Dr John Barry’s Blog

Male Psychology PCOS Hypnotherapy

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Experience Deep Relaxation with Hypnotherapy

One thing my clients enjoy most is experiencing deep relaxation. I use relaxation quite a lot in therapy for two main reasons. Firstly, hypnosis is an excellent natural method of inducing deep relaxation. Secondly, relaxation itself can help with a range of psychological and physiological issues. Hypnotherapy uses a range of techniques to induce physiological relaxation through several methods, for example, specific breathing techniques and muscle relaxation

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Why do some people believe hypnotherapy is fast, safe and effective?

There are lots of treatments out there for a range of issues, so why choose hypnotherapy?In my blog this week I present three good reasons. Your reasons for choosing hypnotherapy might be the same as mine: hypnotherapy is fast, effective and safe. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to support this suggestion, not just from my own experience as a therapist and researcher, but from a wide body of other research published in peer-reviewed journals.

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Relationship Problems? Hypnotherapy Can Help

Research evidence emphasises how important relationships are to wellbeing (e.g. Barry & Daubney, 2017). The good news is that hypnotherapy can help to fix relationship issues. You are not defined forever by your past, but it can be really helpful to realise when problems with relationships as an adult can stem from problems with relationships in the past. Once the root of the problem is identified, you can use hypnotherapy to fix the root of the problem. It's much less trouble to put right than you might think.

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How to Stop Smoking with Hypnosis

Helping people to stop smoking with hypnotherapy is one of the most common requests in my years as a hypnotherapist. So many people today want the benefits of stop smoking hypnosis. London is full of people who are desperate to quit but don’t know how. What is the best way to stop smoking? During my hypnotherapy training in the late 1990s, I was very impressed by a review article which compared various methods of smoking cessation and found that “hypnosis was the most successful single therapy” (Viswesvaran & Schmidt, 1992).

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Hypnotherapy Can Help Reduce Stress and Anxiety

The NHS estimates that 1 in 6 people have experienced anxiety &/or depression in the past week (McManus et al, 2016). Many of these people have been prescribed anxiety medication. In the UK, men have started to value their mental health more than their physical health (Barry & Daubney, 2017), and the stress of maintaining a healthy ‘work-life balance’ is almost impossible for everyone.

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Three reasons you will miss pubs when they go extinct

It has often been said that the local pub is an invaluable social hub, especially in rural communities. To those of you who weren’t convinced of this already, perhaps now that the pub is becoming an endangered species due to covid-19 lockdowns, you might be changing your minds. So what exactly are we losing? Within the rather nebulous idea of the social hub you could unpack many useful activities that are important on a human level, and here are three related to men’s mental health. 

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Ethics, ideology and the APA

At last, the twelfth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. The American Psychological Association (APA) produced guidelines in late 2018 on how to conduct therapy with boys and men. Some parts of the guidelines are, in my opinion, welcome (Guideline 9 has lots of good advice), but other parts of the guidelines were perplexingly ideological and caused a wave of critical reaction, including my own blog.

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The impact of gender politics on therapy

This is the eleventh blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. People go to therapy usually because they feel distressed and are seeking professional advice from someone who is skilled in therapy and will care about their feelings. 

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Bias in how we celebrate gender-typical behaviour

This is the tenth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. In 1966 The Beatles began recording their classic album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at the iconic Abbey Road Studios (formerly EMI Studios). The 1960s was an experimental era of ‘anything goes’ and psychedelic drugs like LSD.

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The relevance of male psychology to modern South Africa

This is the ninth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. Given generations of trauma in South Africa, the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) set up a psychology degree which equipped graduates with practical counselling skills based on contemporary Western ideas. Sounds like a fantastic idea, so what could possibly go wrong?

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Do women favour women more than men favour men?

This is the sixth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. Today’s blog is one of the most creative of the PJP special issue. PhD candidate Nathan Hook conducted an experiment involving a hypertext game based on a fictional story about Arthurian knight on a mythical quest.

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