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The 5 Factor Model & Hexaco

The five-factor model is a commonly used model within psychotherapy and psychology in order to assess people’s personalities. It has also evolved into another assessment tool for personalities which is called HEXACO.

This article examines the original 5-factor model which has the acronym OCEAN:

Openness
Conscientiousness
Extroversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism

The HEXACO model has changed this slightly – the X now stands for extroversion, the E is for emotionality and the H is for honesty and humility.

Openness relates to how imaginative you are and how much of a daydreamer you are and how much you might have artistic interests.

Conscientiousness could mean you are someone who likes to complete tasks successfully or if you tend to misjudge situations. Whether you like things in order or if you can work in a mess, whether you like to break or follow the rules, whether you are someone who does enough to get by or if you really like hard work.

Extraversion relates to whether you are warm and friendly easy to get to know or whether, you know, maybe you’ve got a little bit of a cold shoulder and a bit more difficult to get to know. If you are gregarious and love large gatherings or if you prefer to be alone. If you’re assertive and take charge or if you hang back and wait for others to take the lead.

Agreeableness relates to whether you are trusting or distrusting whether you comply or not, whether you make people feel welcome or if you tend to look down on others. If you are straightforward or cooperative. If you are modest or you like being the centre of attention and if you sympathise with others.

Neuroticism – whether you get anxious and worry about things or if you tend to be quite relaxed most of the time. If you’re hostile or get easily irritated depressed or comfortable with yourself self-conscious so whether you’re easily intimidated or embarrassed.

What you will have noticed with those different elements that I’ve just shared with you is that they’re not all on a ‘this’ or ‘that’ kind of scale. For example, we could say with openness, that you are an open person and open to new experiences or maybe you’re more closed off so that’s kind of a ‘this’ or ‘that’ choice. Whereas, with conscientiousness, you are not completely conscientious or not at all. You can be partially so. What I found really interesting from going through the five-factor model for myself today is that it’s relatively accurate in representing my personality. It’s got me thinking to about my new employees who are going to be coming through as to how I might profile them to make sure that they are suitable for my company.

Something like ‘openness to new experience’ is really important in my organisation because we switch things up a lot. Whilst I want someone who can do the job I also want someone who is open to completely changing what they’re doing too.

If someone is looking for a romantic partner and you want someone who is open to new experiences and a bit of an adventurer versus someone who is happy to do the same thing day in and day out and has a more routine behind them. This is a really useful tool for both work and relationship purposes.

The 5-factor personality model can be found here: https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test-std

I’m interested to hear if your scores reflect who you think you are!

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Dealing with Annoying People

At the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, I provide some practical steps to my clients in how they can best deal with selfish and annoying people. I would like to share these steps with you today.

Firstly, if this annoying person is annoying you on social media, a simple solution: unfollow them. You are not obliged to keep following people on social media. You can also “take a break” on Facebook for a number of days. It doesn’t mean that you unfriended or unfollowed but it just gives you a little bit of respite and distance from them.

If we’re in a workplace environment, pop some headphones in and listen to a podcast and take your attention away from the annoyance. In my hypnotherapy and NLP clinic in Hertfordshire, and like other therapy clinics around the world, there is something that all therapists are very conscious of doing and I am going to explain it to you now because I want you to do the opposite with that annoying or selfish person.

In the Hypnotherapy and NLP clinic in Hertfordshire, when we are working with a client we are conscious of making sure that we stay on the topic, that they have raised because if part way through communicating with them you suddenly change the subject, it can make the client feel as if you’re not really invested or you’re not really listening to them.

Now that is different to times when in NLP we might use something called a pattern interrupt to deliberately throw them off-topic because what they were talking about was really harmful to them and it was getting them into a really bad state.

In a consultation stage where they’re telling us more about what the problem is; we are very clear about staying on point and not saying anything that’s going to kind of take them off of the subject matter or distract them in some way.

Let me give you a working example of when this didn’t happen for me in a personal exchange. I went round to see a friend of mine and I was explaining to my friend about my mother’s behaviour which I was quite upset about. In speaking with my friend, I was trying to wrap my head around how to sort out some practical issues which included some beefy topics such as her debts and selling her house and getting her into a care home.

