Hypnotherapy Clinic

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If you happen to be a smoker, giving up smoking is one of the most common New Year resolutions. How many times have you tried to stop smoking in January? It could be the worst time to stop smoking successfully! You may have been drinking and smoking heavily before and during Christmas and decided that the new year would be a good time to break free from your habit; yet January is meant to be the most depressing month of the year and there are lots of viruses doing the rounds, the days are short and the weather is often at its worse.

You may find that smoking is one of your coping strategies for dealing with life’s stresses and strains and despite the fact that nicotine is a stimulant you might experience a calming effect when you inhale cigarette smoke. If you do decide to quit now or in the future and stress is one of your triggers for smoking I recommend that you plan ahead to ensure that you develop a new strategy for dealing with your emotions and stress before you quit.

This will help to prevent a relapse because however successful you are in initially stopping smoking; a stressful day at work, an argument with your partner or getting stuck in traffic may cause you to reach for the ‘dummy’. It is as if the emotional part of the brain has over-ridden the rational part and before you know it the habit is back with a vengeance.

This is one of the many factors we help you to deal with in our smoking cessation programme so that you can stop for good. You need to plan and prepare properly as you would for any journey in your life. If you need a plan, support, detailed preparation and powerful ‘tools’ to get you to your destination as a relaxed, confident and positive non-smoker listen to what clients of The Spence Practice have to say about our stop smoking programme.

Look out for our next ‘stop smoking successfully tip’ on this blog site!

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Are you still trying to ‘give up’ smoking?

How are you getting on with your new-year resolution to ‘give-up’ smoking? Have you given up ‘giving up’ already, are you still struggling along or have you achieved your goal easily and effortlessly? If it’s the latter, congratulations!

Whilst some people manage to stop smoking easily others find it a real struggle. The reason for this difference in outcome can’t be due to the nicotine or the cigarette itself as they don’t change. I would assume that the physiological effect on a smoker’s body will be similar for everybody, therefore, the only other factor left is the psychology and behaviour of smoking and the ability of human beings to adapt to change.

The message that stopping smoking is an extremely difficult thing to achieve has been programmed into the consciousness of society by the medical profession, tobacco companies and the drugs companies who have a vested interest in perpetuating this myth. Nicotine replacement products (NRT), such as patches, gum, pills and potions create vast profits but do they really help a smoker to quit?

The drugs companies state that you are twice as likely to succeed with NRT as you would with ‘willpower’ alone. Recent research suggests that using ‘willpower’ alone is more successful than NRT. Whichever you believe to be true ‘willpower’ has a very low success rate. If NRT was so effective, you would have thought that smoking would have been ‘wiped out’ by now.

My experience of helping smokers to quit over the last 17 years has convinced me that this is principally a psychological, behavioural, emotional and environmental issue and that this applies to both the habit of smoking and how to stop successfully. Over the next couple of weeks I will be sharing with you some tips on how to make the transition from smoker to ex-smoker easier!

If you can’t wait to implement these tips or feel that you need some professional help to change your attitude and ‘mindset’ have a look at what some of our clients have to say about our stop smoking programme.

 

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How are you doing with your resolutions? Its 12 days already now. We spend the first few days of the year wishing each other a happy new year and then we are constantly reminded by the media that January is the most depressing month of the year.

One of my Christmas presents was a DVD of a Television series called ‘an idiot abroad’. The idiot, (Karl Pilkington) was talking about happiness in the first programme. He said that you can get too much happiness and that “happiness is like a piece of cake, too much of it and you get sick of it

Have you had too much cake, too much food, too much alcohol and too much of your relatives over the festive period and are now experiencing the start of a long hangover called January. That could also depend on your outlook on life and whether you are a pessimist or an optimist. As an optimist you might look ahead and see the new-year as a new start, a time for change and new opportunities. On the other hand if you are a pessimist you might be full of doom and gloom about the economy and your outstanding credit card bills. Do you see that pint glass as half empty or half full?

One of my goals in 2012 is to convert more pessimists into optimists. What are your goals for 2012?

GOALS OR RESOLUTIONS?

