Latest Hypnotherapy News

I recently came accross a website The-Truth-About-Allen-Carr.com which explains how Allen Carr, famous for his books and courses on stopping smoking, stopped smoking many years ago by seeing a hypnotherapist. Despite this he never publicised hypnotherapy as a successful method for smoking cessation, probably because he saw it as competition for his method which, incidently, includes hypnosis as part of the programme.

I recently overheard a conversation between an employer and an NHS stop smoking advisor. The employer was looking for some advice on how to stop smoking for one of his employees and mentioned hypnotherapy as a possible option. This was quickly dismissed by the NHS advisor along the lines that there is no evidence to support hypnosis as a successful method to quit smoking!

Later on that same day I met an old acquantence  whom I hadn’t seen for a few years and during our ‘catch up’ conversation she said “are you still doing that weird hypnosis stuff” whilst pulling a face and recoiling as if I were a threat to her. It reminded me of a time when I attended a business meeting and a man asked me what I business I was in. When I announced myself as a Hypnotherapist he looked scared so I said, jokingly, “whatever you do don’t look into my eyes”. From then on he avoided eye contact whilst continuing our conversation. Proof indeed that suggestions can be very effective!

Whilst explaining my stop smoking method to a potential client I mentioned that hypnosis forms part of the treatment and she said “I’ve tried hypnosis before and it doesn’t work for me”. At the time she was struggling with a combination of willpower and patches. When I asked her about her past experience of hypnosis she said that she had stopped for 1 month afterwards with no effort or negative side effects. “How did it not work”? I asked and she replied “because I started smoking again a month later”. In other words it was very effective at helping her to stop smoking but it didn’t prevent her from starting again. The question is whether or not you could call that a success or a failure on the part of hypnosis as a method for smoking cessation. This is one of the reasons I never quote success rates, because how do you define success?

The hypnotherapy industry needs to do more to educate the public on what we do, how we do it and how it works. The ignorance and misunderstanding is not helped by the use of hypnosis as a form of entertainment. Perhaps its time to re-open the debate on banning hypnotic stage shows in order to help us create more credibility and so that we can help more people who could be missing out on a great opportunity but fear and ignorance prevents them from seeking help.

Is the new year the best time to make changes that will affect the rest of your life? Yesterday (new years day) I was asked by a presenter on BBC Southern Counties radio whether or not I believed in making resolutions at new year. My reply was that I don’t make resolutions myself and never have. Most people I know who make them tend to fail within weeks if not days. An exception is a good friend who always resolves not to drink alcohol for the whole of January, in order to make up for the excesses over the Christmas/new year period, and he usually succeeds. He, like many of us, enjoys a few drinks when socialising, so stopping for one month is realistic and achievable as all goals should be.

Resolutions often fail when we resolve not to do something such as giving up smoking or starting a diet. The reason for failure is due to the fact that the focus is on deprivation instead of gain. If you are a smoker and enjoy smoking and decide to give up to save money or to improve your health you are depriving yourself of pleasure. At the same time you may feel that stopping smoking is a painful experience. More pain + less pleasure is not a good recipe for success. At thespencepractice we help smokers by associating their habit with a great deal of pain/discomfort and by associating lots of pleasure to not smoking in the future.

Neil was in a similar situation with his desire to lose weight. Over the years his weight crept up to 28 stone and it was literally threatening his life. The traditional method of a strict diet, depriving himself of food that he enjoys and regular visits to the gym did not provide Neil with any feelings of pleasure. Despite the discomfort of being so overweight the pain associated with deprivation over a long period of time prevented him from achieving his goal. Visit Neils page on this  website  http://www.thespencepractice.co.uk/weight-loss-success-story.html to find out how he turned things round and is continuing to enjoy his journey towards health and fitness. 

Setting goals and working towards them is much more motivating than making resolutions that are unsustainable. If you want to find out how to set goals and achieve them contact thespencepractice today and see if we can coach you to success.           

Butterflies in the stomach are usually associated with nerves. How often have your bowel habits changed when you were faced with a new or challenging task or event in your life. When I had a fear of public speaking many years ago, I remember having the need to empty my bowels on numerous occasions prior to a presentation or a speech despite being regular as clockwork most days.

When the body’s ‘alarm system’, the ‘fight or flight response’ is activated the digestive system shuts down to conserve energy so we know that the nervous system impacts on the digestive system.

