How Can Cognitive Hypnotherapy Help?

We often experience our problems as being beyond our control, it's as if something takes over and makes us light that cigarette, eat the cake, break into hysterics at the sight of a spider or race the car beside us away from the lights.

Cognitive Hypnotherapy holds that problem behaviours such as these in adult life are a consequence of having learned, at some earlier time, that the behaviour was somehow to our benefit. Perhaps it kept us feeling safe from rejection by our peers or ensured we felt loved and secure within our family. Of course the way we achieved this benefit at that earlier time is unlikely to serve us well as an adult when, for example, we come to face that interview panel we're dreading.

Many people will recognise that when their emotions are heightened their attention is acutely focussed on one or two aspects of the immediate problem; they've ceased to be aware of their general surroundings and often have trouble thinking rationally (can you talk sensibly with someone who is in a jealous rage?). This experience is a self-induced trance, initially formed during some previous (perhaps seemingly unrelated) event and is being reactivated every time the brain recognises (at a subconscious level) a 'similar' situation. When you experience yourself having no control over your feelings or behaviour you are quite literally being ‘hypnotised’ by your unconscious into seeing, feeling or doing things in a certain way.

My role as a Cognitive Hypnotherapist may well be to ‘de-hypnotise’ you, enabling you to regain control over those areas of your life you want to be different.