Find out how hypnosis can free you from the burden of negative feelings and thoughts

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

If women are more hypnotizable, why do men find it easier to use hypnosis to stop smoking? Everyone is different, so when people come to my London clinic for hypnosis to stop smoking, I always conduct a detailed exploration of their habit. As well as things like when the client first started smoking and their current triggers to smoking, I need to ask them a few extra questions, depending on whether the client is male or female. Why do I do this? Let me explain.

The relationship between stress and fertility is a complex and fascinating topic. Hypnotherapy for anxiety might be one way to help. My PhD explored psychological aspects of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), a condition in which fertility problems are relatively common. I have researched and developed a Stress Management programme specifically for PCOS (Barry et al, 2017), which significantly reduced anxiety, depression, and stress hormones.

Depression is relatively common in PCOS. Christmas can often feel like a time when we should be happy, so any sources of unhappiness – such as the troubling symptoms of PCOS - can seem especially hurtful at this time of year. I hope everyone has a fantastic Christmas, but you don’t have to be a psychologist to realise that this time of year can have stressful for people with medical conditions, or other stressful things to deal with. For women with PCOS, some typical Christmas stressors are:

The word ‘hypnos’ is the name of the Greek god of sleep. This in itself would suggest that hypnotherapy will help with sleep problems, and indeed there is research evidence for this (see meta-analysis by Lam et al, 2015). Although people under hypnosis are not literally asleep it is a relatively fast, safe and effective way to improve insomnia. Another benefit is that hypnotherapy helps without the use of medications, which is a especially useful to people who would otherwise take medications that can be addictive or have unpleasant side effects.

As a Chartered Psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society (BPS), I was very interested to stumble across a review of hypnosis by the BPS. The review was led by the renowned psychologist Professor Michael Heap and other experts. It was published in 2001, shortly after I started practicing hypnotherapy in London. The findings of the report are very interesting and I quote in full below the section on the effectiveness of hypnotherapy for anxiety and many other conditions:

Many people start using e-cigarettes as a way to stop smoking but then end up addicted to vaping. A survey of 12,000 British adults found that 40% of people use e-cigarettes to help them stop smoking cigarettes

Hypnotherapy for weight loss is one of the most popular requests for therapists. For people who find they don’t have the time or motivation to stick to a diet & exercise regime or find medication has too many side effects, hypnotherapy is often the answer. But how does hypnotherapy compare to other methods of weight loss?

Research shows that one of the key predictors of psychological well-being is job satisfaction. When people are stressed at work, this not only impacts their productivity but can make the other areas of their life miserable too.

Some people have made an incredible contribution to hypnosis and hypnotherapy over the years. There is a rich and long history behind hypnotherapy, and I am going to mention just a few of the people who have, for various reasons, made an impact on my interest in hypnosis.

There are many stress management programmes in London, but only one has been developed especially for PCOS.

1/ Tailor therapy to the client’s personality: Most therapists will agree that therapy should meet the needs and capabilities of the client. An extension of this principal was created by US psychiatrist Dr Milton Erikson, who is sometimes called ‘the father of modern hypnosis’.

People generally prefer to feel in control of their lives, and although we voluntarily give up control in many aspects of our lives (e.g. when we go under general anaesthetic, or when we are a passenger in a plane) there can be something a bit sinister about the idea of our minds being under the control of another person.