Lockdown 3.0

How is everyone doing?

We’ve made it to the end of the longest January, well done! If all you’ve done is cope, that’s enough.

I know many people have felt under pressure to ‘achieve’ something during this time, so they feel that the time has not been wasted. It’s so easy to compare ourselves to others on social media who appear to have transformed their homes/bodies/businesses. (I’ve done it myself!). But when my logical brain kicks in I remind myself that everyone’s circumstances/time constraints/finances/mental load are very different. I’ve done my best and nobody can ask more than that (as my hypnosis track says!)

Our negative primitive brains make it easy to dwell on what we can’t do at the moment, which makes us feel worse. So how about changing those ‘can’ts’ to ‘cans’ and thinking about how you can do things differently?

You may not be able to go to the gym right now, but you can join an online class. You can go outdoors and walk/run/exercise. You can’t meet up with your friends, but you can schedule a Zoom meeting, facetime or just an old fashioned phone call. Exercise and interaction with others give us a big boost in feel good chemicals!

Perhaps you can’t work right now but you can take some time to do some marketing/ update your website or learn something new. We don’t always have to be productive, sometimes the best thing you can do is rest; take the nap, have the early night. We know that good quality sleep is vital for our mental health, so for tonight the ironing can wait!

What is solution focused hypnotherapy?

Solution focused hypnotherapy combines two great therapeutic techniques.

The first part of the session is based on solution focused brief therapy. We know that dwelling on the problem isn’t helpful and actually makes it worse. We can get so lost in the problem that we can’t see the first small step towards our desired outcome. So we acknowledge the problem during our initial meeting and then move on to how we’d like things to be. Unlike counselling we don’t go over the past, so it’s great for people who want to move forward without going into depth about past problems.

I may ask questions such as “If this session really helped you today, how would you know? What would be different afterwards?” This encourages you to find your own solutions. We all have them!

Once we’ve built a picture of how we’d like things to be (positive visualisation) then we use trance to empty out that stress bucket! Trance is a normal and natural thing we all go into on a daily basis anyway, like when we’re driving and don’t remember passing a certain place. Most of us have the ability to go into a light trance during the therapy session. Some go much deeper. Either way it’s relaxing, enjoyable and effective! Clients often describe how amazing they feel for the next few days. Hypnosis uses trance to encourage a natural brain processing state in which we can gain clarity and go away feeling confident, calm and ready to make positive change.

Mindful eating

If you have been ‘on a diet’ for most of your life, then you will probably already know they don’t work! Not long term anyway. As we always say in solution focused therapy- the more you focus on a problem; the more of a problem it becomes.

So you can guess what happens when we spend our time worrying about what we can’t eat. We also programme our minds to repeat the same behaviours over and over by creating neural pathways. So if we usually have a cup of tea and a handful of biscuits everyday at 11am, then sure enough each day at 11am our brain is encouraging us to do it again, whether we are hungry or not!

I am pleased to be offering specific mindful eating sessions. If you would like some more information on this please contact me and I will call or email you.