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A moderate amount of stress or anxiety is normally an advantage in promoting positive responses and good performances in situations that we meet. When stress or anxiety is excessive, normal functions of the body decline drastically.
Symptoms of stress and anxiety may be associated with a particular incident, event or may be generalised and experienced over an extended period of time. Particular events are either phobias, or incidents like panic attacks or some incidents which lead to post traumatic stress.
Both post traumatic stress and phobias are treated by a hypnotic technique called visual-kinetic-disassociation (also known as the ‘fast phobia cure’ or ‘rewind technique’). This will almost always be successful in one session.
Panic attacks are in most cases accompanied by over breathing and skills can be taught to clients to overcome this. Where over breathing is not involved, a number of techniques are available. More generalised anxiety is treated by a number of techniques including the use of guided imagery, teaching of relaxation and self hypnotism.
Once people slide into depression for whatever reason, they become bogged down in negative thinking. This leads to worries, fears, hopelessness and these strong emotions dominate the depression. One consequence of this is disturbed sleep and excessive dreaming which results in waking up feeling down and unable to be active or motivated.
The implications of the above for lifting depression are:
Habits and drugs range from, for example, nail biting through smoking (including hash/weed) and alcoholism to hard drugs like heroin, crack and cocaine.
In general, the approach needed is based on the social learning model i.e. addiction is a response, a way of coping with yourself and the world; rather than the model which suggests addiction is a primary disease which people have inbred or catch somehow.
A common thread throughout the range is to make available to clients:
This is achieved through an anchoring or association technique.
For most smokers who want to quit smoking and can't, smoking is a habit and the anchoring or association technique is usually successful.
For the minority of smokers trying to give up and for whom the above technique does not work a regression technique is used, taking clients back in time to establish the incident where an association or link with some part of the incident and smoking was developed - work then centres on breaking the association usually using cognative techniques.
For treatment of those who are addicted to hard drugs, the original situation which caused the client to turn to drugs may in addition require to be examined and resolved.
Pain is a ‘multi’ experiential concept – it can be physical, psychological or personal. It is associated with time-remembered pain, current pain, anticipated pain or a combination of all three. Factors, which can be involved with pain, are beliefs, attitudes, personality, emotions etc. The common medical approach to pain is to abolish it completely.
In hypnosis the approach is rather to manage it by reducing it, changing it in some way or changing the area or place where pain is felt. A number of techniques can, depending on the circumstances, be used e.g. distraction, displacement to another part of the body, use of imagination/imagery/metaphors, time distortion, disassociation, fractionation/diminution, amnesia and analgesia. All of these can reduce and or alter the pain to something more comfortable and in a minority of cases, abolish it completely.
John advises all clients with pain to check out with their doctor that hypnosis is an appropriate treatment before accepting them.
The majority of people who wish to lose weight do so by going on a diet, denying themselves some of the things they really like and trying to lose weight quickly.
The usual outcome is short-term success, giving in to eating one of the forbidden foods, disappointment at failure, and being really hungry, ‘pigging out’ and eventually putting the weight back on again. Then after a while they do it all over again.
Apart from not working, this approach is doomed to failure and has health problems attached to it – ‘yo-yo’ dieting has been shown to be bad for both the heart and the immune system. Furthermore, fast weight reduction sends a message to the body saying in effect, there’s a famine here, we need to preserve the body, and as a consequence the fat cells are retained by the body and weight reduction slows up dramatically.
Weight reduction has to be a marathon not a sprint. The real objective is to adapt to a long-term healthy lifestyle, eating a balanced diet and incorporating a reasonable amount of exercise.
And hypnotherapy weight control can help you attain this long term health lifestyle approach, which over time will produce the body shape you want - and even allow you a little of what you really like from time to time – such as an occasional chocolate.
I have also worked successfully with other problems such as headaches, sleeplessness, sexual problems and difficulties, phobias including agoraphobia, fear of flying, fear of heights and fear of moths, snakes, spiders etc, bullying, panic attacks, compulsive buying, pain in the stomach (unexplained by specialist medical practitioners for 30 years), self-esteem, presentational skills, confidence to speak in public, failure to pass driving tests, chocolate dependency, mood swings, confidence and anxiety, confidence in sport, stress at work, anger. I have recently had much sucess with psychosomatic problems (eg blushing, or any unexplained and/or unwelcome physiological body symptoms connected, not usually consciously by the client, to a previous event).
I am willing to treat nearly anything that a client brings. Only on one occasion have I refused – a request to lose half a stone in a week (as I believe fast weight loss is unhealthy).