I was feeling really overwhelmed and in the middle of what at that moment in time felt to me quite intense, my friend exclaimed “huh look! A squirrel!”

It made me want to not talk to her about it anymore because it felt in that moment like my subject and my emotions about that subject were not important and it really threw me off . When people come to therapy and we’re exploring the problem so that they don’t get that sense that we’re not interested in them.

But, we’re going do the opposite to that with our annoying people. With the annoying people we want to throw them off of whatever that behaviour is because we want to interrupt their pattern. We want to do the emotional equivalent of saying “ah squirrel” and pointing in another direction.

Let’s say that you’ve got someone in your office who chews chewing gum really loudly – then you might burst a balloon at the back of the room.

We want something that’s going to break that interruption and if you break that interruption enough times they’re going to want to stop doing that thing around you and that is a slightly less delicate way of dealing with the problem than having that warm fuzzy conversation.

I hope this helps now that most of you are back to normality in working in an office environment.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLPClinic.co.uk

The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic is a team of therapists who specialise in hypnotherapy, NLP, CBT and coaching in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and North London. We provide therapy sessions for adults and children wishing to overcome insomnia, stress and depression and for those who wish to overcome phobias or stop bad habits such as smoking. We specialise in working with NHS Staff and the Police. Call 0203 6677294 or email clinic@HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk
Find out more about Hypnotherapy, NLP & CBT in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire or North London here: www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Dealing with Loss

How do we deal with loss? And what are the best ways to process it? This is a massive topic that will affect us at some point or another and is something that I’ve dealt with both personally and with a few clients that I’ve worked with recently. I think that there are some key things that we can perhaps draw upon, not from an NLP perspective, that could be helpful in allowing us to move on as swiftly and comfortably as possible.

The first thing that happens is, of course, that really annoying thing of just having to wait. Time is a healer – it’s just that sometimes you’d like the time to pass by a little bit faster so that you can get to healing a little bit quicker. And that is, in some respects, possible – but what you have to accept is that your progress from one day to the next may feel very very minimal! What you have to get good at doing is not just thinking about how you were today compared to how you were yesterday; you also have to get good at backtracking a little bit further. Obviously the closer to the time of the loss happening it’s going to be less easy to do, but as the days and weeks pass by you will be able to begin to make those positive comparisons between how things were at the very beginning and how you are now. You will start to notice that progress over time and, although it’s uneven progress you will start to get better at recognising it.

When I talk about uneven progress what I mean is that it peaks and troughs from one day to the next. There’s gonna be an ‘oh I feel so much better today’ day and then the next day or in the next moment there will be a ‘no, no I’m still not there yet’ – but overall the progress is happening. Nothing travels in a straight line; nothing is on a directly upward trajectory. It may look that way from a distance – you might look at other people and go ‘huh, they seem to be doing really well’, but actually they’re not! There is still peaking and troughing going on but only they will know about it, and only they are experiencing it.

Another way in which we can manage loss a little better is to compare what we’ve been through. Have you ever had a really weird dream that, when you woke up the next morning, it’s slightly disturbed you or it maybe left you feeling really sad? I’ve had dreams before where I’ve cried in my sleep and woke myself up with the crying. You wake up it felt like it was so real and your maybe even upset for the rest of the day, but ultimately you reach a point where you go ‘it’s okay, it was just a dream’. Now, I’m not saying that we want to move on and forget things that have happened, or people that have been part of our lives that we’ve lost, but it can be a useful frame for when you just need to get yourself out of the funk! Feeling that sadness and discomfort will affect your productivity and your ability to connect. What can be helpful is to put that sadness and discomfort into a ‘really bad dream’ frame, because if your brain can learn to accept that it was just something that happened and it wasn’t actually as real as I’m making it out to be, then it can lessen some of the discomfort that you’re experiencing at that moment.

