Breaking old ingrained habits can seem daunting and every year therapists see a stream of clients who are down hearted because they failed to keep their New Year resolutions. Unable to reach their goal, the clients seek help to stop smoking, loose weight, focus and get fit. Have you ever set out in January full of determination to break old habits, yet somewhere along the way your will power gets pushed aside and in a moment of weakness the unwanted behaviour creeps in? If this sounds familiar you will be pleased to know that you can make sure that 2013 is the year that you get the inside knowledge of how to change a habit easily and for good. Why is it so hard to stick to a resolution long term? A big reason for millions of people not making the changes they so want is because so much of our behaviour is automatic. The problem? Psychologist Jeremy Dean, citing a study in which 60% of resolvers admitted they’d failed to make a change last for six months. “Of the 40% that claimed they’d succeeded, a good percentage was probably lying. I’ve seen people break resolutions in minutes.” Dean goes on to say habits are so difficult to break because most of our behaviour is automatic, like programmed software running in our unconscious. “If we didn’t learn to do things automatically, life would be exhausting,” he says. ‘We’d have to actively decide which side of bed to get up on, whether to put on slippers, whether to have coffee or tea. All of these behaviors occur seamlessly throughout the day, so we can focus on higher-level decisions.’ In order to break a bad habit or establish a new one, Dean believes it’s critical to understand your brain’s processing system and work with it rather than against it. And, unfortunately, it will likely take longer than you’d expect. Although many experts insist that it takes only three weeks to make a behavior routine, research shows that in reality it’s highly variable and depends on your personality and the difficulty of the task. ‘Quitting smoking or creating a new exercise routine may take six months to a year.’ Dean says. So how can you best make sure that your New Years resolutions will stand the best chance of succeeding? Start with asking yourself a few questions:- Have you made your resolution SMART ? Is your goal Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and do you need to put some timings on what you have to do in order to achieve it? Setting a goal of loosing 10kg in two months, or going to the gym three nights may not be possible in reality. Likewise you might feel that something is really what you want but if you had it would it really make you happy or bring feelings of accomplishment? Now set time aside to think through What is the driving force behind your goal? Are you doing it for yourself or someone else? You stand a better chance of achieving
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Stoptober | Stop Smoking in October Campaign
The Department of Health are running a campaign in October called Stoptober, the aim to get people to stop smoking on 1st October for a month. The idea being that anyone who stops smoking for 28 days or longer are 5 times more likely to stay stopped. Myself and Sara Maude, hypnotherapist and psychotherapist both think that this is a great idea. So we have teamed up and designed a course of 8 free emails that give people the right information, advice and support for you to prepare to stop smoking and stay stopped. We have had the experience of stopping thousands of people smoking with the use of hypnosis and throughout the free program will be giving you the best of our experience including; The science behind why you become addicted to smoking Squashing those smoking myths How to stop smoking without putting on weight Dealing with the fear of smoking smoking How hypnosis can allow you to stop in one simple, natural session and stay stopped How to relax with our free hypnotic downloads There are lots of ways you can stop smoking, many of which you have probably tried several times before, but what’s the best way for you to stop? Naturally as hypnotherapists we are biased! However that is because we have witnessed the power of hypnosis with all the people who have passed through our doors who have stopped smoking in one session. Hypnosis is 10 times more effective than willpower and 6 times more effective than nicotine replacement in stopping people smoking. While medication has proved slightly more successful, the side effects can be worse than the cravings. It’s your decision how you choose to stop smoking but we will leave you to consider the following; Would you like to stop smoking? Would you like to stop smoking and not have to experience the cravings that come with it? Would you like to stop smoking and not put on weight? Would you like to stop smoking in one easy session? Would you like to feel energised about stop smoking rather than experience ever day as an uphill battle? If you answered yes to one or more of the above then sign up for our free program today! Or watch this You Tube video to learn more about why cravings often crush the will power to stop smoking and why hypnosis helps.
