Category Archives: Articles

Age Regression Hypnosis

Age regression is a way of accessing one’s memories from an earlier time. This can be helpful to remember what has been forgotten or to release emotional trauma from an earlier time. The unconscious mind has the ability to repress memories, which would occur particularly if the memory has some negative emotion attached to it, negative emotion, which the individual would be unable to deal with. However, when the unconscious knows you are ready to deal with that emotion, it can represent those memories for resolution.

Sometimes, we can remember events from the past and continue to recreate the negative emotions that went with them. Age regression can be particularly useful in this area, in fact, an NLP technique called Change Personal History, can help a person to change the way they represent their memories to themselves.

Due to the power of the unconscious, which is also responsible for creating the imagination, care and gentle indifference must be considered when performing age regression using hypnosis for traumatic memories that have been forgotten. This is because the imagination may create scenarios which justify the feelings. These scenarios may be real memories, or they may not be.

When using age regression to remember more generic things that have been forgotten, e.g. losing your keys, age regression in hypnosis can be a particularly useful tool. All of your memories are stored in the unconscious, so even if you cannot consciously remember where you left your keys, there is a part of you that knows. (And it will usually remind you as soon as you stop thinking about the keys!) Hypnosis can be used to retrace the steps taken just before the loss of memory, and ideomotor signals can be used as a direct way of communicating with the unconscious. These are generally yes and no signals which are given in answer to questions by unconscious movements, such as a finger being raised to indicate yes, and a different finger being raised to indicate no.

“Going back to a period of my life and dealing with the problems means I now have the whole of the rest of my life to look forward to.”

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Overcome Allergies in Hertfordshire

How often do we accept a label and fully live up to it? The answer may be many more times than we should. The challenge that we have as human beings is that we have used words to identify things, but the words are never fully reflective of the true experience.

For example, let’s say you go to the doctor one summer’s day because your eyes are sore and your nose is runny. The likely hood is that your doctor, whom you respect and trust will apply a label to your symptoms, in an effort to provide an explanation of your experience so that it can then be treated.

So your doctor tells you, have hay fever. From that Summer onwards you grow to expect your hay fever visitor. You know how you will feel, what your symptoms will be when they will start when they will stop. You even compare your suffering with other sufferers, to compete against who suffers the most!

When do you know to stop being a hay fever sufferer- how do you know that you haven’t grown out of it? Could your expectation of it be the sole reason that it is continually re-created?

How about stress? Is that a factor for allergy sufferers? For many asthmatics eczema and psoriasis sufferers it is a deciding factor in the severity of the condition.

So how can NLP and hypnosis in Hertfordshire help?

Well as we know one of the major frames of NLP is the cause-and-effect frame. This moves the client out of “I suffer” and into “I create.” This in itself may not be enough to stop the allergic reaction but does at least get the client away from relying on a treatment for the problem and looking more towards how they continue to cause it. Perhaps they can begin to notice how their diet affects their level of resistance or look for homoeopathic and natural remedies to counteract the symptoms.

For those whose Symptoms are aggravated by stress, Hypnosis is especially beneficial for creating relaxation and relieving tension and suggestions for healing can be given to the patient.

“I think it is unconscious changes that have made the impact.”

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Dealing with Compulsive Disorders

A definition of what compulsion means is usually worded in the following kind of way: A psychological and usually irrational force that makes somebody do something, often unwillingly.

These “irrational forces” are, in the case of compulsive disorders, caused by repetitive thoughts, or mental activity. This is an important factor in understanding and beginning to alter the way that the person with the compulsion represents the problem to themselves. By understanding that the irrational force is caused by the person’s own thoughts and activities, we begin to move the problem away from some outside force that is making them do something, and towards understanding that the problem is something that is caused by themselves.

They may not yet feel as if they are in control of their own thoughts because they have gotten into such an automatic pattern with their thinking that it is occurring as if they have no control over it. And it absolutely will feel that way. After all, whose thoughts are they? In whose head? Whose mind is that? Who is the only one listening to those thoughts? If there is no one else in your head, they must be your own thoughts! This is a great thing to acknowledge because it means that accepting responsibility for those thoughts puts the “thinker” back in control so that they have a much greater potential to create changes.