The symptoms of IBS can be painful, discomforting and embarrassing which then leads to more stress and anxiety relating to travel, being at work and socialising etc. “What if there isn’t a toilet immediately accessible, what if I don’t get to the toilet in time etc.” Your life can become controlled by your digestive system and what would be everyday activities for most people can be a potential obstacle for the IBS sufferer.

Research proves that hypnotherapy is one of, if not the most effective treatments for IBS when it can’t be controlled by a simple change of diet. The hypnotic state is a deep state of relaxation. By learning how to relax deeply and achieving a hypnotic state every symptom in the body slows down, stress/anxiety is minimised and you learn how to regain control over your thoughts, feelings and emotions and send the correct signals from your nervous system to the digestive system.

 With IBS the digestive system is either blocked (constipation) or it is working too quickly (Diarrhoea) so hypnosis helps you to slow it down or speed it up. If you would like us to assess whether or not your symptoms can be helped with hypnotherapy call us now to arrange a free consultation.

Digestion

Our last blog described the digestive system. We will now consider what takes place in this digestive process. It is a continuous changing of substances, which is brought about chemically and organically. This changing is called Metabolism. Upon food being taken into the stomach, it is then mixed with gastric juice and passed into the small intestine in a semi digested state called chyme. At the entrance of the duodenum is the pyloric sphincter muscle, a constricting ring which prevents chyme passing through until it is of the right consistency. This process takes about three hours.

As food passes through the duodenum, it receives bile, (manufactured by the liver), from the gall-bladder, and pancreatic juices from the pancreas. The ducts from each gland unite so that the two secretions are poured into the duodenum at the same time and place, - about three inches from the pyloric orifice.

In the small intestine, much of the changed food element is absorbed into the bloodstream. All the digested food is dealt with here, the undigested parts passing on into the large colon, where liquid food is absorbed. Any remaining undigested parts are then pressed forward by peristalsis action until they reach the sigmoid flexure, and are ejected into the rectal tube.

The intestines ARE NOT BOWELS, as popularly understood, - they are digestive organs. The bowel commences where the small tube leads from the sigmoid flexure. It consists of this tube, (about 2” long), and the rectum. The bowel has one function only, that of dealing with the faeces.

Food passes into the large intestine two to five and a half hours after eating, but it requires nine hours or more before a complete meal has been dealt with.

Diagnosis of IBS

Until recently IBS was usually diagnosed by exclusion of diagnosable physical abnormalities and organic disease. In other words various tests, x-rays and examinations would be made in order to rule out other digestive problems such as chrohn’s, colitis and bowel cancer etc. A diagnosis of IBS could take a very long time which meant a long period of uncertainty and consequent worry and lots of invasive diagnostic ‘tools’ being inserted into the body. This period of worry and stress would often exacerbate the symptoms.

In February 2008 the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) issued new guidelines to the NHS for the diagnosis and management of IBS in primary care. http://www.nice.org.uk/nicemedia/pdf/cg61ibsqrg.pdf

NICE say that “Key elements of management are establishing a positive diagnosis; identifying symptoms that require prompt referral, and working in a long term partnership with the person with IBS, which is a significant change form the previous practice of diagnosing, predominantly by exclusion of diseases, which often led to unnecessary investigations and referrals.”

IBS can be diagnosed if someone reports having had any of the following symptoms for at least 6 months:-

Abdominal pain

Bloating

Change in Bowel habit

And if abdominal pain or discomfort is relieved by defecation or associated with altered bowel frequency or stool form and at least 2 of the following apply;-

Altered stool passage (straining, urgency, incomplete evacuation)

Abdominal bloating, distension, tension or hardness

Symptoms made worse by eating

Passage of mucus

Symptoms of lethargy, nausea, backache and bladder symptoms maybe used to support a diagnosis. However, many of these symptoms can overlap with other gastrointestinal disorders.

NICE recommend that treatment and care should take into account patients individual needs and preferences and that good communication is essential to allow patients to reach informed decisions about their care.

Once the diagnosis has been made the patient and their family or carers will be given the opportunity to be involved in decisions about treatment and care. General dietary and lifestyle advice including physical activity levels and relaxation will be provided and a referral to a dietician made if diet is considered to be a major factor. For people who don’t respond to dietary and lifestyle changes or to pharmacological treatments after 12 months, a referral for psychological interventions will be considered such Hypnotherapy, CBT or other psychological therapy.

