It is normal to feel anxious every now and then but sometimes anxiety can seem to be there all the time. You can feel it in your head, chest and stomach. It can sometimes give you pins and needles or a burning sensation on your skin. Severe anxiety can make you feel sick, so you eat less, which then affects your health and stamina. Above all, it can be absolutely exhausting. You may experience broken sleep patterns where you wake up in a cold sweat and then start to think about things that build on the anxiety. With Hypno-Psychotherapy we can begin to understand what t is you are fearful of and start to re-programme the way you think, feel and behave, so that you begin to feel a little better and eventually address the things you perceive to be threatening. Let me help you overcome this battle and put anxiety behind you for good!

Panic attacks can be extremely distressing and normally arrive when the body senses immediate danger or threat. We go into the fight or flight response which is our bodies way of preparing for a fight or to flee the scene. Because the danger is imagined, i.e. there is no real danger, the body doesn’t know what to do to extinguish the feelings and so they can be really intense. If we where to fight something or run away, then the adrenalin and other symptoms such as a fast beating heart and shortness of breath, would be used up far more quickly and the body would return to normal. To deal with the panic I use hypnosis and CBT to reframe your thinking and work with the feelings so that the actual threat, or imagined threat no longer exists. For example – You may believe that because you are on a train you may go into panic because you cannot get out once the doors close. You may believe that you could lose control and pass out or run out of air. In the throws of a panic attack you believe all these things because of the extreme fear, however it is impossible to run out of air on a train and it is rare that anyone passes out during a panic attack as the blood pressure usually rises. I work with panic disorder very frequently and I help you better understand exactly what panic is doing so that you can begin to fear the actual panic attack less, this reduces the frequency of the panic until it has gone completely. The very thing that fuels panic, is the fear itself. If we remove this fear then the panic has no strength.

Do you dread going into a social situation where you may have to talk with other people? Even talking to one individual can give you intense anxiety, to the point that you may even begin to avoid the very situation that brings the fear. Sound familiar? Social phobia is very often driven by the feelings that those people you interact with are judging you in some way. What are those people thinking about you, what if you say something stupid or do something out of place, how you others see you! Very often it s about how you view yourself and these thoughts and feelings may date back to when you were much younger and later in life they become intensified. What tends to happen is that you become so anxious about an event, such as a meeting or a party, that the negative anticipation of this event causes so much anxiety that the only way to get rid of this awful feeling is to avoid the situation. Then the anxiety goes away and you may feel a little better. However, you may also feel bad about not going and pressure yourself to do it next time round, but it happens all over again. And for those people who do challenge the anxiety and go to a party or meeting, they may be so self focused on their feelings that they become distracted and don’t take anything in, which then fuels the anxiety.

We can work through these feelings and beliefs to forge new ones that are more realistic and helpful, so that you can begin to feel so much more comfortable in situations where you have to talk to others and then put the avoidance firmly in the past.

Nobody really understands how depression is formed or why it affects some people and not others. It has a lot to do with emotional resilience and how you deal with situations in your life. A lot of depressed people have faced a string of negative life experiences causing anxiety and a negative way of thinking about things. Seeing situations in a negative way all the time lowers the mood and decreases the serotonin (our mood stabilising hormone) in our brains. when the serotonin is decreased we find it very hard to feel happy or upbeat. So we can begin to lose interest in the things that used to give us pleasure. When we avoid things it only adds to the frustration and we may begin to feel that we will never get over it, this is a scary thought and merely adds to the low mood. Treating depression takes a little longer than other treatments so it is important to stick with any therapy you choose. I use Cognitive behavioural therapy and hypnotherapy to help restructure thinking patterns so that the feeling become more positive. I also work with the feelings within hypnosis and the two combined has been proven to be highly effective in treating depression. So if you have reached that point in your life where enough is enough, then why not make that choice to begin the process of change, once you start to challenge these thoughts and feelings, you are bringing the fight to the depression. Remember, depression doesn’t define who you are as a person and it doesn’t choose who to affect, but it can be conquered once you make that choice to defeat it.

