Programs

• Overcoming unhelpful habits (2-4 sessions)

• Sleep problems (2-4 sessions)

• Anxiety: generalised anxiety, school anxiety, phobias, panic attacks, Irritable bowel syndrome, OCD and PTSD (2-4 sessions)

• Pain management (3-6 sessions)

• Tics (2-4 Sessions)

Hypnotherapy is not a replacement for medical treatment of conditions such as pain, bedwetting, anxiety or sleep disturbance, but can help alongside medical therapy. Prior to meeting you and your child for such problems, I would ask you to please see your GP, to ensure serious health problems are excluded.

As with adults, for hypnotherapy to be successful, your child needs to be motivated to change. Hypnosis is not done to a child. The child sets the goal they wish to achieve, and through suggestions, we can work out together, how to achieve those goals.

During hypnotherapy, you will be the greatest asset to supporting my work with your child and are welcome to remain with us throughout the session. We will work together to achieve the best outcomes for your child.

Why use hypnosis with children and what makes it different or even more effective than any other tool? You may have seen your child in a trancelike state when they get absorbed in a story, when they draw a picture, build with Lego or when they pretend to be a dog. Children find it very easy to get fully absorbed in the learning experiences that hypnosis can provide them with.

Clinical hypnosis with children is best understood as the deliberate use of this naturally occurring trancelike state. In therapy, we access this natural way of being absorbed in imagination, to create wonderful opportunities for children to discover their own resources and capabilities, to learn new skills and to apply them to the many challenges that growing up brings.

Children can also learn self-hypnosis to help them think ‘on purpose’ to guide thoughts in a more helpful way and to learn to control behaviours. It is very empowering for children and adults alike to find out, that they have so much more control over their own thoughts and feelings than they realised.

Children under the age of 8 usually don’t feel comfortable closing their eyes to focus more deeply, but because of their incredible ability to be fully absorbed in a story, they benefit from the experience in the same way. In hypnosis your child can safely tackle his/her greatest fears and learn the skills to overcome them.

I will make a recording of each session, so that your child can listen to it regularly and strengthen his/her skills. The recording also gives you, the parent, a chance to get an insight into the work we have done, if you were not present. Lynn Lyons, a paediatrician and renowned expert on paediatric hypnosis, defines the use of hypnosis with children in the following way:

“I am using hypnosis with a child when I am able to absorb and join a child in an imaginative experience that allows us to alter sensations, change perceptions, shift a perspective, and discover a solution together. The experience itself, the posthypnotic suggestions, and the practicing that follows allow the child to then apply these new skills and perspectives to future situations” (Using Hypnosis with Children, 2015, p.4)

• Get control over your fears, anxiety, phobias, OCD and worry (2-4 sessions)

• Improve your sleep (2-4 sessions)

• Chronic pain management (4-6 sessions)

• Reduce Alcohol intake (2-4 sessions)

• High Performance in Sport, School & Work (2-4 sessions)

• Overcome unhealthy perfectionism and imposter syndrome (2-4 sessions)

• Overcome low self-esteem (2-4 sessions)

Coping with anxiety

Sometimes it feels like anxiety controls you, whether you are an adult or an adolescent. The truth is, anxiety is a natural and universal human experience resulting from a real or perceived threat to your safety. We speak of ‘panic attacks’, because it feels like we are literally attacked by the feelings of the heart racing, shortness of breath, sweaty palms, dizziness, and difficulty concentrating. You may feel a loss of self-control or self-esteem. Sometimes, this ‘fight or flight’ response is important to keep us safe. The same response to an event that is not life threatening or dangerous is less useful and can interfere with your ability to live life to the full.  When anxious feelings don't go away, or they happen for no obvious reason and make it hard to cope with daily life, it is the ‘fight or flight’ response gone wrong.

Unmanaged anxiety starts to spread into other areas of your life, making you too scared to act.  Anxiety is common and most of us will experience it at some stage. You can learn to manage it and be in charge of your life again.

Anxiety, which includes generalised anxiety, social phobia, panic attacks, OCD and PTSD, is very highly treatable with hypnotherapy.

Improve your sleep

Lack of sleep or difficulty going to sleep, can be directly linked to fearful or anxious thoughts and feelings. Sometimes, a very busy mind cannot be switched off easily. Lack of sleep can often cause anxious thoughts and feelings, setting off a vicious circle, affecting various aspects of your life. This makes you feel more and more anxious about daily activities that you were never worried about before. This spiral of anxiety can successfully be interrupted with the help of strategic psychotherapy and hypnosis.

