Hypnotherapy has a wide variety of applications, from overcoming struggles to self-improvement. Some of the most common reasons for seeking Hypnotherapy are below. Because each person and situation is unique, I always like to have an obligation-free conversation before your first session to determine whether Hypnotherapy is right for your circumstances and how I can best help you reach your desires outcomes and goals.
Stress Management and Burnout
Life poses many challenges, some of which seem impossible to overcome. One thing that is true though, is that it is a whole lot harder to manage and overcome when we are in a cycle of chronic stress and overwhelm, often leading to burnout. Burnout feels like a special kind of tiredness that you just don’t bounce back from, even with rest. It can feel hopeless and exhausting.
Hypnotherapy is a very effective tool in managing stress and preventing burnout before it happens. It is also a powerful reset if you find yourself already there.
Anxiety
Experiences of anxiety are varied in content and intensity. You may have felt that wave of overwhelm, the panic, those unrelenting thoughts that cycle around and that need to escape with nowhere to go. It sometimes expresses as expectations of negative outcomes or gives you every excuse under the Sun why you need to avoid getting outside your uncomfortable comfort zone. You may be tired of feeling like you’re not being understood by those who have never experienced it and having no real way of explaining it to them. I get you.
Anxiety can be an awful thing to live with. It limits you from experiencing a lot of the joy and freedom that you observe in others who just seem to be able to get out there and do the things they want to do. There is definitely a way forward though – even if you can’t feel it right now. It just takes patience and a commitment to the process of teaching the subconscious mind another way. Hypnotherapy has helped many people just like you.
Phobia Management
Phobias can be crippling, preventing you from living your life with freedom and confidence. They can sometimes be embarrassing and don’t make sense to other people who don’t experience the same unconscious responses that you do. They can get in the way of certain social gatherings, or adventures or even just feeling safe in your own home. Some of the more common phobias can really get in the way of career progression, adventures, even relationships. No matter what your phobia is attached to, Hypnotherapy can help you break the cycle and overcome the limitations of phobias permanently.
Addictions
Addictions are a really good example of where the conscious and subconscious parts of the minds don’t communicate very effectively from an alert state. How many times have you thought to yourself, ‘I know I should stop’, or even told yourself that you have stopped, only to find yourself back in the position you said you didn’t want to be in? It’s not your fault and you are not broken. It’s just how your mind works on autopilot. Whether it’s smoking, eating, drinking, social media, or even an addiction to reward/validation/approval in relationships, it’s all related and all can be improved by understanding the role of subconscious attachments and beliefs. It is important to note here that I do not claim Hypnotherapy as a magic cure for addictions. There are important neurological and genetic factors that contribute to an individual’s tendency towards particular behaviours. The part where Hypnotherapy plays an important role is in the awareness of deeply held beliefs, emotions and triggers. Just as with every other Hypnotherapy process, once those core beliefs and emotional attachments have been identified, it is much easier to shift them along with their corresponding behaviours.
Relationships with Food
Food is central to so many cultures and social situations. On its own that I can be a wonderful part of life but when intense emotional attachments or resistances to food arise, it can become a seriously crippling experience. It can become really tiresome trying to explain to people why certain situations around food give you an almost compulsive reaction, either towards or away from food. Many people just don’t understand. Often it’s easier just to avoid or hide your situation from people as best you can but it’s not without its difficulties. Those situations are extremely difficult to avoid. Recognising an unhelpful pattern with food is a very important step that can be very difficult to arrive at. If you have reached a point where you suspect that your relationship has become unhealthy and you’d like to address it, Hypnotherapy is a great place to start. By getting into a clear state of mind, it is possible to understand some of the root emotional causes behind your experiences and behaviour. Being aware is a significant step towards permanent change and from there, you are able to make the shifts that you are ready to make.
Relationships with Body Image
It is impossible, unless you are living under a rock, to have avoided being influenced in some way by media portrayals of what a body ‘should’ look like. On the surface, these portrayals look relatively harmless. It’s just advertising, right? However there exists a layer of communication that is less obvious and more dangerous – the idea that your innate value and social acceptability is determined by the way you look, which is hooked into a very powerful motivator of human behaviour – the need for social acceptance. The most dangerous part of this cultural phenomenon is that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy with real-world consequences. People literally starve for validation and will go to greater and greater lengths meet these impossible standards.
I am not, for a moment, saying that being conscious of your image is a problem, or even wishing to change it. Hypnotherapy is all about freedom from limitations through self-awareness. Ultimately, my approach to helping you get the most out of your body is in helping you understand what really motivates you so you can be free to pursue it in a healthy and sustainable way.
Self-esteem and Confidence
How many times have you wished you could have said something or done something but been held back by some unknown force within? Whether it be talking to that person you’ve had a crush on, asking for help when you needed it, demanding better treatment or asking for a pay rise – there are so many areas in which our confidence plays a vital role in outcomes. For many who experience the crippling effects of low self-esteem and confidence, it can be an extremely frustrating life. You can see the life you want, and could have, but there’s a gulf between you and that place that feels impossible to traverse. Maybe you’ve tried to overcome your limitations before and been met with the crushing and devastating reality of rejection or failure.