Do you have a very real fear of something? There are many people who have an extreme fear of something in their lives and this can be a fear of an object, or an animal or insect. Some people can even fear the elements, such as wind, rain or lightning storms. The main phobias I come across are fears around spiders, dogs, heights or enclosed spaces. However, fear can attach itself to anything and I have seen people with a fear of buttons, fish, birds, patters, seeing other people be sick, flying and water. Very often, the fear is acquired during childhood and can be a learned behaviour, such as witnessing a parent react in a frightening way to a frog jumping or a wasp flying too close, so we learn that if our parent is scared then we must be too. Other times, the individual may have been exposed to something scary and then that fear sticks and they intensify it, fearing any situation where they may encounter the object or animal/insect. Avoiding the situation helps to grow the fear. Phobias can be, at times, easy to deal with, and at other times, be a little more challenging to deal with, but in either case we can rewind some of the old fearful memories attached to the phobia and also deal with any maladaptive beliefs about the fear. Such as, if I am up somewhere really high, I don’t so much fear falling, but fear the fact that I may throw myself over. Or, a spider is dangerous and vicious and will attack me. These false beliefs may seem very real to you but when we challenge them together we can begin to forge more realistic views and beliefs that are more beneficial and less scary. Then we work with the behaviour and both in and out of hypnosis we can introduce new behaviours to help you put your fears in the past where they belong. So if you have a real fear of something, why not take action now and give me a call.

I see many people with a fear of flying, especially around the holiday periods, or leading up to them. Some of you will actually get onto a plane, but will feel so much anxiety that the whole experience is deeply unpleasant and can ruin the holiday. But there are others who simply refuse to board a plane. Their anxiety is so intense, that the only way t deal with it is to avoid the journey all together.

So what causes the fear? A number of factors are at play here. The individual may have experienced a bad flight, such as turbulence, were the plane is subjected to a lot of bumping by the currents of air. If that person experienced fear at this point then they may fear it happening again, and so the anticipation of this happening causes high levels of anxiousness. The person may be terrified of the plane crashing or fear there may be a bomb on board, episodes such as the American 9-11 plane crashes may trigger intense fears in certain people. sometimes the fear arises when a person has children and the fear is surrounding their safety. Other factors include a feeling of not being in control or a feeling of being trapped with nowhere to go or run. and sometimes the fear isn’t even linked to the flight. I have seen many people who have been afraid of flying where the original sensation of fear was to do with something else, for example, falling off something, like jumping into a swimming pool from a high diving board. So the fear of flying may have its origins in something completely unknown to you, or attached to an event that you have all but forgotten. It is important to know that this fear can be overcome, with some hypnosis and thought restructuring you can begin to feel and think a little better about the flying and then the anticipation of the flight, causes less anxiety and the flight itself can be experienced with ease.

Agoraphobia isn’t so much about the fear of open spaces, but the fear of losing control in a given, fearful situation. This intense fear of having a panic attack or losing control in a situation is developed over time based on an initial event, such as having a panic attack in the supermarket. the individual then fears having another attack in the same place and so chooses to avoid that place again. However, this fear then transfers onto other areas, events and situations and so the individual may begin to avoid those places as well. Agoraphobia can then become so intense and the fears so real that the person may only find safety within their own home. And so they avoid stepping out the front door though the intense feelings of fear that that brings. This can severely limit the existence and life of that person. Sometimes the agoraphobic may feel safe if they venture out with someone they trust, but this is a safety behaviour and the aim of getting better is to reduce the safety behaviours altogether. At first this may seem a terrifying prospect, but we work though this together and look at new ways to cope with the feelings. we look into what the actual fear is saying to you, why it exists and what it wants, so that we can find new ways to function. Using hypnosis and Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is my chosen method to deal with agoraphobia. We work with the thoughts, feeling and the behaviours. An example of this is to look at what the fearful situation is, then to look at your belief about the situation, e.g. fearing a panic attack, and then the behaviour, e.g. avoiding the situation reduces the anxiety temporarily. This way of thinking sustains the fear, so we look at new ways of thinking about the situation and use hypnosis to evoke more positive feelings attached to that situation.

Going through IVF treatment can be extremely stressful for both of you. There are stages and processes to go through and tremendous anticipation too. You have probably been through many months or even years of trying to conceive a child before taking the decision to try IVF, so already, you have experiences heartache and let downs and you may even enter into the process feeling really fearful and apprehensive. Hypnotherapy can help you with this process by helping you feel more relaxed and calm and to change the negative thoughts into positive ones so that you feel a little more optimistic about the process. When we enter into IVF feeling more calm and optimistic, then the actual treatment can become more enjoyable and less daunting. The whole mind/body connection becomes so important here. A healthy optimism leads to a healthier and more relaxed body. In hypnosis, I can work with the couple or with an individual to structure the sessions to coincide with your treatment and give you positive suggestions to help you visualise a good and positive outcome.