Traditionally, this is the time of year when you make a resolution to do something or more usually not do something; like giving up smoking or alcohol or starting a diet. Resolutions usually have a negative connotation and consist of some form of deprivation. As a result they rarely last for more than a few weeks. If you want to have more long-term success in making changes you need to set goals instead of resolutions and measure your achievements. This is what high achieving sports professionals do. Not only do they have goals and monitor/measure their performance they also usually have a coach to help keep them motivated and to give them support and encouragement and to make them accountable.

Coaching strategies and techniques are not just restricted to sport and business they can also be applied to all aspects of life. That’s all very well if you can afford a coach; but what if you are unemployed or on a very low income, paying for a coach/mentor may be out of the question at a time when you need the help most. If you fit into this category you might be interested in my low cost- high value coaching programme for 2012; to help motivate, support and guide you to setting and achieving your goals.

The rate I am charging is so low that I can only offer it to the first 10 people who approach me and who qualify for it. Many people are suffering financial hardship at the present time as a result of unemployment and businesses folding etc so this programme has been developed with this in mind. The cost will only be £50 per month for 12 months. I would usually be charging in the region of £250 per month. So if you know of anyone who is struggling financially at the moment and would like the opportunity to work with me as their coach and mentor for the next 12 months please ask them to get in touch.

This is Olympic year remember; you can’t win the gold medal if you don’t enter the race!

 

 

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December 19th, 2011

DO YOU OVER-INDULGE AT CHRISTMAS AND REGRET IT AFTERWARDS?

January can be so depressing as you come down from the ‘highs’ around Christmas. According to the Law of Gravity, what goes up must come down. Is it possible to feel better in January after the festive season is over and still enjoy Christmas? I believe the answer is Yes if you don’t rely on alcohol to fuel your festive fun.

Let’s start with the office party. It might be tempting to take advantage of the free ‘booze’ on offer from your employer and you might think that you are having a fantastic time. However, will it be worth it if you can’t remember what happened next day when you return to the office and your colleagues remind you of the embarrassing things you did in front of the boss. This might have long-term consequences on your career too!

I know people who drink to excess in December and then have a month ‘drying out’ during January. Alcohol is a depressant and you will probably exacerbate the downward spiral by depriving yourself. Over-indulgence on food and alcohol could also lead to indigestion and other digestive problems in the post Christmas period.

What about the climax of it all; Christmas Day? It’s so easy to overdo it and end up getting involved in an argument with another member of the family, spoil the day for everyone and then regretting your actions afterwards.

It is so easy to get caught up in mindless eating and drinking when it might be better to savour every mouthful. Imagine you are a gourmet and you intend to engage every one of your thousands of taste buds and just slow down. Remind yourself of times when you have experienced fun and laughter without being inebriated, even if it means getting in touch with your ‘inner child’.

Unfortunately, having fun and being sociable is often associated with alcohol from the teenage years onwards. Remember, you didn’t need alcohol to have fun when you were a child so maybe now is the time to break those inappropriate associations and look forward to a happier and more positive January.

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Christmas Stress

To be honest I am not a great fan of Christmas and as I get older I seem to like it less and less. Maybe I’m just becoming a ‘grumpy old man’. There are lots of potential ‘stressors’ and potential pitfalls in the period before, during and immediately after xmas and I will be blogging about these and possible solutions during this month.

My wife and our 2 grown up daughters love Christmas, so I get pleasure from seeing them have a good time. However, I have to hide my grumpiness or I am accused of ruining Christmas for them!

This is supposed to be a religious festival lasting 12 days with its climax on 25 th December. It probably doesn’t help that I don’t have a religious bone in my body (I veer between describing myself as agnostic and sometimes refer to myself as an atheist depending on my mood).

Unfortunately this festival has been hijacked by commercialism and consumerism and the period before (foreplay) gets longer and longer or so it seems. It’s not just the retailers either; I cycled past a house at the end of October which was covered from ground to roof in one of the most over the top displays of decorations I have ever seen. I was not amused when 2 carol singers appeared at my door on 2nd December singing; “we wish you a merry Christmas”.

I can’t even blame my pre-christmas grumpiness on it being winter, the weather or the short days. In fact I like the winter season and fortunately I don’t suffer from seasonal depression. My friend Josh used to suffer from this problem; a condition known as Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), sometimes referred to as the ‘winter blues’. Many people claim to suffer from this form of depression during the winter months. With my help and without the need for anti-depressants or sitting under special lights for long periods of time, Josh no longer suffers from this condition in winter. If you know of anyone that is suffering from the ‘winter blues’ you might like to send them this link so that they  can hear what Josh has to say about how he overcame his seasonal depression.