The first thing I would explore with a compulsive client, in my hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, is what Complex Equivalence exists in their mind about this problem. What does this problem mean? What is it trying to achieve? What does it allow them to do? What do they believe would happen if they stopped this behaviour?

Quite often fear is a big driver of compulsive behaviour, and frequently the fear exists to keep the person safe. When you know what this problem means, its truth and validity can be explored. Quite often there is no logical link between the behaviour/thoughts and the “reasons” why it is occurring. For example, one lady I met felt compelled to check the locks on her car (to the degree that she had to have new ones fitted every 6 months) and her greatest fear was linked to the safety of her father after he had nearly died. The was no obvious link between her father’s incident and the repeated behaviour of locking her car. Knowing this didn’t make the problem stop, but it did encourage her to question the validity of the problem which had felt like a very solid problem before she had thought about it in this way.

The next step can be taken if you believe that the client’s problem may be related to a significant emotional event. A values elicitation can be very worthwhile for discovering what “away from” values exist in their values hierarchy and can help uncover SEEs that the client might not have consciously realised were still having a negative impact.

As well as, or instead of this, I would use the fast phobia technique. The fast phobia technique doesn’t have to be restricted to phobias only. It is a process which is very useful at desensitising the negative emotions that occur when triggered by stimuli so that the person can be around the stimuli without feeling negative emotions. This means there is the opportunity to be around things that used to make them feel a compulsion and no longer feel it.

The compulsion blowout method can be used to demolish the submodalities associated with the stimuli. Submodalities are the codes that we use to make meaning of our experiences and memories. When these are adjusted, the memory/experience will no longer work in the same way as it did in the past.

There is, of course, a lot of room for manoeuvre, as a therapist, I am flexible in my approach and will adjust techniques that I already know if I think there is a way of having them work in a more appropriate way for that specific client. Other techniques I have used have included advising the client that they can do as much as they like of one compulsion, but have to trade off another. This works really well for multiple compulsions as the list slowly whittles down until there is just one compulsion to deal with. By this time they have also built up confidence in their own abilities.

“I’m more confident to deal with the feelings.”

By Gemma Bailey
www.GemmaBailey.com

New Year, New Rules!

The ‘rule’ of the rules is to make them not scary and to avoid creating rules that you’re going to dislike putting in place. They need to be rules that you can enjoy enforcing. There may be some rules that are less easy to enforce than others. For example, if I’ve decided as I have in the past that I’m going to go to the gym X amount of times per week. Then I know that that’s a rule that I’m going to have challenges with because that’s a rule that I’ve had challenges with in the past!

However, if I phrase that rule slightly differently then all of a sudden it becomes a lot more attractive, a lot more appealing, and certainly much more realistic of my expectations and my ability. For example, instead of saying ‘I will go to the gym three times a week’, instead, my rule is: You are going to enjoy taking care of yourself and having a physically fit body.

That rule seems much more appealing to me and I think the reason is that I don’t feel like I’m tying myself into a contract where I have to go three times a week and beat myself up if I don’t.

The mental image I make when I say to myself that I’m going to take care of myself and have a physically fit body is a much more serene-looking image. It’s me looking fit, looking like I’m enjoying myself, moving my body in a way that really appeals to me. NLP can help motivate you to exercise and hypnotherapy from a specialist in Hertfordshire, North London can help too.

So simply by rephrasing the rule, I’ve given it much more appeal and it means that in my imagination I get a different sense of it. The sense is that it’s going to be much more consistent and much more enjoyable to me.

Here are some rules that you might like to use that I’ve already reframed for you so that they’re set up in the best possible way:

If you ever had a rule about your health in the past that you did not stick to, it may just be a case of reframing or restating that rule in a way to makes it more appealing to your unconscious mind. As an example: I will stop eating junk food and stick to a healthy diet.

Notice what mental imagery you create, what picture springs to mind when I say to you: ‘I will stop eating junk food and stick to a healthy diet’. The image I get is me sitting at the kitchen table with a stick of celery looking unimpressed.

So, a better rule could be: I’m going to get my body to the healthiest possible state by having a balanced varied diet.