With the help of self-hypnosis techniques, you can learn to calm your body and mind so completely, that sleep will come naturally and effortlessly. Please make sure you have consulted with your GP to exclude conditions such as sleep apnoea.

Chronic Pain Management

Long-term pain can dramatically impact your quality of life, leaving you depressed, tired, angry, anxious….and most importantly, feeling like you are unable to take part in your own life. Medication can often have uncomfortable side effects. But thankfully, it is not the only way we can learn to cope with pain. 

Pain is a complex subject. And whilst it is certainly real for everyone who experiences it, it can be interesting to notice, that pain gets perceived in different ways by different people. Pain can also be perceived differently by the same person in different contexts. If we are in a winning match and hurt ourselves, we might not feel the pain of an injury at all, until well after the end of the game. If instead we are injured by the opposition in a losing match, the pain of the exact same injury might be perceived much more intensely. 

How does someone feel pain in a limb, that does no longer exist? Or how come our body feels no pain at all, when it is fighting for survival? The answer lies in our amazing ability to disconnect the body and the mind. With self-hypnosis techniques, we can learn to do this separation on demand, the exact reason why hypnosis for pain management works so very well. This has been proven in many clinical studies. https://www.jpain.org/article/S1526-5900(18)30124-X/fulltext

Whilst pain is nature’s way of protecting us, we can also learn to reduce the strength of a pain message or sometimes even eliminate it with the help of self-hypnosis, when it is no longer needed to keep us safe. To make sure that you receive the correct help for your particular injury or pain condition, I will need a referral from your GP. 

Reduce Alcohol intake

You feel it has become hard to be in control of how much alcohol you are consuming. With the help of hypnosis combined with some coping strategies, it becomes easy and effortless. You will get back control of what goes into your body and drinking alcohol becomes a choice again.

High Performance in Sport, School & Work

Mindset stands at the forefront of how well we achieve our full potential. We need to be clear about what we can and cannot control in any given situation and be sure about: who we are, what we want and how to get there. You decide your attitude, your mindset, your self-worth, your values. Success is knowing that you’re worthy of chasing your goals and dreams, regardless of whether you achieve them.

By focusing our attention on what we can control, like who we want to be, we remove external distractions such as results and expectations and can focus without fear. You can go after the things you love to do, they just don't determine your self-worth. You can go after your dreams without any promise you’ll actually achieve those dreams and that’s ok. Ironically, this lack of fear to follow our dreams makes us more likely to achieve them!

Overcome unhealthy perfectionism and imposter syndrome

Perfectionism is certainly not something we want to get rid of, it is most likely responsible for your very high achievements! Some perfectionism can become unhealthy and some perfectionists are troubled by “imposter syndrome”.

Unhealthy perfectionism can lead to people never achieving their goals or full potential. They keep setting the goalposts higher, before acknowledging and celebrating their achievements, which creates stress and rising anxiety. This can cause your brain to eventually say “I’m done, I cannot do this anymore”.

With imposter syndrome, despite peoples’ objective successes, they do not feel able to take credit for them. They explain success away as luck, they don’t believe those who tell them how well they have done, and they fear that their luck will run out and that they will be found out as imposters. If this sounds like you, hypnotherapy can help you achieve a more realistic self-assessment and help you stop chronic self-criticism whilst teaching you to be kinder to yourself by transforming every mistake into a learning instead.

Overcome low self-esteem

Do you worry what other people think of you or how they feel about you? Do you fear rejection, embarrassment or failure? Do these fears stop you from trying new things? These fears can be paralysing, stopping you from reaching beyond your comfort zone and experiencing life fully.

Hypnotherapy connects you to your inner strengths, allows you to recognise your skills and capabilities and gives you the strength to try something new. It helps you prove to yourself, that you are ‘good enough’ and ‘capable enough’ to achieve whatever you put your mind to. It also teaches conflict management and how to set boundaries, so that you can start to stand up for yourself. You will no longer be a ‘pushover’ or ‘yes’ person.

The aim is to achieve a more realistic self-assessment, because the truth is, we all have strengths and qualities and also areas that require improvement. Everyone is a work in progress, therefore it is unrealistic to compare ourselves to others. No two people start at the same start line. No two people aim at the same finish line.