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Conscious Medicine Workshop
Conscious Medicine Workshop – Do you want to know how to help yourself or others over emotional and physical blocks? Learn The Energy Medicine techniques that are changing the lives of millions. Energy Medicine and natural healing course – New discoveries in science are proving that your body is intelligent, conscious and speaks to you through vitality and health or symptom and disease. With that in mind what do these people have in common? Marjory was distraught, the pain in her face from a bout of shingles she had a year ago was excruciating. She winced with the shooting pains the after effects of the illness bought. One hour later the pain had subsided and within two days had gone completely. Martin an ex paratrooper had debilitating bouts of anxiety and sadness following an accident twenty years ago. The overpowering emotions would sweep on Martin without warning ‘like a black cloud.’ This normally brave active and fun man would regularly be imprisoned at home by a sense of hopelessness but after fifteen years, this torture lifted a month ago not to return. Wendy always had a feeling of isolation and even though she loved her husband and children, Wendy had been depressed and exhausted since the symptoms started fourteen years ago. This lovely lady now has a great vigour for life and feels deeply connected to her family and to who she really is. Tom was angry and felt burdened with responsibility. Feeling disconnected from his work and family he now has turned a corner and is ‘enjoying all that life has to offer.’ Mary was overweight and had dieted for many of her fifty years. She described the feeling of needing to eat as a power that stamped out all logic and willpower. Mary is now eating when she feels hungry and is steadily loosing weight. What do these people have in common? They all used techniques from the field of Conscious Medicine to overcome ingrained patterns of emotion that caused unwanted feelings and behaviour. Unresolved emotion is often the keystone of later physical illness and overwhelming negative feelings. Often someone who presents with physical symptoms or disease will have no idea that unconscious thought patterns might be the cause of a body struggling to heal itself. This imbalance can happen to anyone and is not a sign of weakness but just the way we are made. The great difference in this age is that you don’t have to go through years of talking therapy or get to know the original cause to create change. New techniques can shift trauma, bitterness, jealously or hopelessness in just an hour. Once there is a shift in thinking there can be a radical change in the way messages are relayed to the body causing profound healing. ‘Your body listens to everything you say! So much of your life’s experience is coloured by your experiences in your early years. On the surface those experiences often don’t amount to much but as a little one you perceived life in a
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What will 2012 be like for you?
Will you create the life you want or will 2012 just fly by again? Firstly Happy New Year to you and how is 2012 looking like for you? Far from the world ending at the end of 2012 as some predict. I think that the world wide unprecedented changes we have experienced only herald an opportunity for each of us to create the life that makes us happy. Easy for me to say eh but there is a personal reason for doing so. My lovely Mum Betty died unexpectedly in November and just a few days before when she was given her prognosis she simply smiled, looked at the doctor and said ‘oh that’s ok, don’t worry. I have such a good life and been so happy.’ Then smiling at my Dad she added ‘and I have been so very lucky.’ Awesome eh? Betty was told she was going to die in a very short while and her response was gratitude for her blessings. Not for a second did she show any bitterness, sadness or fear. I guess what I am trying to pass on is this – if life is not as you would like it, take action now so you don’t have any regrets later in life. Sometimes it might be hard to change the actual situation you are in but you can shift your perspective. Where you place your attention and what you think is always a choice, even if most of us might need a little help to do it. So I wish you all strength and resilience in these challenging times. Oh and a bucket of courage to make the most of life and step up to be the best you can be.
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Hypnotherapy Course Newsletter
Our first newsletter is here Bringing you up to date with Within Sight’ training courses for 2012. Hypnotherapy Training: If you are thinking about training as a hypnotherapist or want to increase your knowledge of managing people and their problems. Check out the dates for our Hypnotherapy weekend and Hypnotherapy/Psychotherapy Diploma. CPD modules: Or if you are already a qualified therapist we have a host of training days which will advance your skills and make you more effective. NLP and EFT with our sister company Happiness Events. Top class training that Within Sight likes – they have a great team that is similar to our own. Friendly, down to earth experienced trainers that offer top quality workshops. The success of our ‘Conscious Medicine’ weekend last October has made us decide to run it several times this year. The next available Conscious Medicine workshop is June 9th and 10th. Call us on 01273 738663 to chat through any question you have – no question to small.