Another way of lessening your discomfort is with distraction – good old-fashioned distraction! Keeping yourself busy by doing stuff that you really like can help you to move on quickly within a decent period of time; especially if it involves some sort of reinvention or creation. Even things like clearing out your wardrobe of all of your old clothes and donating them to a charity shop can help shake that sadness and stagnant misery. Small positive changes can promote bigger positive changes! This doesn’t take away the sadness, but it helps you to move through and past that sadness so that you can start to live in a healthy and happy way all over again.

Part of loss is change and part of change is also evolution. Things evolve; who you are now is not the same you that you will be in a few years time – your ideas, your values and all of the things that make you you will have slightly shifted, or they’ll just have an extra layer of something else. For that reason, loss isn’t always as bad as it seems at the time. Sometimes loss gives us an opportunity to go through a change – an evolution – and to come out the other side of it as an even better person.

If you are experiencing a sense of loss in your life at the moment my thoughts and my love are with you and know that you won’t always felt this way. You are going to get better every day and in every way!

By Gemma Bailey

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How Important is Reality?

Just how important is reality or perhaps isn’t?

The reason why this question has come up on my agenda recently is that I recently went to see, in my humble opinion, a fantastic film – The Greatest Showman. A year or so ago I watched a film called ‘LaLa Land’, some of you may have seen it, it had loads of positive reviews that critics loved it, it won a ton of Oscars and when I watched it I was so bored. If you haven’t seen it let me give you the storyline because seriously I’m not ruining anything for you, two people meet, they fall in love, they break up, they meet other people after they’ve broken up, they see each other again across a crowded bar and that’s it, that’s the whole story.

LaLa Land kind of ruined musical films for me for a good long while however this week I was brave and I watched The Greatest Showman and I loved it as in I want to watch it again and again. It was so, so, so, so good and the music in it is, in my humble opinion, phenomenal so I posted on my facebook to share the joy with everybody else and probably nine out of ten people who had seen it also loved it, there were a couple of people who were less enthusiastic shall we say. One fellow hypnotherapist made some comments which I found really rather interesting and this is not a direct quote but it was something along the lines of:

“It was a good film and the music was good however the storyline was a million miles away from the truth of the story about PT Barnum”

The person that made the comment seemed a little bit aggravated by this it’s just something I picked up in the tone of how it was written obviously that may not be the case because there is no tonality in reading people’s words. I started to wonder well who cares, you know, it’s a great movie and it made me feel good and apparently it’s made quite a lot of other people feel good as well so does it really matter if the story that’s told later is different to this story that actually happened in reality?

From an NLP perspective and on on a moral level, I have a huge subscription to the idea of telling the truth as much as I possibly can even to the extent that sometimes it might be detrimental to some of my relationships but for the sake of a clear conscience and getting a good night’s sleep I really like the idea of being upfront and honest with people because it keeps my conscience clean but in the NLP world it seems like that is not necessarily the case and here’s why.

There are certain processes within NLP that we use which deliberately get people to think about old events in very different ways to the way in which they happened in real life, let me give you an example. If somebody has had a traumatic experience in their past and they’re still having problems with their old event years and years later then one of the processes that we could use with them could be a sub-modality intervention or fast phobia cure. When we do those interventions we

explicitly ask the client to begin to see the old event in a different way, perhaps we take the colour out of it or we shrink it down maybe even put some comedy voices in there, some overlaying of baby giggling, all sorts of different things in order to change the impact that that memory had. But now the memory isn’t true anymore, it’s not an accurate reflection of the real-life situation.

So is it really important that we subscribe so heavily to reality in our lives? For me, the things I’ve been able to achieve in my life have definitely come about as a result of a slightly bonkers imagination but I wouldn’t be without that because I wouldn’t have got to where I am now if I hadn’t have had the creativeness and ability to distort my situation in positive ways. in order to move it on to better things later on. From my perspective, if we are able to take something and make it better then why not! Why not almost like divorce ourselves from reality a little bit, I also tend to think that the human brain isn’t necessarily geared up for dealing with reality anyway.

As you know when we take information in through our brains we’re being bombarded with stuff which we cannot effectively process because there is quite simply too much of it, so some of the information just gets outright deleted and we never knew that it was there in the first place, not on a conscious level anyway. Some of it is distorted, so it gets changed in some ways, it might get over-exaggerated or minimised and some of it is generalised upon to link it up with a ton of other stuff that maybe it didn’t realistically link up with but that enables us to be able to process all of that information that’s coming in through our senses so that we can begin to make some form of sense of the world.

