Howland Hypnotherapy
HYPNOTHERAPY IN HARLEY STREET & ESSEX
Hypnosis for Anxiety and Stress
We all feel nervous at times. We all have stresses and worries. We would not be normal if we didn’t. However, when these nerves, stresses and worries start to take over, they can become bigger than the problems that caused them and this is when we need help.
Everyone experiences anxiety differently, but you may find yourself having to deal with:
- Sweating
- Over-thinking
- Tension Headaches
- Palpitations
- Nausea
- Assertiveness issues
- Insomnia
- Inability to switch off
- Dry Throat/throat clearing
- Breathing Difficulties
- Physical Habits (Hair pulling, nail biting, teeth grinding)
Suffering anxiety and stress is exhausting for your mind and your body.
Stress is punishing, both physically and mentally. CBT combined with Hypnotherapy has been recognised as quicker and more effective in treating anxiety than any other therapy.
I very successfully treat this condition by:
- Helping you learn to fully relax, both mentally and physically
- Discovering the triggers and the negative thinking of your anxiety and replacing them with positive, enabling thoughts
- Calming and even changing the emotional response to the triggers.
- Helping you to regain your strength and build your confidence
- Enabling you to become aware of your triggers before they happen and arming you with a variety of ways to combat anxiety were it to return in the future.
Anxiety can be crushing and so destructive to relationships, to work and to life in general. This doesn’t have to be the case. You can be free from the prison of anxiety.
I can give you the skills and the means to thrive and live with peace.
Hypnosis for Phobias
Almost everyone has something that frightens them. Fear is part of life and most such fears are bothersome and little more, but when fear takes over, when fear starts to interfere with your life, your plans and decisions, then something needs to be done.
This is where CBH comes in. A huge amount of research has proved that the combination of CBT and Hypnotherapy is fantastic for treating fears and phobias. With CBH you can learn quickly how to control and banish your fear rather than suffer it controlling you.
Using Hypnosis means you can face your fears and deal with them in your imagination
In this way you can, in a calm and relaxed mindset, control any given situation. We work through your thoughts and beliefs which create the fear and rid you of them by Systematic Desensitisation, a model which is effective and quick.
Using these techniques you will soon learn new ways to think, feel and behave and your old fear or phobia will cease to have any control, leaving you free to live life to the full.
There are many fears/phobias which I can successfully treat this way, including, but not limited to:
Acute Anxiety relating to Panic Attacks
- Fear of choking or suffocating
- Fear of vomiting
- Fear of fainting
- Fear of loss of bladder or bowel control
- Fear of losing control
- Fear of Physical illness
- Agoraphobia (The fear of being in situations where escape might be impossible or that help wouldn’t be available if things go wrong).
Social Anxiety/phobias
- Fear of public speaking
- Fear of social events
- Fear of confrontation/asserting yourself
- Fear of blushing
- Fear of trembling
- Fear of sweating
- Fear of rejection
- Fear of criticism
- Fear of business meetings
- Fear of stuttering
Fear of situations, events or objects
- Fear of injections
- Fear of heights
- Claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces)
- Fear of flying
- Fear of general anaesthetic
- Fear of driving
- Fear of spiders
- Fear of surgery
- Fear of rodents or other animals
- Fear of public transport
- Fear of blood
- Fear of the dentist
- Fear of exams
- Fear of being alone
Hypnosis for Confidence Building
Do you worry about other people’s opinions of you?
Do you waste time examining your actions and the things you say?
Are you anxious or nervous at social events?
Do you wish you could be stronger and more assertive?
A lack of confidence can be a massive barrier to getting the most out of life. Whether socially or in work, low self-belief can have seriously negative effect, which can make even simple things, like a relaxed conversation, seem monumentally difficult.
I employ a wide range of effective techniques to build assertiveness and confidence, which I use specifically to fit your requirements and targets.
Every day we engage in ‘negative self-talk’. We tell ourselves that we aren’t good enough, aren’t clever enough, aren’t strong enough. If we think these thoughts frequently enough they become our ‘go to’ thought patterns whenever we are in certain situations. The result is that we are beaten before we even start. But, these thoughts Can be silenced. You can banish them forever.
Together we can replace them with positive thoughts, with rational thoughts which will change your feelings and your behaviour, permanently. Freeing you to move on with your life, positively and confidently.
Hypnosis for Insomnia
Is lack of sleep making you exhausted?
Do you get anxious just thinking about sleeping?
Are you unable to turn your mind off at night?
You must be shattered. The chances are you haven’t had a good night’s sleep in ages. Sleep is vital and a significant lack of it will harm your body and your mind.
Well, you are not alone. According to the Aviva Wellbeing Report, at any given time as many as 31% of people in the UK suffer from insomnia and it is a serious problem. People can lose their jobs, have fatal accidents, see their marriages fail, suffer depression, heart disease or obesity and in the hyper connected world we live in, it affects more of us than ever before.
The great news is that Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy is an incredibly effective treatment for this problem.
“CBT should be considered a first-line intervention for chronic insomnia” (Jacobs et al 2004). CBT combined with Hypnotherapy has been proven to be an even more effective treatment and significantly better than pharmacology. Regular, deep, refreshing sleep is within your grasp.
Maybe you have difficulty:
Falling asleep
Remaining asleep
Waking too early
It could be that you are suffering from a respiratory problem like sleep apnoea. In which case medical help is required, but far more people have no specific physiological issue, and their sleeplessness is bound up with anxiety, stress or bad habits. Hypnotherapy combined with CBT can discover the underlying causes and change the unhelpful thought patterns that prop them up, while nurturing tension release and enhanced relaxation.
