New Year Blues?

I know it isn't New Year yet but everything that can be said about Christmas has already been said hasn't it?

Some years ago I met for the first time, one of those people who hates New Year. Until then I had not been aware of this substantial group. This particular individual explained that he found New Year depressing because it was an opportunity to look back over the year past and realise that he had achieved nothing, not moved on in life, not got anywhere nearer to reaching his goals.

My thoughts were instantly that this was one seriously depressing and depressed person! Well heavens, if you looked back at all your failures wouldn't you hate it too? I certainly would. This man had no perspective on what he HAD achieved. Maybe he had learned to cook macaroni cheese or discovered more about recycling or painted his kitchen, bought a new car, educated himself by reading a paper twice a week. I don't know what he had done but I know he had achieved something. But he wasn't acknowledging anything that he had done.

Perhaps some of our strategic goals might not have been achieved in full but let's not let that overshadow who we are and what we do and have done this year. I haven't achieved everything I wanted to and I haven't got as far with some goals as I wanted to get either. What I have achieved though has been an expansion of my hypnotherapy work, an excellent work/life balance and a deeper love for my small son. Those things are important and although I did not do the one thing that I wanted most this year, I will not be feeling depressed when the New Year arrives.

Take a proper look at what you have done this year. And if you acknowledge the detail then you will find achievments and positive change too.

Celebrate Happiness

I feel like I'm in a confessional, "Bless me Father for I have sinned because it has been a few weeks since my last blog post." What can I say? Family and home pressures too numerous, not to mention the time I have to give to my clients, and actually it is right that I give more time to family and clients than to my blog.

Onwards with the blog!

My subject today is to celebrate happiness. I have a couple of very worthwhile clients at the moment who have both suffered difficult childhoods and difficult subsequent life experiences. If I let them dwell on these they could feel pretty depressed don't you think? So we are trying to stimulate their happy neural networks. Every day they have to think of and dwell on a positive memory or experience or feeling.

Thoughts are only flases of electrical stimulation and they go round the brain through networks. These networks are the ones they know, the ones they have been used to taking and using. A person who likes dogs will have a neural network set up so that each time he sees a dog he feels positive, happy, perhaps a nice memory may be sparked. Someone witha dog phobia would have a diferent, negative network of thoughts activated by the same stimulus. Each of these networks are in part habits. The brain is used to responding in this way os it always responds in a similar manner.

So if we keep prodding and stimulating the positive networks then we can develop more positive habitual ways of thinking. And if we have a habit of thinking positively then we become more positive overall.

Despite the tough times, everyone does have some positive memories or experiences to draw on. Any tiny memory will do - playing in the snow, a funny time with a friend, enjoying a certain TV programme - anything at all. If you train yourself to consider a happy or positive memory or a positive thing about yourself as a person every single day, you will be compounding and strengthening your positive view of yourself. You will improve your self-esteem slowly but surely.

There are positive parts of everyone and we need to strengthen these sides of ourselves in order to learn how to deal with the negative parts of life. Even something that started off badly will have a bit of good to build upon.

If you have been born into an unfortunate situation, it is not necessarily your destiny to stay in that mould. You CAN change your stars. I would like to recommend a film called "A Knights Tale" starring the late Heath Ledger, which describes how the unlikliest situations can turn around.

And remember, in your darkest hours, "I may be lying in the gutter, but I am looking up at the stars." I wish Heath Ledger had been able to see those stars.

The stars ARE there. All you need to do is open your eyes and look up.

EFT or CBT?

Heard of these?

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). EFT is the tapping technique where you tap on points of the body in order to release emotional disturbance and upset. I have made one or two blog posts about it.

CBT is based on changing the way we think in order to change the way we feel. Very simply, you recognise a negative thought, decide why it is negative and then place a positive spin on it. Practised diligently, over time and with persistence it should help by lietrally changing your mind.

There is a fundamental difference between EFT and CBT, which a client recently pointed out to me. She has worked with CBT before and is therefore used to changing negatives into positives. EFT on the other hand focuses on all the negative thoughts, brings them into consciousness and uses the tapping system to discharge them. This bothered my client, who felt that EFT is a very negative therapy.

If you compare it to CBT, then in this respect you could say that EFT does feel rather negative. But I promise you that it works because with EFT we focus on all the negative aspects of a situation until they are dealt with, processed and the negative sting has been taken away. Some parts of life ARE negative, and may not be what we would like to deal with but if we are not overwhelmed with emotion then we are able to deal with them in a positive manner.

There is an EFT method called "Choices" which I also employ, which has a far more positive feel to it. It adds in the positive frame of mind that we want to cultivate, after we have dealt with the negative feeling. For those who enjoy CBT, this application of EFT is sure to be a winner.

Want to try EFT and feel free? There's more on my website: http://www.northamptonhypnosis.co.uk/EFT.html

On romance

A girlfriend recently emailled me to say that she had prepared an evening picnic for her partner. She had put the children to bed and had laid out some beautiful food and drink on a blanket in the living room for her beloved when he got home.

It struck me instantly that it was a wonderful thing to do. Romantic, thoughtful, pleasing, simple.

Ladies, do you ever wish or grumble that your partner is never romantic? What do you mean by that? Do you ever make romantic gestures for him? Well do you?