Often in NLP when we refer to that processing of information we talk about it in chunks of information or bits, which does make it sound like computers and actually that’s completely inaccurate because human beings are really nothing like computers, in fact, computers are dealing way more effectively with reality than human beings are. If you complete a word document on your computer and then save it later on, when you go back to it, maybe six months later, a year later, three years later you’re still gonna get the same word document that you had created in the first place, unless you have some kind of fault with your computer but on the whole, your computer is going to stick up on the screen the exact piece of work that you had created way back in time.

The human brain doesn’t work like that, not only are we deleting, distorting and generalising on the information that we take in from one moment to the next but we also repeat that process each time we recall a memory or an experience that we’ve had in the past. Why? Well because our state gets in the way depending on what we’re doing at that moment and how we’re thinking and feeling at that moment of recalling, we could then end up having a very different experience of the memory.

I’ll give you another example, I have to confess I have seen The Greatest Showman twice so far and I’m planning a third watch. The first time around that I watched the film, I was in a bit more of a stress state and it was after work, I was running late and It was just a stressful situation. There was a scene in the film where the main character was speaking with his family having just got the sack from his job and I’m not spoiling anything here, by the way, his daughters were asking him about making wishes. Now there was a way in which I interpreted that particular portion of the storyline which made me think that he had forgotten his daughter’s birthday, the very first time I watched the film and heard that portion of the story. I was operating from the belief that he had forgotten his daughter’s birthday and this was accounting for the things that he said and how he was reacting but when I watched the film the second time around, it was a lot more chilled out and when I watched the film for a second time around, I realised that I’d completely got the wrong end of the stick the first time because he was actually toying with his daughter, he was messing about with her and pretending to have forgotten her birthday.

I like to think that I’m a fairly astute character, that I’m quite good at tuning into these things but apparently state affects even me! So this is why when we have a recall of a memory or experience from the past we might end up changing that memory or experience as we recall it based on our present state. This means that we could end up deleting, distorting and generalising upon our memories in different ways every single time we remember them. Computers are going to be much more reliable in terms of representing accurate information compared to a human being, human beings are not quite so accurate when doing that process.

I like to think that if you’re creative and you have a good imagination then good for you, just make sure you do find things with it. Very often people use their imaginations to trip themselves up in unhelpful ways, for example, people who have phobias have great imaginations, they’re really good at imagining worst-case scenarios but it’s not the best way for them to be able to use their imagination, it could be put to much better use however instead they use it for the purposes of

seeing man eating spiders sitting on their face and things like that. If you’re using your imagination for positive purposes and you know really who cares about the fact that it’s different to the reality of what’s really going on in life. Sometimes what’s going on in life, you might want some time out from there, ultimately it’s all about your intention if you have an imagination which you are using to harm yourself or

to mislead others then maybe being away from reality isn’t such a good thing but if your intentions are good, if you’re using your imagination to be creative, to help change the world in wonderful, powerful, meaningful ways or maybe just to change your own world in wonderful and powerful and meaningful ways then that is, in my humble opinion, a very good thing.

Imagination is an art form, so being able to utilise it and escape from reality for a little while can be a truly wonderful thing and if you can use it for the purposes of making yourself and/or others happy then that indeed is an even better thing to be using your imagination for. In the words of PT Barnum:

‘The noblest art is that of making others happy’.

By Gemma Bailey

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Lower your Expectations

The topic for today is all about lowering your expectations. I know that’s not very NLP of me because you know a lot of NLP is focus on the positives and it’s just really unrealistic because life does not serve us in that way.

Sometimes it’s helpful to be a bit more realistic about the serving that you’re going to get in this thing called life but in addition, it can actually be really helpful if you lower your expectations completely because when you do, you actually start to get impressed by everyday stuff, like a butterfly. If you have lowered your expectations of what a good day should be and you see a butterfly, it’s already a good day, happy times granted.