In our next blog we look at how and why IBS might have a psychological component to its symptoms.

IBS is defined as a functional bowel disorder; a disturbance of the colon where patients present with long standing symptoms of any of the following:- crampy abdominal pain, bloating, excessive flatulence, diarrhoea, constipation or alternating diarrhoea and constipation. IBS accounts for about half of all the visits to gastroenterologists. It is classed as a functional disorder by the medical profession which means it is not an illness or disease, the digestive system is not functioning as it should be for whatever reason, whether it be diet, lifestyle, stress or emotional reasons. Upper gastroenterology. symptoms are also quite common such as acid reflux, nausea and vomiting. Some people experience fatigue, back ache, head ache and gynaecological symptoms. It is not a life threatening condition, however it can severely impact on the quality of your life and has serious cost implications to the health service.

The Digestive System

The digestive system consists of the alimentary canal - a continuous tube from the mouth to the anus, and the accessory organs - teeth, tongue, salivary glands, pancreas, liver and gall bladder.

The process of digestion is the turning of solid food into a substance which can be easily absorbed into the blood stream, thereby nourishing all the tissues of the body by means of conversion and absorption.

Food is placed in the mouth and is masticated by the teeth. It is moistened by the salivary glands and formed into a ball (bolus) by the tongue. As this bolus slips beyond the tongue, the trachea (wind pipe) is automatically closed by the epiglottis to prevent any food passing into it. We all know the unpleasant experience of food ‘going down the wrong way’ and causing a paroxysm of coughing. When the food is safely swallowed, it is gripped by the pharynx and pressed on into the oesophagus (or gullet) by peristalsis action. This is a squeezing movement caused by the contraction of the muscles in the tract. Symptoms of IBS appear to be caused by a spasm resulting in the peristalsis action taking place too quickly or too slowly. The oesophagus is about ten inches long and descends in front of the vertebrae, through the diaphragm to the upper end of the stomach.

The stomach is a muscular sac shaped like the letter ‘J’ and it holds an average of one and half pints. It lies above the umbilicus (navel) and to the left of the xyphold cartilage, just below the diaphragm, and partly under the left lobe of the liver. At the lower end of the stomach is a valve, called the pylorus, the orifice of the small intestine, the first twelve inches of which is the duodenum, which is shaped like a horse shoe. This now continues into the portion consisting of the upper two fifths of the remaining small intestine, - the jejunum. The last part is the ileum. The small intestine is about twenty five feet long in the adult, and is coiled around in numerous directions until it reaches the ileocaecal valve, the entrance to the large intestine.

From the caecum, the large colon ascends on the right side of the abdomen as far as the liver, when it turns at the hepatic flexure into the transverse colon as far as the spleen, and now turns downwards at the splenic flexure into the descending colon as far as the sigmoid flexure, which leads to the rectum.

Our next blog will explain how you digest food and how the medical profession diagnose IBS

Every 3 months we will be focusing on conditions that can blight the quality of your life and for which the medical profession do not have the answers. These are conditions that have a psychological component even though the symptoms may be physical.

Over the next 3 months we will be focusing on the condition known as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) the symptoms of which could be affecting as many as 20 % of the population to varying degrees.

If you are a sufferer or know someone that is you can visit this site over the next 3 months and find out more about this debilitating condition and how to combat it. The next post will describe what IBS is and how it is diagnosed.

Win a free course of therapy at The Life Makeover Show on Saturday 26 November at Hove Town Hall. We will be exhibiting at this show. If you visit thespencepractice stand you can enter our free competition to win a course of therapy up to the value of £350. Every entrant will receive a free copy of thespencepractice motivation and stress busting CD.

The show starts at 10 am and closes at 5 pm and includes free workshops, free tasters, free demonstrations, free advice, competitions, deli/cafe, champagne & seafood bar. Admission is £5 on the door (save up to 50% by booking on line at www.lifemakeovershow.co.uk)

We tend to associate bullying with the school playground bit it doesn’t stop there unfortunately. A survey* by The Samaritans has revealed that over 80% of workers have been bullied during their careers and a third of people are so stressed they have dreamed of quitting for a life abroad.