One of the techniques I used with Josh is called, ‘re-framing,’ whereby we found a way of re-framing the winter months for him. A part of his brain, known as the ‘reticular activating system’ was focusing his attention towards all the things he didn’t like about winter and his mind was blocked from seeing anything good about it. He is now able to focus on aspects of winter that are positive and block out the negative thoughts to a great extent.

To get myself in the Christmas spirit I am going to do a bit of re-framing myself this week so that I can look forward to all the good things about this festive period.

Going back to my sexual analogy it shouldn’t be a surprise that many women will start shopping in November and most men leave it until Christmas Eve!

 

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National Stress Awareness Day

November 2nd, 2011

Today is National Stress Awareness Day. I am sure that it was marked in your diary, sandwiched between Halloween and Bonfire night!

Why do we need to be aware of stress you might ask? Well in the same way that we need to be aware of maintaining a healthy body it is vitally important to understand how your body and mind reacts to stress. This is because the long-term effects of chronic stress could be fatal. 

The International Stress Management Association UK (ISMA) defines stress as:-

“The adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them.”

Those pressures may come from many differing sources and when their combined effect is overwhelming, stress occurs. This means that stress is not good for you. Stress is an unhealthy state of body or mind or both. 

Stress has become the most common cause of long-term sickness absence for both manual and non-manual employees, according to the CIPD/Simplyhealth Absence Management survey.
- CIPD Survey October 2011

British businesses lose an estimated £26 billion each year in sickness absence and lost productivity. The good news is that with greater awareness and mental health support, businesses could save one third of these costs – ‘a mammoth £8 billion a year’. According to- Mind June 2011 

For more interesting facts about the effects of stress on our health and economy see; http://www.isma.org.uk/about-stress/facts-about-stress.html

I have been treating people suffering from the effects of stress for 17 years now. If you want to find out how Josh turned things around with our help listen to josh’s success story here and you can hear Mike’s story here .

If you would like some help and advice on how to prevent stress negatively impacting on your life, please request our free report titled DE-STRESS from our contact page . DE-STRESS is an 8 point plan to build up resistance and to prevent the effects of stress damaging you physically and mentally. 

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Can you think yourself thin?

October 31st, 2011

Do you sabotage your own success through your negative thoughts and emotions? 

In previous blogs I have explained why following diets, trying to lose weight and using weight as a measurement can be counter-productive in achieving your goal of losing weight. Today I am going to focus on self-sabotage and how and why you might be preventing yourself from achieving your weight loss goals.

There are 2 parts to the human mind and we don’t pay enough attention or perhaps fully understand how each part works and how they interact with each other. What I mean by the 2 parts is the conscious part and the subconscious (sometimes referred to as the unconscious)

Your conscious mind is the thinking rational part that is good at analysing and logical reasoning. The conscious mind is limited in that it can only process a limited amount of information at any one time. Whereas the subconscious part of the mind is responsible for data storage in the form of memory (storing possibly thousands or even millions of bits of information) It also manages the functioning of the body’s systems which means that you can breathe and walk and carry out a multitude of tasks without having to think about what you are doing.

Another responsibility of your subconscious mind is your emotional state. You don’t consciously decide to be angry, sad or frightened, it just happens as a reaction to something that you see, hear or feel. For example, you might be feeling sad and have the urge/craving for sugar that leads you to seek out the bar of chocolate in your cupboard even though your conscious mind is telling you that you are not hungry or that chocolate has very little nutritional value.

When there is a dispute between the rational part of the mind and the emotional part the emotional part usually gets its way. If you are trying to lose weight you might then feel guilty about eating the chocolate and then feel even worse and so eat some more and so it goes on.

Your subconscious mind is heavily influenced by your internal ‘self talk’ and your imagination. However, it doesn’t respond to a negative instruction, so if you tell yourself “I must not eat chocolate” your mind will focus on the word chocolate and if you enjoy chocolate the emotional brain will crave it even more as it seeks out the opportunity for pleasure.