Doesn’t that sound so much better? It doesn’t sound as painful. It doesn’t sound as if you’re missing out and this is an important thing with diets guys I’m just going to say this quickly is one of the challenges with diets is that firstly, it presupposes that you’re going to be missing out on certain things.

Visit an NLP therapist in North London or Hertfordshire for a free consultation to discover how they can help motivate you to exercise and live a healthier life.

If you’ve ever had the experience in the past of being told that you can’t have something, doesn’t it make you want to even more?

A challenge with dieting is that you are stopping an old way of eating in favour of going for a new way of eating and then once you’ve lost the weight, probably stopping that way of eating and trying then to go through the transition of having a normal balanced diet so you go through at least two transitions. You go from where you are now into diet mode and then from diet mode back into normal mode once you’ve lost the weight.

How about you just have a healthy life instead? That’s only one transition. You only have to do that once. You have to change once, so if you can say to yourself that you’re going to have a varied and balanced diet, getting your body into the healthiest possible state, then you’ve only got one thing that you need to change and one thing that you need to stick to and you do that for the rest of your life.

Now when I say it’s the rest of your life you don’t have to freak out about that because remember it’s a balanced and varied diet, which means that you can still have a takeaway. You can have chocolate. You can have those foods that you enjoy for all the wrong reasons. You just need to do it in a balanced way.

Hypnotherapy can provide you with the commitment and willpower to be able to stick to a diet in the future. Speak to the Hypnotherapy and NLP clinic for more information.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

PTSD usually occurs after a person has been exposed to a situation which threatens great physical danger or when physical harm occurs to themselves or to another.

Those with PTSD may exhibit a variety of symptoms. Some become very detached and “numb” losing interest in their old way of life and the people they used to be close to, becoming aggressive, violent or no longer affectionate, whilst others may be very jumpy and sensitive.

Particular triggers such as sounds/smells/images/feelings associated with the event may create an emotional response. Quite often those with PTSD also experience flashbacks. This is a spontaneous repeat of the memory of the event that may be triggered by the sounds/smells etc associated with the event or the flashbacks may also occur as dreams when sleeping. Often thoughts of the event will then continue to occur throughout the day. Other anxiety disorders such as depression are often associated with PTSD.

It can be useful to establish how the person is representing the flashbacks and memories of the event to themselves in their mind. Those who are experiencing a great deal of emotional pain from the incident will usually replay the memory fully associated- seeing it through their own eyes as if they were there. Those who see the memories and flashbacks dissociated (as if they are watching themselves in the event), usually have a lesser degree of pain from the event when they remember it in the now.

Techniques such as the NLP fast phobia cure can be used to help the brain interrupt the experience normally associated with the memory and gives the opportunity for the mind to re-code the event so that the incident is altered and desensitized. EFT has also proved to be effective in treating PTSD as it realigns the body’s natural energy systems. Using eye movement patterns in addition to tapping also gives the brain an added opportunity to desensitize and reprogram old memories.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Your Self-Esteem Explained!

Morris Rosenberg states that self-esteem is formulated in 3 ways (1) reflected appraisals, (2) social comparison, (3) self-attribution.

The reflected appraisal comes from Mead and Cooley’s idea that if others respect us and look up to us in some way, we are likely to have higher self-esteem than if they are degrading us.

‘Social comparison’ is the process by which we compare ourselves to others in either a positive, neutral or negative way. Poor children (as a generalisation) will often do less well at school than their wealthier classmates as the comparison of lifestyles may develop negative self-esteem, making it less likely that the poorer child will perform well in school and the low level of achievement will then further damage the self-esteem (see below).

Self-attribution is when there is a failure to observe the internal psychological processes and instead, form an opinion of the self-based on external behaviours or reactions. Bem gives us the example that a man who eats an enormous dinner could conclude “I guess I was hungrier than I thought” making a conclusion about his external experience in seeing the empty plate instead of getting in touch with his internal feelings whilst eating or after finishing the food to establish if he was full up earlier or is now feeling overfilled. Therefore a child whose teacher tells them “You’re not very good at concentrating.” Could conclude that this outside information is the truth about their ability to concentrate and develop low self-esteem, instead of challenging the statement internally (“When am I good at concentrating? What do I concentrate really well at? Am I concentrating now?) and using his own internal conclusions to improve the self-esteem and the level of concentration.

