kendal and Lancaster with flexible daytime and evening clinics to suit you. If you would like to have a no obligation 20 minute consultation where I will share exactly how this process can help you then you can contact me by clicking this link

Wishing you well

David Faratian











A shocking fact about smoking cessation


smoking-hypnotherapy-cumbria

In this month’s blog I want to discuss the three issues that trigger your cravings and urges to smoke, and the secret hypnotic techniques that can turn them into triggers that make you automatically lose the cravings and urges and reject the cigarettes.

In the next few minutes you are going to completely understand why it is so difficult to quit smoking, and the way hypnosis and NLP techniques can be highly effective psychological tool for neutralising the cravings and urges without having to resort to struggle or to willpower. 

Here's the first issue that triggers oral cravings and urges.

All smokers get cravings and urges to smoke because putting cigarettes into the mouth provides temporary relaxation and pleasure 

If you smoke, it all started when you were an infant. When you got upset, your mother stuck a bottle full of baby milk in your mouth or maybe a dummy.You got distracted by the bottle, relaxed and soon thereafter you fell asleep.Your inner computer, your unconscious mind got programmed so that now, when something is placed into your mouth, you get relaxation and pleasure from it. 

Now as an adult when you feel tense or nervous, you put cigarettes (or chewing tobacco) into your mouth for relaxation and pleasure.

Here's the second issue that triggers oral cravings. Smoking is a conditioned response 

Do you remember learning about the scientist named Pavlov in school? Pavlov rang a bell every time that he fed his dogs. After a few repetitions, all he had to do was just ring the bell, and the dogs would salivate.

If a person smokes and simultaneously drinks coffee, the mind takes a picture of the cigarette in the hand, and connect it to the image of the cup of coffee. Thereafter, every time the person looks at a cup of coffee, the minefields in the missing part of the picture. It flashes an image of the cigarette in the hand, and the person feels and urge to smoke

The mental picture of the cigarette is usually only at the unconscious level. In other words, the person may not be consciously aware of the picture. But the image is there, creating cravings and a compulsion to smoke. 


The same thing happens if you smoke and drive, or smoke and watch other people smoke, smoke and watch TV, or smoking do anything else. Soon almost everything causes you to unconsciously see a cigarette, and it is those unconscious images which make you feel cravings and a compulsion to smoke.

But what about the physical addiction? Isn't there a strong physical addiction? Isn't that what makes quitting so difficult question?
Here is an interesting fact. Relaxation and pleasure make up as much as 45% of the addiction. The conditioned responses make up 45% of the addiction BUT the physical addiction surprisingly only makes up 10% of the addiction

Of course the physical addiction is to nicotine among other psychoactive elements. Scientists tell us however, that the body metabolises all of the nicotine within 72 hours! So effectively after the 72 hours we are only left with the urges and compulsions caused by the mental emotional aspects of the smoking habit

So now I'm going to share with you how you can quickly get rid of your cravings, urges, and compulsions, because this will provide a solution to quitting without with drawl, stress substitution of food or having to rely on willpower. As already discussed the craving and compulsion part of the smoking addiction accounts for 90% of the addiction, so it is the mental aspects of smoking which cause the majority of the cravings and compulsions and not the physical addiction to nicotine. In other words your mind is mostly responsible for causing the cravings and compulsions.

But here's the good news what the mind can create what the mind can learn, The mind can also unlearn

Hypnosis works extremely well at eliminating the smoking addiction because it reaches deep into the part of the brain where the unwanted habits take route, the unconscious. When implemented by an expert hypnotist and NLP specialist you can quickly eliminate any compulsion

Without a compulsion to smoke you quit without feeling tension or anxiety, or suffering from cravings or with drawl. And since you're actually feel more relaxed, you won't have any desire to substitute food in place of the cigarettes!

Through the hypnosis and NLP programs available on this site you can conquer your battle with smoking and cigarettes without the struggle. You might be wondering why hypnosis and NLP (neurolinguistic programming), works so well. The reason is simple when you change the mental association, you also change the emotion which links you to the behaviour which in turn breaks down the habit. 

If you would like to find out more about this approach for dealing with your habit of smoking or any other compulsion or addiction then simply click on the CONTACT ME link at the bottom of this page or CLICK HERE for more information.
 