With certain foods your imagination has an important role to play too. Whether or not chocolate tastes nice and makes you feel good momentarily; it is very likely that the message portrayed by the advertising industry repeatedly over many years that chocolate equals pleasure, by linking it to sex, means that you start to salivate before you start eating it.

So what can you do to resolve the link between emotions and eating and programme your subconscious mind to create the successful outcomes that you desire?

Firstly you need to find ways to change your emotional state before you eat anything so that you can sever the link between your emotions and food. For example you could use your imagination in a positive way by visualising how you will look and feel when you have achieved your desired size and shape.

Secondly you need to remember to eat consciously, mindfully and slowly and not allow yourself to be distracted by watching TV or browsing the internet whilst you are eating.

To find out how Neil succeeded in his goal of becoming slimmer after his weight ballooned to almost 30 stone read here!

 

 

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Why trying to lose weight is self-defeating and often counter- productive! 

In my last blog I explained why dieting is counter-productive and often results in weight gain in the long-term. I believe that using weight as a measurement can also be counter-productive. As a society we seem to be obsessed about measuring our happiness on the number shown on our bathroom scales in the mornings.

Are you obsessed with jumping on the scales every day and do you base your level of happiness on what those scales tell you? I know some very heavy people who also happen to be extremely fit and healthy because most of their weight is comprised of muscle and very little fat. For example, I can think of a lot of athletes such as Rugby players and shot put and discus throwers who would fit into this category.

Someone recently said to me that she weighs 11.5 stone and her target is 10.75 stone. She also made the comment that her body seems happy at 11.5 because it always seems to end up at that weight yet she is unhappy at being over 11 stone. This appears to be a psychological barrier and probably would not be an issue if she did not weigh herself. I also know someone who has always associated happiness with being thin and unhappiness with being overweight. This belief was instilled in her from early childhood by her father!

The scales can be demoralising at times. Have you ever experienced being on a diet for a week, say, and exercised more rigorously than ever before and then stepped on the scales with the expectation of weight loss; only to discover no change or even a slight increase in weight. You may have changed shape as a result of a reduction in fat and increase in muscle but this success won’t be recognised by the scales. The likelihood is that you may give up on the exercise and healthy eating as a result as you are thinking “what’s the point.”

I don’t possess any scales and only ever get weighed when I visit my local GP practice which, thankfully, is a rare occurrence. You can keep a check on your body by looking in the mirror and noticing changes in the way your clothes fit and if you need some form of measurement maybe your clothes size and/or a tape measure might be more appropriate.

The words we use and our interpretation and meaning we identify with those words can have a profound effect on our lives. I know someone who has an aversion to exercise because he always associates exercise with his school days when he was humiliated and bullied because he wasn’t very good at sports.

I would suggest that very few people would have a positive connection with the word LOSE. For example I am a competitive sportsman (possibly because it was the only thing that I excelled at school). In sport your aim is to try to win you don’t try and lose.

Generally, in life, you take steps to avoid losing anything and you were taught to do this from an early age and if you lose anything you then try and find it. This kind of thinking becomes ‘hard wired’ by the time we are adults. So it must be a source of confusion to the subconscious mind when you keep on trying to lose weight. In this context the opposite of losing is gaining, which is perhaps what makes gaining weight easier to do than losing it.

As the focus on losing weight is part of the problem I suggest that you change the emphasis towards what you are going to gain as a result of becoming slimmer. These benefits might include feeling more confident, having increased levels of self-esteem, having more energy and therefore achieving more, living longer and having more choice of clothes to wear etc.

Finally, throw those scales away!!!

 

 

 

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According to a recent study by the weight-loss company Atkins many women put more effort into dieting than into their relationships and think about food more than sex. This study also found that one in ten women would feel guiltier straying from their diet than being unfaithful to their partner!

This survey asked 1,290 female dieters in the UK about their attitudes to food and dieting and how it impacted on their relationships. Over a third said they thought about food and dieting more than they thought about their partner and more than half said they thought about food more than sex. It would have been interesting to ask men the same question!

The main reason cited for starting a diet was trying to attain a perfect ‘beach body’ (whatever that is) whilst one in seven women said they were motivated to diet after receiving cruel comments about their weight. It is estimated that at least three quarters of the UK adult female population have been on a diet at least once.