I went to my mum’s house and she lives in a council house in quite a suburban area right next to the main road and a massive pheasant showed up in the garden, she named him Fred the pheasant and he stayed in the garden for a good couple of hours and was absolutely beautiful, the chances of seeing a bird like that in her garden are slim to none and it’s never happened before.

We’ve got a hypnotherapy diploma training coming up in the next few weeks and the training is going to be taking place at a hotel that I used to use years and years ago and haven’t used in a very long time. The reason why we switched was because they kept putting their prices up but because they came to know me quite well and they knew that I knew my way around the place they became a little bit lazy in their service, so they would maybe neglected to refresh the halfway through the day and then as the trainer I was also empty in the bins and going off to fetch more teas and coffees for people.

However every year they still put the prices up even though the service was decreasing so we switched to a different venue but unfortunately we’ve got to go back to the old venue for just one week as our new venue is currently booked up for the week where we have training taking place. We were going to be going back to the Holiday Inn instead of using The Boxmore trust where we usually use their facilities for training.

Going back to the Holiday Inn reminded me of an incident that happened there one day which, now I look back on and laugh but at the time left me somewhat perplexed. I had gone into the room that morning and discovered that whilst we had teas and coffees available for the delegates, we didn’t have any milk! So I went upstairs to the reception desk and there was a guy on reception who, you know how it is when your mind is really busy, perhaps doing something completely different and then somebody drops you out of that moment with a question, which you were not expecting. I think in hindsight that’s probably what happened to him that day, I approached the desk and said “Morning, would it be okay if we could have some milk?” and he looked up at me and said “what do you mean milk?” and then I was confused, I mean when I’ve asked for milk before no one has said what do you mean milk, so I said “like the kind from a cow” and he then looked a little bit irritated by this. He then said for “what purpose do you need the milk?” and I said for the tea.

At this point in time, I’m thinking to myself, this is fairly obvious no? so then he responds with “what do you want me to put it in?” and “I said I don’t know? a jug or the little plastic cups, something like that?” At which point he stormed off and he went and got the milk, so you know I got the job done but it was just a very bizarre conversation and it was just the perfect embodiment of what my experience of using that venue was actually like. The reason why I’m sharing this with you is because I had an expectation that we’re paying quite a lot of money for this venue now, therefore, I expect the service to be pristine, like on the money but that was not the experience that happened. In reality, what happened was that I was often dealing with confused people who didn’t really know what was going on and who was sometimes quite rude to us and now I have to go back to this venue again.

The point is that I’m not going in with an expectation of perfection because if I do then I will spend a week being disappointed instead I’m going in with an expectation of having a great time on the training and having some fun with my delegates and probably just kind of making our way through and making do with the venue that we have. If you can make your expectations of other people or life in general not just realistic but actually a little bit lower then you give yourself more opportunities for pleasant surprises and for discovering ways in which you can become satisfied that you didn’t even know that you could.

It can be helpful to be satisfied with the little things in life and although in NLP we encourage you to dream big, set big goals for yourself, to keep yourself occupied, I personally feel that sometimes that can take some of the smaller and actually quite fundamentally important things in life away from our attention. If you can be inspired or feel happy because you went outside in nature and you saw the first daffodil of spring or because you saw a bird that is quite rare and you haven’t seen it for a while or something like that if you can do those sorts of things and still

get a sense of satisfaction then that is a successful accomplishment, that means

that you’ve been able to find appreciation in the smaller things in life and have perhaps lowered your expectations of what having a good day looks like

Quit Smoking

The benefits of stopping smoking are endless, so I will not even bother trying to list them! You will, of course, be generally much healthier, and of course, much more empowered when you are no longer at the mercy of a little white stick. In my hypnotherapy practice, I am dedicated to ensuring that you give up smoking with ease and speed. This is why I offer two choices to my clients who are interested in quitting smoking as well as a free consultation.