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Part 4 | Post Traumatic Stress Disorder | The Rewind Technique
Post traumatic stress – Lifting Trauma With the Rewind Technique or Fast Phobia Cure This is the forth in a series of video’s helping you understand PTSD. Watch this video to see how you can lift PTSD with the rewind. Here is a written summary. You have learnt about the broad range of anxiety based symptoms that PTSD creates. Those symptoms are generated by the memory of a difficult time getting locked into the amygdale and never make it through to the neo cortex and long term memory where the mind can think about the event and feel calm. To get the memory passed the amygdale and into the neo cortex we use the rewind technique, sometimes called the fast phobia cure. It is a safe and proven technique of lifting trauma. The effectiveness of the rewind is due to it help a sufferer’s brain do what it has been trying to do, that is to get the memory away from the amygdale into long term storage where it does not create anxiety and panic. The steps to the rewind are in the next blog post and when you read the blog you will see that there are a series of steps that we take the client through. Within these steps are the two keys for the success of the technique. The first is asking the person with PTSD to imagine watching themselves watching themselves on a TV screen. this known as double dissociation. For the first time that person will have recalled the event as an observer and that event will loose some of those anxiety tags. The second and key to its success is that the person recalls the memory whilst feeling very calm, and we achieve this by a relaxing visualization or hypnosis before we do the actual steps to the rewind. When you enable someone with PTSD to think about the event in this dissociated way –and whilst feeling calm this teaches the amygdale that this thought is safe enough to release the anxiety tags the event has been given. What follows is the hippocampus recognises the thought has no chemical stress tags attached to it and lets it go into long-term storage to the neo cortex where it will not activate the fight and flight when recalled. This is the reason for the often ‘miraculous’ change in the way a person can feel, the trauma can be formed over a few seconds and for many those symptoms can be lifted in just one session as the memory finds a different place to reside. In the case of multiple traumas the rewind may have to be done several times over a few sessions but usually if the traumas were of a similar nature, once is enough to help the person feel so much better. If you would like to train in the rewind technique there are two main options Face to face with Within Sight’s trainers: we hold a one-day course Check it out here If you want to find a therapist who
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Steps of the Rewind technique – The Fast Phobia Cure
The Rewind Technique – summary of steps Relaxation and anchoring. Deeply relax your client using a special place or counting them down, as in the staircase induction. Build a multi-layered sense of relaxation. TV screen and video. Ask the person to notice a TV and video screen in that special place and a remote control Double dissociation. Suggest that they can have the dream-like relaxing experience of floating out of their body and stand to the side of themselves, so that they can see themselves watching the TV, but not see the screen itself. Dissociated viewing. Then ask them to watch themselves watching the TV while relaxing very deeply. Get them to nod their head when they know intuitively that the self watching the screen has finished watching the ‘video’ of that old memory. If during this process you see them tensing up, then relax them back in to their special place, speak in a calm reassuring and confident voice. Carry on when you see they are comfortable. Rewind through the experience. Then get them to drift through time and space and go into the end of that old video to a time when everything had calmed and settled right down, way after the event. You can suggest that the unconscious mind can do this so that they don’t have to remember it. Suggest that once they notice this they can nod their head. Suggest they recall what it would be like to see a film that is being rewound very quickly from the very end to the very beginning. Then suggest that when you count to 3 your client presses the remote and experience going backwards in the video; whizzing very quickly from the end to the beginning, way before anything had happened. You can speed up your voice as you take them through this Watch the experience in fast forward. Ask your client to drift out of the beginning of the video and relax in the special place, and then ask them to watch the video in fast forward while relaxing very deeply to a time way after the event when everything had calmed right down. Repeat steps 5 and 6 suggesting that they can begin to notice what it is like to have that memory while becoming even more relaxed. They can nod when they have done this, so that you know when they are experiencing the memory calmly. At this stage, the memory is de-conditioned. You can then ask them notice the differences when thinking about that memory from a different part of their brain; and what they find most reassuring or easy about that? Future pace if appropriate. Rehearsing how life will be without the phobic response is a vital part of the rewind. However, it is inappropriate to ask someone who has been attacked to rehearse being calm when attacked! Instead, you can ask them to take a look at the future and see how different life will be when they are more relaxed
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Part 1 | Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder | Helpful Information
Helpful Information about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Available in a Series of Podcasts and Blog Post-traumatic stress disorder – youtube introduction to the 3 videos on PTSD (2 minutes) Over the last few years the team at Within Sight has noticed an increase in the amount of people who come to see us with post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is often not recognized and can cause untold misery for the sufferer and their family. Understanding what causes it and how to get rid of it can alleviate that suffering; so we have filmed a series of four podcasts on PTSD. 1. An introduction to the series on PTSD 2. The signs and symptoms of PTSD 3. What is happening in the brain to cause the distressing symptoms 4. The rewind technique – a fast and effective method of resolving PTSD – learn exactly why it works We have worked with thousands of people who have post-traumatic stress disorder and have seen first hand what a debilitating and overwhelming condition it can be. However there are techniques that safely transform the lives of people suffering from PTSD. These techniques can safely and effectively release people from the constraints and misery of PTSD, often in just one session. We use the ‘rewind technique’ reputed to be one of the most successful psychological tools available to safely and effectively lift PTSD, it will be fully explained in the forth podcast and blog. If you would like to train in the rewind technique Face to face with Within Sight’s trainers: we hold a one-day course 121 and online. Check it out here Learn the rewind If you want to find a therapist who has been professionally trained to use the rewind in a client session, email us on info@within-sight.com let us know where you live and we will do our best to help you find someone to help you.
