An update on my work over the last few months:

Weight Loss

The Hypno-band weight loss programme works well.  However, my statistics show that depression can get in the way.  Weight gain often started in teenage years at the same time as depression.  Hypnotherapy is a pretty effective way of overcoming depression, so when weight loss programmes aren’t going well it may be best to focus on lifting the depression.  When the depression goes so much improves.

Stop Drinking

So what’s the drink-problem test?  Well the drinker is ok!  He or she doesn’t have a problem!  So we need to ask the drinker “Who else is affected by your drinking”? And then “How do you feel about that”?  If they are causing someone close to them pain and they don’t like the idea, they may just have a think….

I have helped several clients with this recently and their lives no longer involve drinking. It’s just not part of their lives and they can do so much more!

Anxiety – Panic Attacks

These are often feelings from the past making themselves felt in the present.  If I can find out where those feelings came from and talk them through logically with the client, those anxious feelings go, or if they don’t, are much more manageable.  If the origin of the feelings remains unknown, I help the client work through a series of exercises, which seem to help a lot.

Stop Smoking

Of course it’s the single best thing anyone can do to improve their health!  We don’t NEED to smoke.  We spent many years of our life not smoking and were perfectly happy.  Most newly pregnant women give up straightaway and do so easily. The approach I use involves a “change of identity” where the smoker becomes a non-smoker.  It’s as if they have never smoked.

Stroke Recovery

I’m working in partnership with GRASP St Albans.  We are working on a program of Enhanced Visualization and Exercise to restore movement to Stroke Survivors ​http://vitalminds.org.uk/stroke-recovery/ Early results are very encouraging, but we need more clients to really prove what we are doing is effective.  If you know someone who has survived a stroke please put them in touch.

Young People Finding Things Tough

Did we just sail through our teenage years and early adult life?  Think about it!  There were probably things you struggled with and those things may still be affecting you today.  Today’s teenagers are under a LOT of pressure.  They suffer from exam stress and find their first term at University hard and some drop out.  They struggle with self-image and confidence.   A couple of sessions of counselling and some hypnotherapy to replace negative views with positive ones, can give them the boost they need.

Hypnotherapy can help you to change the way you feel and the way you behave.  For example, if you have a bad habit like smoking, overeating,or drinking too much, a few hypnotherapy sessions will allow you to make the changes you want.  This happens because, with the help of the therapist, your subconscious mind becomes aligned with your conscious mind.  Simply put; If you are trying to change something consciously, unless you have asked your subconscious mind for it’s permission, nothing much is going to happen!  So how does this work?  Well, in hypnosis, the therapist makes positive, helpful suggestions to the client’s subconscious mind and they way they feel and what they do begins to change.  For example, with weight loss clients we agree that they should eat three good, healthy meals a day.  They find that after a week or 10 days they are doing this and have stopped eating unhealthy snacks.

This article in the Mail Online about weight loss, tells us what Hypnotherapists using the Hypno-band program already know. You can change your eating habits and you can do it quickly, with the help of a qualified Hypno-band practitioner.

My client’s eating habits change after the first session and the quickly become accustomed to eating healthy nutritious foods.  These new eating habits become part of their lifestyle.  The use of MRI technology to see changes taking place in the brain simply confirms what experienced Hypnotherapists have known for decades – habits can be changed and changed quickly.

65% of my Weight Loss clients also suffer from Depression.  Frequently, that depression started when they were teenagers and they don’t know why.

Depression has led them to “self medicate” with food.  Each meal, or the many snacks they consume through the day, gives them a little “hit” and they feel a bit better.  Of course, that feeling of well-being is immediately replaced by guilt, or bad feelings about themselves. Needless to say, the cycle continues and unneeded food is consumed throughout the day.

Conventional, weight loss programs like the Hypno-band may work because as clients lose the weight they feel better and the depression lifts.  If the conventional method is unsuccessful lifting the depression is essential.

Bad feelings associated with depression are often associated with childhood events, which the client simply does not remember.  All that remains is the powerful “feeling” which compels them to eat.  So it’s a feeling from the past occurring in the present.

Hypnotherapy is the best way of finding, exploring and understanding those feelings.  It allows the client, with the help of the therapist, to fill in the blanks in their “life narrative” and make sense of it.  This takes place over two or three, one hour sessions and the client feels a sense of relief  and renewed empowerment.  So if you feel that depression or low self-esteem is getting in the way of your weight loss efforts, please click on the contact form