By far the most reliable means of improving one’s own self-esteem is to find it from within, as relying on an outside source to verify your identity can be at times unreliable. If your self-esteem comes from knowing that you are a good daughter to your parents, what will happen to that self-esteem when those parents pass away? Or if your self-esteem is verified by knowing that you are good at your job, do you then lose your self-esteem if you lose your job?

If we must compare ourselves to others, then surely looking at what others have and what we do not, is best serving us if that helps us to establish new goals for the future to help us achieve that which others have. Comparing ourselves to those who have less than us should encourage us to feel thankful and to develop a more grateful attitude for what we have already.

The idea of challenging the labels we are given (or give to ourselves) is not a new one. All NLP techniques are really based on the idea of reframing a problem (that is “seeing it in a different and more resourceful way).

Psychologist, Dr Clare Graves said “It’s not that you get rid of problems. You evolve into a person who the problem doesn’t matter to.” This implies that overcoming a problem is simply a case of changing the way in which you think about that problem or seeing yourself in a more resourceful way. Using the techniques of NLP this change in thinking can be created at the unconscious automatic level. When a person believes that they can be and do more, they tend to feel better about themselves and therefore have a better experience in life. They achieve greater results which propel their self-esteem to an even greater level.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Knowing Your Limit!

One of the biggest challenges that can occur with those who take cocaine whilst drinking alcohol is having the willpower to stop, instead of ending up on a “bender” which ultimately results in a horrible hangover the next day.

The challenge with deciding to call it a night before things get out of hand, is that one is probably not in a state to make a sensible, rational decision about what happens next due to the substances already consumed.

Further challenges around knowing when to stop include:

Being with others who are in the party spirit adds pressure to continue
Knowing that you still have money in the bank and have the funds to continue
Not pausing to think for a moment about the implications of continuing
A caring host who keeps topping up your glass/offering you other party options.

If you’re aware that you incline to start drinking and continue onto cocaine, you must learn how to plan your evening out in advance of going. You will likely be unsuccessful at relying upon your judgement later.

The planning required will involve hypnotherapy, NLP and some practical steps to ensure that you can continue to involve yourself socially with alcohol, but to a limit, you decide upon whilst sober.

How the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire can help:

Hypnotherapy accesses the unconscious part of your mind where your habits and behaviours are installed. Your hypnotherapist will give suggestions to you whilst in a relaxed trance-like state to help build your resilience and confidence to stop drinking when you instinctively know you have had enough.

Remember, these substances are poisons. Your body and unconscious serve to protect you from harm and you, therefore, have a built-in system which knows when you’ve had enough. However, for many, that system is overridden or ignored because of the effects of the substances. Your hypnotherapist will be able to “reset the system” to allow you to become more finely tuned to the “that’s enough, time to go home” signal so that you begin to adhere to your natural tolerance levels.

NLP can help build motivation and commitment to your new decision and enable you to set realistic parameters for your behaviour. For example, if you know that peer pressure is an issue for you, NLP can help you to build a strong sense of reliance and the ability to “stick to your guns” about your decision.

You can also work with your therapist to establish any practical steps you can take. Perhaps you can change your drink of choice or alternate between a soft drink and an alcoholic one, or use a Revolut card (Join me and over 18 million users who love Revolut. Sign up with my link below: https://revolut.com/referral/gemma3qa2!JUL2-22-AR) instead of your bank card so that you stop when the money on the account runs out. (If the issue occurs when you’re drinking at home, it might help to have a glass of water with an alcoholic beverage.)

Even simple exercises such as remembering how bad a hangover felt before you allow yourself to become fully indulged in the party spirit can be helpful.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Boost Your Creativity

The Encarta dictionary defines creativity as “the ability to use the imagination to develop new and original ideas or things, especially in an artistic context.”

Creativity and imagination are largely linked with right brain functions, whereas analytic and rationalised thinking is more associated with the left brain.

