Are you looking for hypnotherapy to help you with a challenge in your life? Perhaps you simply googled, hypno therapy near me, and arrived at this article. I work as a hypnotherapist in London. I hope that this article will explain more about what hypno therapy is and how it can help you too.
What is hypno therapy near me all about?
Hypno therapy or rather hypnotherapy, is sometimes explained as an “altered state of consciousness” in which an individual can experience an increased receptiveness and responsiveness to their inner experiential perceptions. I know this sounds complicated, but it really isn’t! Hypnotherapy is a relaxed state in which the mind is more open to suggestions to bring about positive changes. As a hypnotherapist working in London, I will use suggestions to influence the client’s unconscious mind while their conscious mind remains relaxed. This therapeutic change is brought about with the cooperation of the client and can produce wonderful results.
Hypno therapy and the conscious and unconscious mind
The analogy of an iceberg is often used as a metaphor to distinguish the parts of the mind and how they work together. On the surface of the water, we see the conscious mind, which is actually the smaller part of the mind. The conscious mind is the part that we usually think of as “my mind.” The conscious mind is associated with rational thinking, decision-making, analysing and the forming of judgements. It also will actively sort out what is perceived but its capacity is more limited than we often think. Everything else that it is unable to be processed falls below the water-line into the unconscious mind.
The unconscious mind acts as a support network of resources for the conscious mind. Once you have overcome the conscious learning stages in activities such as driving or cycling, they then become automatic (unconscious). These various skills are then directed by the unconscious mind. This means that on a regular journey, we can easily commute to work and back without being consciously aware of how, we just do it, as if on autopilot. Our conscious mind is still responsible for filtering the important information such as ensuring we do stop at a red light or swerve around a pothole. However, it’s really the unconscious mind busy coordinating all of these once difficult ‘mini’ skills into an automatic pattern of events. Since hypno therapy works with the unconscious, change is more effective and lasts longer. If you were looking for hypno therapy near me, I’m sure that already you are seeing that hypnotherapy is power stuff!
Hypnotherapy is great for imagining goals, events, feelings, dialogue or situations etc. in the most positive way possible, removing addictions and traumas. This is since the unconscious mind can act now to ‘think’ differently. So, for example, athletes can use mental rehearsal techniques to positively imagine themselves performing their event at their ‘peak.’ The hypno imagined success creates chemical and neural changes that project the athlete closer to their imagined reality, which is great! So then it can already truly feel as if the body and mind has ‘lived’ or become that positive experience. When placed back in the sports arena, our athlete can perform these desired outcomes uninhibited, since the athlete has relearned them into automatic mode. Hypnotherapy is very powerful for enhancing performance.
Hypno therapy and trauma
However, the communication between each part of the mind is not always positive. Sometimes we do experience trauma, bullying or unpleasant events which influence how we feel. So, negative events can create a negative pattern of responses. Consider a negative cycle of repeated aggressive criticism from an authority figure. This might be one’s manager at work. Whilst being criticised, the employee might register stress responses from their autonomic nervous system such as increased heart rate, sweating and muscle tension. The unconscious mind feels like its experiencing past feelings of worthlessness and anxiety. The employee may then worry about their job security (negative mental rehearsal) and the implications that it will have on their life. All not great at all. If you like, the unpleasant emotional and physical feelings are likely to create a negative ‘memory trace’ from the unconscious mind. So a trauma is created and then later on, just thinking about your manager afterwards can cause you to relive the events, deepening the negative memory trace. So now perhaps when there’s the anticipation of meeting them again, the same negative reactions are likely to be triggered. Hypno therapy can help reprogramme those images and feelings.
How hypno therapy near me can help
Hypno therapy creates a more relaxed mind and helps that mind become more receptive to communication without conscious interference. Visualisation is just one tool that, as a London hypnotherapist, I often will use. Other approaches may vary according to how the client takes in information. So, that could be visually, audibly or kinaesthetically. For some clients regression can be the focus of the treatment. This might be when the aim is to re-attach positive feelings into past events that have left a negative mark on their self-esteem.
Hypno therapy suggestions can be used to create powerful internal dialogue patterns (affirmations). For example encouraging a person to repeat internally, “each day in every way, my life is getting better and better,”. This boosts a client’s ego when facing a difficult situation. Physiological anxiety symptoms such as muscle tension during a performance can be re-educated into relaxation responses.
What is Hypno therapy?
Hypno therapy, or rather hypnotherapy is the therapeutic use of hypnosis as opposed to something that might be used in a stage show (Think Derren Brown!), which is aimed at entertainment. Hypno therapy can help create a therapeutic change in a client’s thoughts, beliefs, values, feelings and behaviour. A client might arrive with a particular symptom that they want treated. As a hypnotherapist, I use a variety of strategies to treat you, the client. This might vary from providing a temporary relief of the symptom. For example, with a recent London client with insomnia, helping them to relearn a positive process that will help sleep. Or the range of strategies I use could be more in-depth, if the symptoms are acute and have been long-term. In the latter situation, I might uncover and treat suppressed causes and subsequent triggering events that have developed your symptoms. Hypno therapy techniques might be about trying to disassociate or release the negative emotions in these events. This can help you to transform them into positive associations, likely to influence a more long-term therapeutic change.