When you make the decision to use Hypnotherapy to help you quit smoking, I will initially want to make sure that you are completely motivated to do so and that you want to give up smoking for all the right reasons. For example, one of my clients said that he really enjoyed smoking but that his wife hated it and that he wanted to stop smoking for her. Fortunately, I identified this man’s lack of motivation to achieve the goal for himself. If I’d have carried out the hypnotherapy there is little chance that it would have been successful due to the fact that the client didn’t have the desire to want to quit smoking.

In my practice, I use a range of different hypnotherapy techniques to assist my clients so that they are able to stop smoking. Here are some example of how I do it:

Away from techniques- There are of course many off-putting facts about the negative impact smoking has on the mind and body. When your mind is overloaded with this information you will feel compelled to move away from smoking forever.

Moving towards techniques- I also have lots of information about the positive impact quitting smoking and remaining a non-smoker has. I am keen to help you set goals for the future that wouldn’t have been attainable whilst you were a smoker. Now that you are a non-smoker you can explore new ways to relax, to exercise and to spend your money.

Metaphors- I believe that if you can lay back and enjoy the experience of quitting smoking, then you should! That’s why I use tailor-made metaphors, which give very specific instructions to your subconscious mind and suggestions to give up smoking. However, consciously, you don’t even need to listen, you can just lay back and relax.

Empowering alternatives- Wouldn’t it be fantastic to know that you can, not only give up smoking but that you can also look forward to doing something really and truly meaningful to do instead. Such as spending time with your family, which, no doubt, if you didn’t quit smoking, an early grave would have prevented that opportunity.

Anchoring- As well as a qualified hypnotherapist I am also a qualified NLP Master Practitioner. This means that throughout your intervention there is a strong chance that I will also use some NLP techniques. One such NLP techniques is called anchoring. This allows the hypnotherapist to create for you, a really powerful positive resource that you can fire off at will, should you find yourself tempted by cigarettes.

Compared to all other methods, research suggests that Hypnotherapy can improve the chances of quitting smoking and remaining a non-smoker. Hypnotherapy works in several ways, including:

Reducing the anxiety associated with stopping smoking
Helping people to find the motivations for stopping
Installing coping mechanisms
Re-evaluate unconscious beliefs and behaviours associated to smoking
Installing positive beliefs so that weight gain is not inevitable.

I have successfully helped many people to quit smoking throughout my years of practice as a hypnotherapist. Few of those people have required follow up sessions, many quit after just one session.

Quit Smoking (1 session only required) with 6 months of free support.

Book a free consultation now, via my contact details below.

I still do not smoke and it’s the start of something great!

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

No More Resentment or Eating Burnt Chop

Not eating burnt chop is a metaphor about getting rid of resentment. It’s a type of martyrdom where we put what others want ahead of what we want. Often not even voicing what it is that we want so the other person doesn’t even know that they’re putting us out. It’s a combination of a conflict avoidance technique, self-talk that tells us we don’t deserve to get what we want and a belief that asking for what you want is rude.

One of the by-products of ‘eating the burnt chop’ is that we resent the person who we are constantly giving in to. Mostly this is a partner or close friend or family. This can make us snappy for no apparent reason (as far as they’re concerned) and unhappy. In addition it doesn’t have a good impact on our health. Although I am learning to eat less burnt chop going forward, I still have built up resentment towards people from past burnt chops!

There are times when you do stuff for other people, that you don’t necessarily want to do and for some strange reason you forget to say ‘no’ and then you do it and then you’re miffed, because you’ve ended up putting your time and effort doing something for somebody else, that you didn’t actually want to do in the first place. A good hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner can help you to understand and move beyond resentment. Find a practitioner in Hertfordshire or North London to help you move forward.

I figure that you’ve got two options. When somebody says to you “Can you do X for me and in your head?” and you think ‘I really don’t want to’.

Option number one is to help them anyway and love yourself for the fact that you are doing it.

Option two is that you say ‘no’. What stops you from saying no when somebody asks you to do something for them or somebody leans on you in in a particular way? Is it avoiding conflict? That could be part of it but I think if we pick this apart even more, maybe it’s more to do with a fear of being unloved. If we were to chunk this up to a higher level, we would go above and beyond avoiding conflict and if we were to think of it in a more positive sense, I think it has more to do with wanting to be loved or a fear that you’ll be unloved if you don’t do the things that other people want you to do.