As individuals, we may tend to be more inclined to naturally use one side of the brain more than the other, which would define the ability we have to tap into our creative talents. Of course, there are influences in our lives as we grow up, that are responsible for either nurturing or stifling our creativity. For example, most of our schooling tends to focus much more on learning via the left brain, encouraging logical and objective learning, as opposed to holistic experiential learning which is related to the right brain.

Creating can lead to a deep sense of satisfaction and there are many different ways that people can express creativity. The common factors tend to be that a great feeling of compulsion to do something. Then throughout the process of doing it, a connection with oneself, or even a feeling of motivation or trance-like experience. If the person remains motivated to continue their project until completion, they will feel a great sense of pride once the process is successfully completed. Just imagine if it was a requirement of your job to feel this good every day! In fact, those who set up their own business often do so as an extension of a hobby or creative process that they already enjoy.

If you are not a natural creator, how can you develop this skill to create more wholeness and inspiration?

Here are some tips:

1. Have a few sessions of Life Coaching to help uncover the things you value most in your life and begin shaping your dreams. Motivational techniques can also be applied if a sense of uncertainty prevents you from taking the steps you need to make.

2. Listen to music that makes you feel good and switch off the news! Often the news is depressing and can put you in a bad state.

3. Make lots of notes. You never know when those good ideas will sneak up on you and if you don’t jot them down, they may be forgotten.

4. Get inspired. Look at other people’s creative work, either in the field you are interested in, or just in the natural environment around you.

5. Do some brainstorming around your chosen idea. This will move it from pie in the sky to the specific steps you will need to make.

6. Read books. Books are great for expanding ideas and are “healthier” for your brain than watching the telly all the darn time!

7. Keep your brain fit by doing crosswords, and quizzes and participating in creative and intelligent conversations.

8. Be healthy in your body. Your mind and your body are linked so you need to look after both. Feed them healthy food and exercise them both.

9. Write a list of how you will feel and how your life will be affected by expressing your creativity. What will it mean to you?

10. When you get an idea, do something about it, before someone else beats you to it!

“Thank you all so much, this has made a positive change in my life.”

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Break Your Bad Habits

Having just looked at a list of bad habits posted on the internet, I can honestly say that whilst they are habitual repetitive behaviours, many of them are also disgusting. One site listed nail biting, throat clearing, lying, interrupting, chewing the end of a pen, smoking and swearing in its top 20 list of bad habits. And that’s not to mention knuckle-cracking and thumb-sucking.

Habits are formed when behaviour is consistently repeated. Eventually, it becomes an unconscious behaviour, that is, you can do it without thinking about it. In just the way your unconscious controls your blinking, breathing and walking without you having to remember to make it happen, it also takes over responsibility for activating the habit.

In a sense, the levels of competency go some way to explaining how this unconscious activity is created:

Unconscious Incompetence- Not knowing about it and not doing it. (Ignorant)
Conscious Incompetence- Knowing what needs to be done but unable to do it, lack of skill required.
Conscious Competence- Knowing what needs to be done and having to think about how to do it, in order to do it.
Unconscious Competence- Knowing what you need to do, and being able to do it without consciously thinking about how it is done.

We can see by looking at the levels of competency process, how a positive behaviour such as learning to drive, for example, is taken through the above stages so that it shifts from conscious activity, into an unconscious one. The problem with this process is that the unconscious mind will not distinguish between a good habit and a bad one. When learning to drive, this is generally a beneficial habit to master, and biting your nails for example is not.

However, the unconscious simply responds to the programming it is given. It does make a distinction about whether it is right for you or not. The more times you repeat the behaviour, the more hard-wired the behaviour becomes, good or bad.

This means that in order to break a bad habit, its automatic function of it needs to be bought back into the awareness of the conscious mind, in order to give the conscious a choice about whether to continue with the action. This could be enough for some to break their pattern, yet for others, even though when they are conscious of the habit, may continue to pursue it. For example, many people who smoke and know that they should give up, are aware of the cigarettes they light up and inhale. Worse than that, they are even conscious of what they are doing to their depleting immune system as they do it- and still they continue- why?!