I have news for you ladies; diets don’t work!

Why diets don’t usually work

How many times have you started a new diet with a determination to maintain it in order to achieve your goal of a slimmer you and then lost your motivation soon after? How many times have you lost weight by following the latest celebrity diet and then put it all back on within a few months? How many times have you joined your local health club in January and found your commitment and resolve ebb away within weeks? Why do we keep on repeating the same pattern of behaviour and then be surprised that we keep on getting the same results?

In order to understand why diets don’t usually work perhaps we should start with the word DIET and here you can see the first clue, which is that the first 3 letters spell die. Obviously most people don’t want to die and we are all pre-programmed to attempt to survive as long as possible. So what tends to happen is that when you ‘diet’ you attempt to eat less than you usually do. The logical part of the brain and/or the conscious part of the mind suggests that you eat less and move more often in order to achieve your goal of losing weight. However, one of the responsibilities of the subconscious part of your mind is self-preservation along with the functioning of the various systems within your body.

In other words it will put self-preservation as a higher priority than losing weight so that when you eat less your body thinks that you are starving it which leads to a slowing down effect on the body’s metabolism and the storage of energy in the form of body fat which can result in the opposite effect to what you intended.

Another factor with dieting is that it is usually associated with deprivation. Most human beings will prefer pleasure over pain and discomfort and therefore depriving yourself of foods that you enjoy does not satisfy the emotional part of your brain which is another function of the subconscious part of the mind.

Thirdly you are likely to see the diet as something you do in the short term in order to achieve your goal but then what happens when you achieve your goal, after all you would not want to live on cabbage soup for the rest of your life would you? So what then happens is that you achieve your weight loss goal and then return to the way that you used to eat before you started the diet, which is what caused the problem in the first place.

Instead of focusing on dieting I would suggest that you adopt a plan to eat healthy nutritious food on an ongoing basis. It is also important to focus on the right balance between protein, carbohydrates and fat instead of counting calories. Your focus needs to be on keeping yourself energised and feeling good instead of on trying to lose weight.

How about having sex more often to burn off those calories instead of thinking and obsessing about food and dieting!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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How many times have you heard people say that losing weight is not complicated; “it’s  simple, just eat less and be more active”! There is some truth in this statement because the majority of us in the western world eat far too much and are not active enough. This explains the mounting health problems we face as a result of obesity but doesn’t offer the complete solution when it comes to losing weight and getting back in shape. That’s because the attitudes and behaviours we have learnt, in relation to lifestyle, have been programmed into us over many years.

 If you always do what you have always done don’t be surprised when you always get what you always got! When your thoughts turn towards losing weight it is very likely that you will have been programmed to think about going on a diet and/or following a strict exercise regime, in order to achieve your goal. The reason this method fails most of the time is because most people don’t fully engage their minds, fail to set clear goals, fail to plan a long-term strategy for change and fail to motivate themselves to remain committed to achieving it.

When it comes to goal setting and motivation you can learn a lot from professional sports people who have to be in peak condition in order to perform at the top level. They have exercise regimes and nutritional guidelines to follow; not because they want to lose weight, but because they want to win or gain something; perhaps a gold medal at the next Olympics for example.

Along with a strong desire to achieve their goals athletes need great determination and commitment and be able to perform under pressure. To get to the very top in sport you need emotional resilience, which is often referred to as ‘mental toughness’, in addition to training and eating the right foods to build muscle and produce energy.

One of my favourite sports is Tennis. The most successful tennis players over the last 50 years; Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer & Rafael Nadal have one thing in common (in addition to their tennis ability) and that is the ability to remain calm under intense pressure along with an immense desire and motivation to keep on winning.

I am not saying that you need this level of ‘mental toughness’ to succeed in losing weight but, by utilising some of their strategies and techniques you can get your mind to work for you instead of continually sabotaging your success. If you follow the tips and ideas in my blogs over the next few weeks and months you will make it so much easier to be successful in losing weight and more importantly be able maintain your new size and shape.

Read how Neil successfully turned things around when his weight ‘ballooned’ out of control.

My next blog on the subject of losing weight will be on the subject of ‘diets’ and dieting and why they don’t work!

 

 

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