So, the question you have to ask yourself is: is that really true? Is it really true that by doing this thing for somebody else you are going to avoid conflict? You’re creating a conflict within yourself and in the long term if it makes you feel grotty around them, then you’re probably going to end up with conflict with them too. Is it really true that if you don’t do this thing for this person that you will be unloved? Ultimately not doing something for someone might leave them a bit miffed for a while but in the long run they’re going to respect you much more for having the self-respect to be able to set yourself some boundaries.

They might even start to consider your thoughts and feelings more too. Maybe you need to stop being so selfish by always helping other people and give them a chance to learn to be capable for themselves or to even help you. What if saying ‘no’ to them means that they’ll love you more? If that’s the case then you can say no, without having to experience the guilt whilst you say it.

But if you say yes and you’re miserable about it, you only have the right to be miserable with yourself, not really with the other people, because you decided it, you decided to do it so you have to own it. You have to take responsibility for it. Who said yes? You did. Who took the action? You did. Who’s miserable? You are. Whose fault is it? It’s yours.

Consider more about what you are giving and not so much about what you’re not getting as a result of doing this thing for these other people.

When you work with a professional NLP practitioner and Hypnotherapist in North London, Hertfordshire you’ll begin to develop the skills to challenge your thinking in new and empowering ways.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Releasing Disappointment

Disappointment is one of those feeling that we all experience but fail to discuss as much as other more (seemingly) significant emotions such as anger, stress and anxiety.
It may be because emotions like humiliation and disappointment tend not to be crippling. Life still goes on in spite of them, but they cast a bit of a cloud over what might be a perfectly happy human.

Disappointment tends to bring with it feelings of sadness and failing. It can have undertones of anger and bitterness and has the potential therefore to be a very complex emotion.

Often, though not always, disappointment brings with it a continual whirring or ‘what if’s’. If only things had been different. Returning to what might have been is what creates the stuck-ness that disappointment has and it cannot really be overcome until someone is ready to put a greater degree of energy and focus into what will happen next than they are currently putting into what might have been.

Living in the past rarely serves us unless it is to learn from the mistake we made and to make contingency plans for how we will be better prepared in a similar situation in the future.

Essentially, once the driving process of what might have/should have been has passed, the only way to really move on is by asking (and answering) the question:

“What are you going to do about it? How can you be ready for what happens next?”

Some of you reading may be old enough to remember the old BT adverts with Maureen Lipman in the late 80’s. In one such advert she calls her grandson to find out about his exam results. They are not as good as his grandmother would have wanted. You see the disappointment flash across her face and you can hear it in his voice too as he recites each subject he took and each one a failed exam.

Finally she says “You didn’t pass anything?”

“Pottery” he replies with a sigh.

It would have been a fleeting “What can he do about it?” thought that causes her to respond with: “Pottery? Very useful! People will always need plates. Anything else?”

“And sociology.” He responds glumly.

“An Ology? He gets an Ology and he thinks he’s failed! You get an Ology and you’re a scientist!”

As she continues to reassure him you see his eyebrows lift as he begins to consider that his grandmother might have a fair point in what she is saying.

Releasing disappointment doesn’t just come from finding ways to make the best of what you have or what you are left with. It also comes from being honest about what you’ve got and creative about what you chose to do with it next. It might also be a case of forgiving and deciding to set the bar in a different place to where your prior expectations had previously thought it could go.

Recover first, then make a plan for moving forward and make that plan have multiple prongs that can safeguard you from having the same sort of disappointment again in the future.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Bringing Down the Barriers – Dealing With Someone Who is Defensive

“Have you thought about getting a part time job?” I asked
“What are you trying to say?” Was barked back at me. |
“Errrm, literally just that. Have you thought about getting a part time job?” “Oh for God-sake!”

This was a recent encounter with a relative who, unbeknownst to me at that time, had, having recently retired, been asked the same question by many of our other relatives.

I hadn’t anticipated that such a simple and innocent question could prompt such a defensive response. If I had, I would have avoided asking it.