There is a difference between self esteem and confidence. A lack of confidence means that you lack the conviction of a particular skill such as talking to others or the opposite sex, taking a test, doing your job to the best of your ability, entering a competition etc. It’s about feeling good about a particular ability and to carry out that ability well. Self esteem, is more about how you see yourself or how you think others may see you and whether you respect yourself or not. For example, when you look into a mirror, what do you think about the person you see reflected back?If those thoughts and feelings are positive then you have a healthy self esteem. If you dislike what you see then the likelihood is that you self esteem needs a boost or you need to work on why negative feelings toward yourself exist. These feelings may be based on old self beliefs or core beliefs such as “I’ll never amount to anything”, “people must like me”, “I can’t do anything right” or “I am a failure”. These beliefs are normally formed in childhood. we can work together to begin to boost whatever it is you lack, whether its confidence or self esteem to help you feel more positive about yourself and your abilities. When you challenge the way you think and feel, you can gently begin to start to feel a lot more positive about who you are as a person. Hypnosis is a great tool, and I use as many techniques as  I can, to help you feel so much better in your life.

I have helped many smokers to kick the smoking habit once and for all. I do this in a single session that I have developed and tweaked over the last 3 years. I offer a free backup session within 3 months of the original session, should you require it, but it is rare that anyone returns.

It is important that you are ready to quit smoking. So you need to ask yourself this question “do I want to quit or do I need to quit”, If the answer is that you want to quit then thats a good positive place to start. Needing to quit is different. You may need to quit because of financial pressures or for health reasons, however, there is still a part of you that want to carry on smoking. We cans till work with this but you really have to want to stop smoking. So now that you have decided that you ‘want’ to stop smoking, ask yourself the next question, “out of 100%, how much do I want to quit?”. If the answer to this question is anything but 100% then there is still a part of you that wants to keep hold of the habit.

Will power alone can be great but for many, they need a real boost of motivation and determination. This is where hypnosis come in and I use a number of visual techniques to help empower you to long term success.

Imagine being free from smoke!

Imagine being better off financially!

Imagine better health!

I hold a specialist certificate in Smoking Cessation to make sure I am best positioned to help you kick the habit of smoking forever!

Weight loss is one tricky subject. We have all been on some sort of diet in the past, however, we soon find that the weight returns, and this can be demotivating and frustrating. Diets will either deprive you of certain foods or deprive you of calories. This is why you crave the food you are deprived of and at the first sign of frustration, boredom or sadness, you dive for that food and eat it to give you comfort. If you deprive yourself of calories then the body can begin to conserve fat and again, when we experience a negative emotion, we reach for the food.

I have structured a 6 part session plan that tackles all these issues, especially the emotions attached to the eating, because if they are not addressed then the eating will always be a problem. we need to reprogram the mind so that you deal with the cause of the emotion so that you no longer need to eat to feed it. Eating in response to emotions doesn’t work. You need to be able to eat what you want but with moderation. You need to bring exercise into the equation and gain the motivation to do so, and hypnosis is very good at getting you to feel motivated and energised. Hypnosis can help to reduce cravings and increase the desire to be lean and healthy, or just to be healthy and reach a weight that is just right for you!

Stress is all too common today. We feel the stress of the workplace, trying to hit targets, keep on budget, juggling too many things at once and being always attached to our email. Demand simply outweighs resources and then you reach a snapping point.

Stress related illnesses are on the up, so it is so important to learn how to deal with stress better. Stressful situations don’t just happen in the workplace, life itself is stressful. We have financial stresses, family stresses, relationship stresses and the list goes on. I use CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and hypnotherapy to help you better understand stress and to deal with the feelings as well as altering the way you think about stressful situations, to help you feel and function better. I will give you the tools that you need to help you achieve your goals.

We all get angry from time to time, anger is a natural feeling and therefore it has a purpose. However, sometimes this feeling becomes persistent and can spiral out of control. You may even feel as if you may lose control at any moment, or perhaps you have lost control on many occasions and hurt yourself and others, even those close to you. This can lead to feelings of guilt and shame. If your anger has reached a point where it causes you, or others close to you, concern, then it’s time to do something about it.

There are techniques and strategies we can adopt and adapt to help you deal with the underlying issues behind your anger. we can look at how the anger inside you developed and if it has an an origin, for example, anger can be a learned behaviour, perhaps a parent was always angry when you were a child and you leaned that if the parent deals with a situation in an angry manner, then that is how you learn to deal with situations in the future.

It’s not always this way of course. Anger can build up through a series of negative events, such as losing a job. Or can be linked to anxiety. When we have high levels of anxiety we feel as if we cannot deal with certain situations and so we get angry, and a lot of the time it is anger aimed at yourself.