The figure of 80 % is hard to believe and it could be that bullying may be difficult to define and one person’s take on bullying might be viewed by someone else as ‘office banter’. It’s also interesting that we tend to think that living somewhere else will eliminate stress.

Some people appear to thrive on pressure and stress whereas others ‘buckle’ under it. Whatever contributes towards creating stress in your life it is the way that you react to it that will determine the outcome.

When we work with clients suffering from the emotional, physical and psychological effects of stress we help you to regain control over your emotions, behaviours and thoughts and make the appropriate changes in lifestyle that will improve the quality of your life.

Other findings from the Samaritans survey included: 

• Over a third of people identify work as being the main cause of stress.
• Half a million people say their work is so stressful that it is making them ill .
• Five million people feel very or extremely stressed by their work.  Workloads and relationships with colleagues and management are cited as the biggest contributing factor, and to make matters worse managers feel that they don’t have the skills to deal with it.
• 12.8 million working days were lost to stress, depression and anxiety in 2004 at a cost of 3.8 billion.
• Absence from work due to sickness, costs UK business nearly £11 billion a year, but the estimated cost to society is nearer £23 billion.
• 49% of people are worried about the effect stress is having on their health.
• 32% of workers feel their employers turn a blind eye to the problem of stress.
• 83% would rather say they were sick with flu or other problem than admit they were stressed.
• 40% of IT workers, retailers, caterers and engineers feel unsupported at work and over half unable to deal with stress.

* Stressed Out: A study of public experience of stress at work, December 2007.

For more information go to www.stressdownday.org

At last, the book that smokers have been waiting for. ‘Stop smoking easily and Transform your Life for good’! is a new book by Elliott Wald founder of the ‘EasyStop’ stop smoking method which helps you (1) To make your mind up to stop. (2)To stop and (3) Stay stopped for good.

The first section of the book is about making that all important decision to stop and committing to that decision. You have to really want to do it for yourself and not because you feel you ought to for the sake of your partner or children or because a medical professional is advising you to stop or because you are being ‘nagged’ or made to feel like a pariah by government bans and anti-smoking advertising.

The second section of the book focuses on how to go about stopping once you have made your mind-up to do it. There are many methods/approaches available to help you quit but the problem is that most don’t deal with both the physiological and psychological aspects of smoking. As Elliott says “it’s like cutting off the tops of the weeds and leaving the roots intact. When you stop in the right way, which involves a change in your ‘mindset’ and attitude towards smoking it can be easy, by pulling up the roots so that you can stay stopped for good. Staying stopped is dealt with in the final section of the book.

You can obtain a copy of the book from http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stop-Smoking-Easily-Transform-Your/dp/1934266051/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198359405&sr=8-1

The smoking ban has now been in force for 7 months and we would be interested in your views on whether or not it has made your life better or worse or not made any difference at all. We welcome views from smokers, non-smokers and from publicans on how it has affected business since it was introduced.

Whilst exhibiting at The Wellbeing Fest in Lewes at the weekend i was surprised at how few male smokers came to visit our stand and how many women, whose partners’ smoked, stopped by for a chat. I shouldn’t have been surprised because i have seen it happen many times before. For example, a couple will be walking past our stand and the male smoker will be looking away to avoid eye contact and his partner (smoker or non-smoker) will be pulling him in our direction.

I hadn’t given too much thought to the gender differences in the smoking habit before until i read this article http://www.articlecity.com/articles/health/article_6948.shtml on a blog this morning. Men have always found it more difficult to seek help for psychological, behavioural and emotional problems than women do. As problem solvers we men think that we should be able to find our own solutions to problems and don’t want to be dictated to by our partners, the government, medical profession and therapists etc. However, how many men will take their car to the garage when it breaks down or have a computer fixed by an IT expert when the computer crashes. Perhaps that’s the aswer for many smokers. They have to wait until the body starts to breakdown before they will seek professional help. It might be a regular morning cough or difficulty breathing when climbing the stairs or something more serious like a heart attack or emphasema.

What is clear is that a ‘nagging wife’ or a ’nanny state’ government banning smoking is more likely to strengthen a smokers resolve and encourage their rebellious streak.  Even the french have now banned smoking from bars and restaurants from the start of this year. “I will stop when i want to stop” is often the response from a male smoker. The sad part of this stubborn response is that it can and often does lead to a premature and harrowing death. Prevention is always better than cure and if you do it the right way with our help you are much more likely to succeed.