Types of hypno therapy
There are various terms used with hypnotherapy such as holistic, remedial, curative, insight, clinical etc. Each one varies in its emphasis and can vary in approach depending on the particular therapist using it!
Suggestions and visualisation are the main tools used in hypno therapy
Direct and indirect suggestions have the advantage of being quick and effective (sometimes just one session) for habits such as smoking, weight reduction or nail-biting etc. I still get that wonderful feeling of satisfaction when a transformation takes place quickly, but as an experienced hypnotherapist, I am more aware of ‘why’ it has happened in this way (the client might believe that hypno therapy makes you change). This situation can generate many client referrals but usually with the same high expectation. It would be as if a new client brings a “can you do to me what you did to them?” agenda which over-simplifies the therapeutic dynamics involved in each consultation and with each new client.
At the other end of the continuum are more analytical forms of hypnotherapy. As a hypnotherapist, I would use the direct suggestion to start the process and monitor any changes as the course progresses. If there appears to be a block to these suggestions, it could be because the negative feelings and symptoms are being reactivated by something in the client’s present situation. Or perhaps the condition has a strong history of past traumatic incidents that have remained suppressed but are being re-triggered. It is common for people who wish to resolve a past trauma to look to hypnotherapy for help, and may then search for hypno therapy near me. If this was the case for you, get in touch to see how I can help.
Analytical hypnotherapy (sometimes called (hypno-analysis) is thus aimed at identifying the underlying reason for a presenting problem. By working through the causes, I can find that it helps to make the symptom become more redundant. It can be used for complex conditions such as addictions, depression, eating disorders, self-confidence and self-worth, obsessions and compulsions, sexual problems and anxiety-related skin conditions etc. Or it can be used for more straight forward treatments like habits, but which have a more complex history.
Analytical hypnotherapy has the advantage of providing a more long-term change to the conditions presented. I find that it can help treat some of the associated issues for which anxiety, self-confidence and self-esteem are commonly linked. The client benefits by having an increased self-awareness which can help them in other aspects of their life.
Does hypno therapy have links with other therapies?
How a hypnotherapist uses their techniques, skills and experience will have a huge impact on the therapeutic outcome. To consider hypnotherapy as an isolated therapy, that is ‘done’ to the client, would ignore some of these broader dynamics. Even with a basic suggestion, there are numerous ways that a therapist can place emphasis on phrasing, style, imagery, timing etc. that can influence change in the client.
Hypno therapy and NLP
Let’s look at NLP (or Neuro-Linguistic Programming). NLP is something I use a lot at my London office. NLP focuses on the connection between neurological processes, language, and behaviour patterns that have been learned through experience and organised to achieve specific goals. NLP has its roots in Ericksonian (Milton Erickson) hypno therapy and can simplify the processes of therapeutic change with some very rapid results. Many of the techniques used involve placing the client into a light relaxation or hypno therapy (trance-state). As an NLP therapist I might use an ‘anchoring’ technique. For example to help evoke a new positive response to an old negative habit. This involves, for example, replacing the physical reach for a cigarette (negative somatic response) when feeling tense, to a new relaxation response anchored by squeezing two fingers together. It can really be very effective.
We generate positive and negative anchors (habitual responses) frequently in our lives. The smell of a particular food can create a salivating (desired) response with a memory of when we first enjoyed that food. Television advertisers are renowned for anchoring a positive mood towards their products. They are repeated to viewers who are in a light ‘TV trance’ with their critical faculties suspended. A hypnotherapist who has altered a response to an old stimulus will have set up an anchor in their client whether they call it ‘NLP’ or a process within ‘hypnosis’.
A hypnotherapist can use regression techniques extensively to ‘re-frame’ the meaning of traumatic experiences. Regression can also help the client increase their self-awareness so that they are ready to make changes for themselves. In this context, a hypnotherapist might be considered to be adopting a psychotherapeutic (psychotherapy) approach. They cannot call themselves a psychotherapist (or psycho-analyst) however, even though during their course of treatment, they have utilised some of the best ideas from these differing schools of thought. In my opinion, using hypnotherapy can be a very effective way of using positive strategies from other therapeutic disciplines, but still within a ‘hypnotic’ context.
Hypno therapy near me in London
If you live in London, hypno therapy can be found nearby as I am based in King’s Cross and so easily reachable from most parts of London. Remote hypnotherapy is also available online for those who prefer not to travel, nationally for UK residents and internationally for those around the world including USA and Canada. Get in touch today to find out more about how hypnotherapy can help you.