Together we can address and develop your sleep efficiency so that sleepless nights become a thing of the past.
Hypnosis For Habits
Is an undesired habit causing you embarrassment or difficulties?
Habits come in all shapes and sizes, from hair-pulling, nail-biting, skin-picking and blushing, to non-physical habits such as procrastination and repetitive negative self-talk. Likewise, their effects can range from the inconvenient to serious emotional harm.
Fortunately, there is good news. These habits can be dealt with and in most cases dealt with quickly and powerfully. A CBH approach to habit reversal is proven and effective. One study (Azrin & Nunn, ’77) showed a 90% reduction in habit after just one two-hour session. The addition of hypnosis to this proven method helps reinforce and embed it in the mind.
So get in touch and we can send that unwanted habit packing for good.
Hypnosis for Weight Loss
Are you always reaching for the next snack?
Tired of following diets that just don’t work for you?
Do you recognise the voice that says, “I’ve had too much today, so may as well finish the pack”?
People spend so much money on slimming clubs and gyms which can often make things worse as they focus their attention on all those things they shouldn’t have, while ignoring the underlying beliefs and failing to investigate what’s really happening in the moments when they reach for the wrong foods or too much food. Being in control at these times using key tools and hypnosis can give you the best chance of mastering the old thoughts and feelings which rule your behaviour.
Have you looked in the mirror and had negative thoughts and said unkind things about yourself?
We will discover these negative thought patterns and change them using powerful Cognitive Behavioural techniques. Next, we will work on those deep-rooted feelings and behaviours which block your ability to lose weight. All of this is reinforced and embedded with hypnosis so that you can once more slip on that outfit you’ve been despairing of wearing again.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) alone has been proven to be a highly effective in helping weight loss, but research carried out by Irving Kirsch (1995) displayed greatly enhanced results for weight loss when CBT was combined with Hypnosis and vitally, 78% of those studied showed that the weight loss results had increased when reviewed months later.
You can lose the weight and keep it off. Let’s get started.
Hypnosis for Parents
Are you always fighting with your children?
Are you finding worry or anxiety is preventing you from enjoying your children?
Are you feeling overwhelmed?
There’s nothing tougher than being a parent. As Dad to 3 kids myself, I know what it’s like. As a parent you’re a teacher, a manager, a sales negotiator, a cook, an entertainer, quite probably a cabbie, certainly a police officer and the list goes on. The position requires boundless energy and patience, and it doesn’t stop at the end of the working day.
As a consequence our children cause us all a huge amount of anxiety and worry and this is quite normal. But if you find yourself anxiety ridden or worrying far more than is appropriate, or that you’re angry and stressed out a lot of the time, then perhaps you’ve reached the point where help is needed.
If you have reached this point then I can help. Imagine totally changing the way you think, feel and act towards your children so that you are able to feel confident, relaxed and enjoy your time with them. With Hypno-CBT this is completely possible.
Often, we find that our anger and our anxiety are triggered by some deep-seated beliefs we are holding.
For example:
I just can’t cope
I’m a terrible parent
I’m a failure
I’m too hard/too soft on them
Once an event occurs that triggers these negative thoughts, the chain reaction begins. The thoughts make the body feel anxious, or angry, or hurt, or frightened. These feelings, in turn, control the way we behave in that given moment. We work together to discover these deep-seated beliefs and to replace them with positive thoughts, breaking the chain reaction and freeing you to feel calm, strong and confident.
Hypnosis for Exam Nerves and Anxiety
Are you stressed out by Exams?
Does the pressure of Exams cause you to fail to perform to your best ability?
Does just the thought of Examinations cause you anxiety?
Exam! The very word can strike terror in the hearts of some. If this is you, you are not alone. It has been estimated that more than 16% of all secondary school pupils suffer from high levels of exam stress.
The good news is you don’t have to suffer too.
Together, using CBT and Hypnosis, we can identify the negative thoughts that drive your stress, and reframe them so that they can become, not just powerless to affect you, but actively positive thoughts that motivate and allow you to be in control of your feelings and behaviours. On top of this I would teach you powerful relaxation techniques that you can use before, during or after exams to keep you calm and focused on what needs to be done.
Hypnosis to Stop Smoking
Research has shown that Hypnotherapy, linked with CBT is incredibly effective at helping people to conquer their smoking habit, not just in the short term but forever.
If you’re a long-term smoker, you know that it isn’t just the nicotine which keeps you lighting up. Smoking becomes part of you, your identity, who you are. That first fag in the morning, or the one after the journey, the one with your coffee or your beer, or the one to de-stress yourself when things all get too much, they are all connections to who you are now. Somebody once said that smoking was the punctuation to his day, the commas and the full stops. Speaking as an ex-smoker myself I know just how hard these connections are to quit.
So yes, it seems so hard, but for most clients, one 2 hour session is all that we need to break your smoking habit for good. First, we start with a consultation to build a solid understanding of your smoking habit. This is key to breaking it.
The consultation gives us insight into where your subconscious is blocking you from stopping smoking.
Then we work with CBT techniques to focus on and change the thoughts, feelings and emotions that take place in those moments when you crave a cigarette. Once this has been done, I then use hypnosis with all the key thinking, feeling and behaviour changes woven together to enable you to free yourself to become a non-smoker. With your permission the hypnosis will be recorded so that you can take it away and reinforce those changes in the days to follow.
Having true insight into what is going on at those critical points when the craving occurs, taking control of them with the techniques you have learnt, in conjunction with hypnosis, gives you the strongest possible opportunity to overcome the old behaviour which supports your habit.
Imagine, right now, how amazing it will feel to be free of that harmful habit forever.