The Alternative Doctor

When people have problems where is the first place they turn? In most instances, if it can’t be dealt with through talking, it is either toward their doctor, their counsellor or their priest. With today’s technology most people will even ignore all the above and head straight for Dr.Google, that font of all knowledge and solutions. The internet can certainly provide many answers as can conventional medicine but these solutions usually involve medication, chemicals and sticking with what makes scientific sense, which may explain why alternative therapies rarely get a look in. How often do we type ‘how can I treat weight problems’ or ‘what helps with smoking addiction’ and get back a list of solutions which tend to leave out the many successful alternatives which have a proven track record but for some reason people don’t really know about, like homeopathy, reflexology, aromatherapy, nlp and of course hypnotherapy and hypnosis.

How many people really know that hypnotherapy can offer treatment for, and help with a full range of niche conditions including
Irritable Bowel Syndrome, migraines, sexual problems like impotence, premature ejaculation, vaginismus, insomnia, pain control, fears and phobias for flying, needles, heights, dentists, fear of horse riding, fear of childbirth to name but a few; general anxiety, addictions and habits like gambling, alcohol and sex, habit control for losing weight and smoking, solutions for relationship problems, anger management, improved self confidence, children’s problems like bed wetting, nightmares, bullying, and even relief from menopause symptoms, and developing better sports performance. The list is actually extensive and yet the fact that these complimentary remedies are ranked so low in search engines says a great deal about how narrow minded and conditioned we are as a society to be skeptical about anything that doesn’t always have a logical basis.

The truth is though, that alternative therapies like hypnotherapy are gaining more and more credibility from medical organisations like the British Medical Association even though the NHS (National Health Service), still appears to relegate hypnosis to the same category as trivial showmanship and voodoo. Fortunately though more and more general practitioners are welcoming alternatives for conditions like hypertension and
sleeping disorders because often the Doctor can only treat symptoms with a medical cause and in the case of primary or essential high blood pressure, in 90% of cases there simply is no medical cause and so hypnotherapy, meditation and relaxation strategies are regarded as the most sensible route. Insomnia, like hypertension can often have no visible medical solution because the symptoms are driven by latent stress and therefore a psychological alternative is needed.

Most conditions, which have a medical diagnosis are undoubtedly aggravated, at least in some respect, by psychological roots and the causes are more often than not given the title ‘stress’, so it certainly stands to reason that neuro-linguistic therapies come into their own when dealing with the vast majority of medical conditions.

Certain phobias, which for years were treated with several sessions of psychiatric interventions, can now be dealt with through rapid phobia NLP in just a handful of sessions and more importantly, the cure is permanent. NLP is also particularly effective for habit control and although weight loss and smoking are a given, the efficacy of NLP to deal with habits as niche as addiction to
alcohol or gambling, is hard to disprove. The reason is also logical, because despite medicine being able to dull or numb certain emotional triggers, which lead to the compulsions and obsessions of the habits mentioned, they rarely offer enough of a change in attitude or behavior, which could be seen as sustainable and visible in the long run. Tranquillizers and anti-depressants cannot take away the emotional attachment a gambler has for the momentary win or the person who exercises an unhealthy interest in porn because of the perceived high. NLP and hypnosis can however recondition the patterns of behavior by firstly teaching the person how to disconnect emotionally from any ‘buzz’ associated with habit and then helping them to develop recognition strategies for neutralizing the first signs of the old pattern.
In fact the exciting realization that alternative therapies can not only be effective for standard habit control and phobias, but can more directly affect the human immune system is opening up the debate about complimentary therapy even more. The relatively new study of psychoneuroimmunology has shown scientifically that there is a relationship between the mind and the human immune system. Encouraging the client to think about their immune system, and focus on what it can do for them, does have a beneficial effect. Guided visualisation and positive affirmations, while either meditating through self-hypnosis products, or being treated more directly in real time by a professional hypnotherapist can give the psychological edge a patient needs to deal more productively with conditions even as serious as cancer.
This clinic offers treatment for all the areas discussed whether you live in Cumbria, Barrow-in-Furness, Dalton-in-Furness, Ulverston, Kendal, Windermere, Whitehaven or you are looking for more indirect supportive measures for self-hypnosis through our full range of audio relaxation
self- hypnosis CDs and mp3s