The good news is, there are reasons why these feelings hold you back and they can be changed. The first step is understanding where they come from, which Hypnotherapy is really good at assisting you with. The next part is about giving your subconscious mind a better way to respond – to replace old self-limiting beliefs with new, more compatible ones. It sounds so simple when you read it, and it can be! Once again, it’s not a magic trick. There will most likely be things you’ll need to let go of and sometimes it can be uncomfortable to accept, but it really can happen for you.
Chronic Pain
Chronic pain can be exhausting in a way that can only be understood when experienced. In its own way, chronic pain can create a special kind of hopelessness, especially in cases where there seems to be no medical reason for it and no obvious solution.
While Hypnotherapy makes no claims to be able to diagnose, treat or cure, it can be useful in two ways when dealing with the experience of pain. The first, is in addressing the way pain is perceived. Whilst hypnotised, people are able to experience reduced and even eliminated pain sensation and these effects can be long-lasting. The second, is in addressing any emotional distress that introduces intensity into the pain cycle or even creates psychosomatic pain. The mind can have a power effect on the stress-response as well as experiences of pain in general, especially if the pain is actually emotional pain rather than physical.
Insomnia
Have you ever dreaded the setting sun knowing that you’ll most likely have to endure another horrendous night of sleeplessness, where tiredness is no-longer just a word but a never-ending cycle of suffering and numbness? Insomnia is a horrible and debilitating experience that bleeds into every part of life. Like many other struggles listed above, the hopelessness is visceral, desperate and never-ending.
There can be many reasons why you have interrupted sleep patterns. Some of them may actually be physical or chemical. In the case however, that the cause is actually mental/emotional, Hypnotherapy can be a very effective option for overcoming this cycle.
Depression
Have you ever found yourself trying to explain to people in your life that you’re not just ‘sad’, that there’s no rational reason that you feel this way? There are no words that can convey the experience of depression to someone who has not experienced it. I use the word hopeless a lot with reference to the struggles I help people overcome but this feeling goes beyond hopelessness into a realm beyond words. Depression is a whole body, whole-being experience that can be all-consuming at its worst. It’s not that you don’t know there are things worth being happy for. In fact, sometimes acknowledging them can feel worse because it shines a light on how for down the hole you are – that you can’t even feel good about the good things in life anymore. This situation can be a very complex interplay of chemicals, structures, social factors, beliefs and perceptions and should be approached with delicate care.
Hypnotherapy is one of many complementary tools that can be of great benefit to someone struggling with depression – especially when locating and reframing deeply held negative beliefs or intense emotional charges. It is recommended that this approach is used in conjunction with conventional medical/psychiatric assessment in developed cases or chronic cases.
Trauma
Life is not always fair and sometimes things happen that are totally unexpected and out of our control. Some of these events can be very intense, overwhelming, confusing and leave us less stable, less trusting, more fearful and generally worse off in terms of our individual freedom and joy in life. Trauma comes in many forms – as a result of things that have happened to us personally, things that have happened to those we care about. Some of these experiences have the power to totally transform our relationship to the world and other people from that moment on.
Even if you have been living with the crippling effects of trauma a long time, Hypnotherapy can give you access to deep, significant healing without necessarily having to re-live your experience or be re-traumatised by it. There are many ways to get to the core of what is going on for you so you can liberate yourself from all that has been holding you back.
Medical Hypnotherapy
The umbrella of Medical Hypnotherapy covers any way in which Hypnotherapy can be a support to those undergoing medical treatment. These include, but are not limited to:
Pain control. Hypnotherapy may help with pain due to burns, surgery, cancer, childbirth, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, jaw problems, dental procedures and headaches. It has also been used in the place of anaesthetic in cases where it is not possible to incorporate conventional pain control due to allergy or other complications.
Diet control: Hypnotherapy can be very effective in reducing appetite and influencing behaviours that contribute to weight gain.
Medical phobias: In cases where intense fear may create a barrier to effective medical treatment, for example, fear of doctors, hospitals, medical procedures, fear of death, fear of needles, nausea or vomiting at the sight of blood… Hypnotherapy can be a great tool in preparation, and along side medical professionals and procedures in reducing fear and stress responses and reducing suffering around procedures and recovery.
Personal Growth and Development
The subconscious part of your mind holds the information to every aspect of your experience of life. Deep within the layers of your story are all of the elements that have shaped you into you, for better or worse. By putting yourself in the ideal state to explore, your mind will naturally show you areas that are holding you back and you can have access to clear communication in the areas you know you want to improve.
Two people in the same situation may be having totally different experiences of that situation. One may be having a wonderful time and the other, a terrible time. It is not the situation that dictates that outcome but what each of those individuals holds onto as being true about it. If you would like to get the most out of your life situation/enjoyment of the experience of living, the subconscious mind hold the key. Hypnotherapy is a great way to get you in touch with patterns and processes that are otherwise obscured by conscious filters of the mind.
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