But sometimes we need to ask questions or make suggestions that we know are going to be provocative, either because of who we are dealing with or what the subject matter is going to be.

It seems unreasonable that you should have to formulate strategies to avoid upsetting the apple cart and so assisting the other person in changing their behaviour may be a more desirable alternative.

At The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, we subscribe to a set of NLP presuppositions. One of these is “You cannot change others. When you change yourself others change also.” So when I make the suggestion of changing the other persons defensive behaviour, this is a change that will occur as a result of your new way of managing them.

Firstly, you’ve got to start thinking about life from their perspective. What are these unjust that they are protecting themselves from? What are the ways that their perceive their value to be challenges or violated? When you have identified these consider their other motivators too. What do they like, what gets their interest?

If you can begin to communicate with them in a way that has them feel as if their needs are being met, as if you too have their best interests at heart they will not have the need to defend themselves as they felt they did before.

You need to create the sense that you are on their side or, that at the very least you understand there side, if you want to remove from them the feeling that they need to defend themselves from you.

In the example above, my relative was complaining about not getting enough pension. This told me that they were concerned about the finances. The rest of us were concerned about how much money she was spending due to boredom. But having recently gained the freedom of retirement, she was in no hurry to put herself in a position of employment as the above outburst had demonstrated.

I waited a while and had to pick the right moment to casually say “Wow, that’s a decent amount of money.” As I flicked through the newspaper.
“What? What’s that?” She asked.
“Huh? Oh nothing. It’s an advert for part time Christmas work at the post office. I didn’t realise they paid such a good hourly rate.”

The ‘planting of the seed’ proved to be a useful way to covertly work around what would have otherwise been a suggestion that was disregarded due to stubbornness and defensiveness.

When you begin to see the world as they do, you can change how you communicate to fit with them. As the trust between you develops the barriers of defensiveness will soften meaning that when you need to cut-to-the-chase with them, they will already regard what you say as being reasonable.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Learning to Make Connections After Overcoming Social Anxiety

The anxiety is gone (or at the very least is entirely manageable now) and you’re ready to start getting out there in the big wide world, making new friends and forging new relationships. But wait? How do you do that exactly?

I remember being about 7 years old and able to walk up to a child and say “Hi, I’m Gemma. Would you like to play with me?” It was a pretty cool strategy that worked almost all of the time. Except this one time when I was on holiday with my grandparents. We were in Spain and I was playing alone in a swimming pool. I saw a little girl just like me and thought it would be nice to play.

The challenge was that I hadn’t realised she was Spanish. So when I approached her to say hello, she looked at me and freaked out because I was speaking to her in the wrong language. I watched her swim away hurriedly to her father, talk to him in her own language and point at me as if I had threatened to kill her. It was a big wake up call. Making friends wasn’t always going to be as easy in the future as it had been in the past, and clearly there was a little more that I need to know when it came to making relationships. “Hello, do you want to be my friend?” wasn’t the fail safe that I thought it was.

There’s a rule when it comes to communications that ‘People like people who are like themselves’. Meaning that we prefer to connect with others who in some way appear to be like us. That could be something about their posture or how they use their body, the tone of their voice or even the sorts of words and language they use.

Therefore, a good first step in building up relationships with others after overcoming social anxiety, is to observe others first. Notice the communication styles they use. At the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, we teach people all of the different clues you can look out for to identify someone’s communication style; how to replicate it and communicate back to them in that style causing them to feel comfortable and at ease with you.

We’ll also teach you how to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. It goes without saying that we have all experienced an uncomfortable social encounter at some time, but when someone has had social anxiety, they have felt that feeling (or at the very least feared having that feeling) for a significant period of time. Taking that first bold steps to ‘get back out there’ and face up to whatever may come your way takes an honest acknowledgement that just because you feel better, it doesn’t mean that everyone you meet will be lovely, or that they’ll love you. Becoming comfortable with the idea that sometimes your conversations may be stilted or that people might not be as friendly as you would have liked; whilst still maintaining the knowledge that many people will be friendly and many other conversations will be wonderful, takes a kind of acceptance of the idea that that things may not be perfect every time and that this is perfectly natural and okay.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk