The therapies I offer and how it all works
" …we keep bringing the past into the present. We can't change the past, but we can change our relationship to the past." - Gabor Maté
I use talking therapies to help you uncover why you do what you do, and guide you to release unconscious habits and responses from the past that are causing you distress or holding you back from achieving your goals. This enables you to make positive, and sometimes quite profound, changes in your life.
On this page:
Reality, perception and the subconscious mind
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one" - Albert Einstein
Reality is not absolute. Our experience of reality is filtered through our experiences and a learned understanding of our world.
The subconscious mind cannot distinguish between information obtained from the physical senses and information generated by the imagination. However, our subconscious mind strongly influences the way we see the world, the emotions we experience and the way we automatically behave in particular situations.
Our automatic responses are the product of our past experiences. They initially developed to keep us safe and either through repetition or through a single strong (positive or negative) emotional experience, they become embedded in our unconscious as instinctive ways of responding. For example, one dog seeing a stranger pick up a stick is excited, while another cowers - the response will depend on each dog's past experiences. For one, a stick means a game of fetch, for the other it means a beating. The external situation is the same for both dogs, but the way they perceive it, and their instinctive or subconscious emotional response, is quite different. Similarly, human responses are affected by our subconscious conditioning.
Sometimes a pattern that initially protected us, may be unhelpful later in life and we may find ourselves reacting to particular situations in ways that limit our ability to function as we would want to.
What is hypnosis?
A hypnotic trance can be understood as a type of focused attention while the person is relaxed. It is entirely normal and is something we all experience on a day-to-day basis. It involves being so absorbed in what we are doing or thinking that we are unaware of our surroundings. For example, if you are so absorbed in a video game (or simply in a daydream) that you do not notice the everyday noises around you, then you are in a light hypnotic trance. In hypnotherapy I guide you to focus your attention appropriately, but it is you who puts yourself into the trance.
Because it is only a form of focused attention, you cannot get 'stuck' in a hypnotic trance. Inevitably, sooner or later, your concentration will be disrupted. If someone called your name while you are playing your video game, you would notice the sound (even if it took a few moments) and your concentration would be disrupted, bringing you out of the trance.
You are always in control. Even while in a hypnotic trance, your conscious mind is always, to some extent, aware of what you are experiencing. Although you may be primarily engaging with your subconscious, the conscious mind is observing, and capable of commenting or censoring. Your conscious mind will step in and reject any suggestions that do not align with your current intentions and values. Similarly, if in hypnosis, you are actively involved in a memory from early childhood, you will have an awareness and knowledge of the present that enables you to put the memories into context, and you will be able to recognise and describe elements within the memory using your current understanding and language.
This means that you cannot be forced to do anything against your will or against your values, or to reveal information that you do not want to share. A hypnotic trance is not the same as sleep or unconsciousness. It is more like a daydreaming process - your subconscious mind is active and alert, and your conscious mind is observing and aware of your thoughts, even if it may not remember everything afterwards.
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is the therapeutic use of hypnosis. It deals with patterns of thinking, ways of seeing your situation or ways you react in certain situations. It aims to replace unhelpful patterns with more constructive ones that align with who you want to be. I use a range of methods to help you explore your issues and make the changes you want. While in a hypnotic trance you can identify and review the underlying experience(s) that led to the current unhelpful pattern. I use spoken suggestions to help you resolve and release the strong emotions that have been bringing reactions from that experience into your current ways of thinking and behaving. This can make a profound difference. Hypnotherapy supports you to find answers and explanations, and to modify unhelpful patterns.
Hypnotherapy tends to be a short therapy and, depending on the nature of the issue, often about three sessions will be sufficient.
The first step involves us talking about what you want from the therapy - what issue(s) you want to explore and how you want things to change. I will ask questions to get a better understanding of how you experience the issue(s), and of your thinking around it. This helps me find the most useful approach, and then we will agree on what the therapy is aiming to achieve.
I usually then guide you into a trance state and use suggestions to encourage your thoughts to roam freely beyond the constructs of your logical conscious mind and enable answers to be revealed. Our thinking patterns are learned, and whatever has been learned can be unlearned or re-learned differently. The narrow focus of a hypnotic trance makes it easier to learn, especially at an unconscious level, where it feels effortless and you are hardly aware of doing it. Often it feels like simply arriving at a deeper understanding, one you were unaware of before.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
NLP focusses on understanding how we organise our thinking, feeling, language and behaviours to produce the results they do.
The underlying assumption in NLP is that people are not broken but are simply following an inappropriate unconscious strategy which is leading to the problem or stopping them from achieving the outcomes they want. The objective is to help them identify this mental pattern or strategy, then develop and embed a more constructive one so as to change or eliminate the existing unhelpful behaviour.
NLP techniques help us to look at our thoughts, feelings and emotions as things that we can control, rather than things that passively happen to us.