Give me a call today to discuss your needs and goals and we can begin to make you a calmer person, with all the tools needed to handle all situations that life throws at you!

Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy is very efficient at treating sleeping problems. If there isn’t a medical reason behind your sleep disturbance then it is normally caused by psychological factors. This can include anxiety, depression and stress. You may wake up in the night and find that you are worrying about something, and while you worry, the mind cannot fins a way to relax and so the body can’t relax. You may find that you lie awake for hours, or you may get up and make a drink. If this happens more than a few times then a pattern starts to form and the unconscious part of the mind starts to learn that this is entirely normal and so you may find that you wake up at the same time each night.

This can be incredibly frustrating and can only make the anxiety, depression or stress worse. This is because our bodies and minds need rest to energise ourselves ready for the next day, if we don’t get enough rest then our problems and frustrations are magnified, and we find that we can’t think straight or we experience a sort of brain fog.

You deserve to be free from this vicious circle and together we can work out a strategy to conquer your sleep problems once and for all. I do this using a unique blend of hypnosis and CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), to address the cause of the sleep problem, and to adjust the way you think and feel so that you can get the quality of rest that you deserve.

Do you feel totally demotivated? Just can’t seem to find that ‘get up and go’?.

You may find that you procrastinate and put things off that need sorting out. You may have set yourself a goal only to find that the journey to that goal is fraught with problems and so you give up. We have all been there at some point, I remember putting off writing my dissertation when I was at university, until it became a mad scramble at the end causing me a lot of stress. And, actually, the dissertation wasn’t that hard to write and I kicked myself for having not done it earlier. We often see things as going the wrong way or being too difficult when actually these thing are perfectly within your reach. We just need to work on the way you think and feel about the task to change the way you look at it. Hypnosis can really help you to feel motivated and to see a positive outcome and to help you to set goals and then achieve them, without the fear of failure!

Do you need the sporting edge? Do you want the belief that you are better than your opponent? Hypnotherapy has been used to help sportsmen and sportswomen for decades now and has helped golfers overcome their nerves, athletes to become more focused, boxers to become stronger and have more stamina, you can quite literally apply hypnosis to every sport on the planet, you simply tell me what you need more of in your sport and we work together to achieve that wish. I have even helped sports people to enjoy training more, to build their motivation to train and see all the positive outcomes of that training, rather than focus on any negatives. So, if you need that little something extra to help you in your chosen sport, why not give me a call and begin that exciting journey today!

We all have the capacity to blush from time to time. Some say it is a way to show others that we have done something socially unacceptable, that we have broken etiquette somehow, and the blushing is a way of apologising. Whether you believe that or not, blushing can really affect your life. It may become such a problem that you try to avoid the situations that make you blush, such as giving a speech, talking to the opposite sex or going to places where you may have to speak to someone. Some people blush when they talk to strangers and others may be fine talking to strangers but blush when they talk to people they know.

I like to explore the cause of the blushing as well as the current way of thinking. The blushing may have been caused by embarrassment when you were a child and this lead to thoughts about it happening again. when we constantly worry about going red, we are keeping it at the forefront of our mind and worrying about what others may be thinking when we go red can only exacerbate the problem. So I use hypnosis to uncover the cause and work with those feelings and I also use Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help with the unwanted and negative thoughts that accompany the feelings. This restructures the thoughts and feelings in such a way that the problem no longer exists.

The lead up to any kind of exam can cause a lot on anxiety for most of us, but for some people exams cause intense feelings of dread. The anxiety in extreme cases may cause nausea and vomiting or even fainting. Very often it is the anticipation that is worst, all that build up of days and weeks of intense worry. The worry about doing well, the stress caused with not letting yourself or others down and even feelings of negative judgement all add up to an entirely unpleasant time.

Hypno-psychotherapy can really help you to calm down the nerves and I use calming techniques, positive visualisation and direct suggestion to help with those unwanted feelings and well as tackling the way you think about the exams and looking into your beliefs about yourself, as very often, there is a negative self belief that needs to be adjusted, to help you sail through your exams without all that worry and anxiety.

If there is no medical reason for the headache or migraine then it’s cause is probably through tension of some kind. And tension can be cased by a number of factors including stress or even posture. Together we can address the issues that cause the tension and headaches by learning relaxation techniques and other useful strategies to help eliminate the route cause of the headaches and tension.

I have even come across clients who’s headaches served a purpose. They were there for a reason, the intention of the headache was good, it’s just that the intention was good but the headache was not the way to achieve the intention. So we restructured the pattern so that the positive intention was still acheived but the headaches went away. It’s fascinating stuff.