The answer is that they get some sort of a payoff. An opportunity to be destructive and release some tension by biting your nails, or a moment to drift off and take a break from the busyness of work when having a fag. In the great scheme of things, it’s important to note that these payoffs are of course only temporary. They only alleviate pressures for a short amount of time and usually come with a downside, such as ultimately damaging your health, the way you look, the way you feel, or the way people respond to you.

NLP techniques are great for helping to get “leverage” for applying pain to the unwanted problem and pleasure to the solution. Anchoring techniques can provide an instant desired state to relieve tension for example so that it is no longer achieved by performing the habit. Hypnosis can be used to reprogram the unconscious part of the mind, linking unsavoury feelings to unwanted behaviour (for example feeling sick if you go to put your fingers in your mouth to bite your nails) and forming new habits to deal with stressful/ boredom situations in a new empowering way.

To book a free initial consultation with a licensed Practitioner in NLP, Hypnotherapy and Hypnosis, Please contact us at 0203 6677294.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Stop Evening Drinking Habits

For some people, the ultimate downtime after a long day’s work is a glass of wine. It helps unravel those tightened muscles, softens the thoughts in the mind and eases any prickly emotions from the day. It’s an accessible and legal way to unwind. More than that, it creates finality between the day you had just had and the fact that it is over. That you are in a different space, mentally emotionally and physically.

However, sometimes, the need to drink alcohol after a long day’s work becomes a habitual process that can quickly spiral out of control, or into some form of dependency.

Drinking Habits and Alcohol.

Of course, many people manage to have just a glass or two of wine or a small beer and they may choose to have alcohol one day and not the next. Some people find the same sense of release in meditation, yoga or hypnotherapy.

If it is manageable and within a healthy level then there appears to be little risk or concern. The point, at which someone might consider getting help, is the point at which they begin to feel that they no longer have a choice in the matter.

Of course, there is always a choice, because you are always in command of your own thoughts and your own actions. But when someone has a craving, the sensation and emotions related to that come from deep within the unconscious mind. Your unconscious is the domain of your emotions and unless you have amazing willpower, it can be a tricky business to do battle with your unconscious. It’s incredibly powerful and it’s also where the changes to habits, cravings and emotions need to take place.

Hypnotherapy and NLP in Hertfordshire.

Access to the unconscious to make these changes (such as to drinking habits) isn’t something that many can do instantly just by deciding to. The reason is that your conscious mind is often “in the way” of your unconscious mind. It is there to stand guard to make sure that you do not process any old suggestion and take it on board. This is why having a trustworthy hypnotherapist, such as a practitioner from the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, who is trained to access those guarded areas of your mind is so important and beneficial.

If you had a conversation with someone and they said “Well just stop doing it” that conscious logical part of your mind that has already decided that drinking every night is a bad idea, responds by thinking “Well if it were that easy I’d have sorted it out myself already!”

Deciding it, knowing what is right and wanting to do something better for your health and your life are all well and good, but it might not be enough to actually make you stop.

The first step is remembering you have a choice. No one makes you go to the fridge, pull back the ring pull, unleash the cork or any of those things. Only you decide that, and you can decide something else. Distraction can work incredibly well sometimes. When you really engage your brain in other things you lose time and you lose awareness of all the other things that you could have been doing instead (such as drinking). You only need to repeat this process a few times to break the habit completely.

It’s worth remembering that if you do stop completely at doing some habitual thing, that thing, no matter what it is – even if it appears to be totally destructive, was meeting a need. Here’s an idea of some of the needs we have (these are emotional needs, not physical ones like food and water).

Significance
Certainty
Uncertainty
Love
Contribution
Growth

So although drinking alcohol has many negative effects, we can evaluate the emotional needs it may be meeting and recognise the reliability with which alcohol relaxes gives a sense of certainty. That the vulnerability and volatility that alcohol can provide might also simultaneously provide a sense of uncertainty. Some people can only connect with others after drinking and it may be their route to feeling significance and love.

Any drinking habit that fulfils 3 or more of the above-mentioned needs is addictive. It’s easy for people to become addicted to alcohol; not just because the substance in itself is addictive but so are the emotional needs that it meets.

If you are someone who needs to break their evening drinking habits, contact the hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire about how we can help.

By Gemma Bailey