It is easy for us to complain about the lack of romance displayed by our men. But if we never reciprocate then what do we expect? I'd like to encourage all ladies to start to do a little more on the romance stakes. Sometimes perhaps we expect too much of our men. And if we display the behaviour we would like to experience then others tend to follow suit. When we are polite, we tend to be spoken to politely. If we are angry and aggressive, our opposite number usually reacts with anger and aggression.

So if we are romantic and loving, why would our loved ones not react in a similar manner? Try it. I'm going to.

I can't explain it but...

Many people are sceptical of complementary therapy. And very many are sceptical about hypnotherapy and EFT. Even some of my clients are sceptical about the therapies I practise. Yet they are willing to come along and pay me. This is amusing though it shouldn't be.

I had one such client this morning.

"I can't explain it but I have stopped snacking between meals. I don't know why but I stopped doing that instantly after our first session."

So she came to see me and we worked with some hypnosis and she has been listening diligently to the CD I gave her. Yet she doesn't know why she has stopped her snacking?! It surely couldn't be the hypnotherapy could it? No of course not, it couldn't possibly be anything to do with the 2 hour session that we just had together!

We worked with Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) today and I showed my client a very nifty EFT method to get rid of cravings. After we finished, she really did not want to eat the bag of crisps that I offered her. And yet she remains sceptical about whether EFT really works. OK, I'll almost give you that one because EFT is so new and different, but I promise you it does work. It just got rid of your craving for crisps!

EFT is the background workhorse, quietly chipping away at negative emotions, removing obstacles. Every single objection can be swept away and dealt with. All the excuses can be simply and quickly zapped. All the "I can't because..." that I hear so often from my weight loss clients are deleted and removed so we can get on with the business at hand - losing weight with hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy makes reducing calories easier. EFT gets rid of the obstacles to long-term, effective weight loss. And so it clears the way for hypnotherapeutic work. If you want to lose weight but are finding it difficult, try hypnotherapy.

More at www.northamptonhypnosis.co.uk

Gastric Band Surgery with Hypnosis

Yes really!

Take a look at this news report: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5357013/Woman-lost-4st-after-hypnotist-convinced-her-of-gastric-band-fitting.html#

If you can't be bothered, I will summarise! So an obese woman goes to a hypnotherapist who hypnotises her into believing that she has had gastric band surgery. She knows she has not but still she can only eat small amounts of food. Since her food consumption has dropped, so does her weight.

It's a simple cause and effect but the case is interesting for a hypnotherapist. You are wondering, "Is this real? Can this really be done?" Yes of course it can. I won't bore you with the how and why I believe this case can work but it is totally possible. Hypnosis can help with weight loss and the "hypnotic gastric band" is clearly one method of achieving that. I haven't employed that method yet but perhaps I should!

Want to know more about hypnosis? My website www.northamptonhypnosis.co.uk should answer most of your questions. Or give me a call. Researching the solution is only background information, picking up the phone to make an appointment is really making that solution happen for you.

Derren Brown

Derren Brown, entertainer, showman and illusionist (my description) has angered me beyond belief. On his show on Friday night he performed a rapid hypnotic induction on a highly suggestible young man. He then gave him the command to go to a bank and take out £5K and give it to Derren, which he did. Derren then helpfully erased his memory of the event.

Derren was then able to use the £5K to go gambling at a casino. There was far more to the show than this and I would argue that it was one of Derren's least entertaining shows but never mind.

The point I would like to make is that he was extremely irresponsible in doing this. The entire thing may easily have been staged. I know of no bank that allows you to spontaneously withdraw £5K in cash. And 5 days later the young man said he had no recollection of the meeting. Had he not noticed a £5K hole in his finances?

It matters not one jot whether this was real or staged. What matters is that it looked to the viewer that hypnosis is mind control. I spend a considerable time with new clients to bust this myth and to reassure them that if I directed them to give me large sums of money from the cashpoint then they would not comply. If any of my clients both past and future potential were watching then they will have lost all confidence in what I said!

I cannot tell you how infuriated I am. My clients have to have confidence in me, in the therapeutoic nature of hypnotherapy and in my moral use of the techniques. Everything I do is directed at achieving the clients' goals, to help them achieve what they want to achieve and trust me, none of them want to give me huge sums of cash - not at first anyway!

I would just like to reassure everyone that in a hypnotic trance, a client will comply with the hypnotherapist in accordance with his/her own deeply held beliefs and values. So if you want the therapist to help you with a fear of flying then you will respond to all that is said which relates to fear of flying. therefore you will comply with that part of therapy because it is what you want. My explanation of the young subject on the Derren Brown show (if it was not staged) is that he wanted to give him the money because he liked Derren, he wanted to help him, he wanted to feel that he was a special part of his show and that no one else could help Derren out, that he was receiving special treatment, that he would be rewarded and that there was no risk to his money. Of course, this would not be show on TV because Derren is a showman, he cannot reveal all his secrets.

It is important to remember that Derren Brown is not a hypnotherapist although he does sometimes engage in positive hypnotherapeutic techniques, as in the Trick or Treat series. A hypnotherapist who is a member of a professional body such as the General Hypnotherapy Register, the National Council for Hypnotherapy or the British Society of Clinical Hypnotherapists would never attempt to influence a client in the way that Derren does with the willing participants on his show.

If you want real therapy then don't ask an entertainer!

Find out more at my website: www.northamptonhypnosis.co.uk