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Part 2 | Post Traumatic Stress Disorder | The Symptoms
The symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder – watch youtube video 7 minutes long Symptoms may vary in range and degree of impact Symptoms can range from feeling emotionally out of control to mild anxiety and an inability to get a particular event out of your thoughts. In order to be medically diagnosed as having PTSD you have to have exhibited a wide range of symptoms over a particular period. However we recognize sub threshold trauma, which may fall outside of the guidelines that the British Medical Association lay down. So you can still have a range of distressing symptoms that still a make your life miserable but not get a medical diagnosis of PTSD. This means that someone who has been in a war zone and returned with full-blown PTSD can be helped just as a person who has had a bit of bullying go on at work and now keeps thinking about it and feels pangs of anxiety. Lets take a closer look at the range of symptoms – you may not have every one of the signs listed below or may have them really badly or just a little. Either way you can be helped by experiencing the rewind technique, which we discuss in the last video. Reoccurring flashbacks and nightmares You could be doing something quite mundane and suddenly get the feelings and pictures in your mind that make you feel like you are re-living the traumatizing event. And you might find it hard to get to sleep and will frequently wake because of nightmares. Panic attacks Your anxiety will suddenly climb to a pitch where you feel as if your heart beat is going to burst through your chest. Some people feel as if they are going to faint or die because the symptoms of a panic attack can be so traumatizing in themselves. You can feel routed to the spot or want to just immediately escape from the situation you are in. Unable to connect Not being able to connect to people even those close, like your family and friends is a common symptom. You can feel completely disconnected from life and are not able to find joy in the things you used to enjoy doing or the people that you love. You might feel as if you are in a trance most of the time. Can’t concentrate Distracted by anxiety and unpleasant recollections of the event it becomes increasingly hard to concentrate on anything, so decision making, reading or following the most simple TV program can become impossible. Avoidant behaviour You will do anything to avoid anything that reminds you of the trauma. So if you have been bullied at work you will develop a great deal of anxiety around even thinking about work or the person who has done the bullying. Emotional roller coaster – out bursts of anger or tearfulness and despair are commonplace If you have PTSD you will be operating from a basis of fear; driven by the emotional brain
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Part 3 |Post Traumatic Stress Disorder | What Happens in the Brain to Cause PTSD?
This is the third in a series of short blogs and video’s about post traumatic stress disorder. Today we are looking at what happens in the brain to cause PTSD. Watch the youtube demonstration about the three main parts of the brain that are involved in causing PTSD. 9.30 minutes, Here is a quick overview of the information in the video. In a nutshell, PTSD occurs when your brain over remembers an unpleasant event and keeps reminding you of it. How does it do that? Ok so we humans have evolved brains that have a special capacity for learning, remembering and reminding us – so that we don’t spend all of our lives having to re think how to make a cup of tea, swim or recognize words. Now this is a great thing but in our modern world when it comes to remembering things that have caused anxiety, this process can go off track and cause problems. Lets look at the three parts of your brain that are involved in this remembering and reminding process and can go on to cause PTSD. Neo cortex is the newest part of the brain and yet it is about 60 million years old. The neo cortex is the large part of your brain mass just behind your forehead and is responsible for the higher level functions in human beings like empathy and strategic thinking. Its polar opposite is the Amygdale which is one of the oldest parts of the brain, its main function is to prepare us for fight or flight in the face of any potential threat. So when an event, a thought or a person becomes a perceived threat, the sense of fear alerts the amygdale which orders your adrenals to flood you with cortisol and adrenalin, making you really strong in case you need to fight something or run fast to escape the situation. The Hippocampus is the memory gate for the brain, for anything to reach long term memory like new ideas and new learning it has to go through the hippocampus. So how do these three things operate to cause and maintain PTSD? Lets look at the amygdale first. The amygdale tags events with emotions and has a brilliant memory. The amygdale will try to store information that has caused anxiety to be produced, now that can be anything from a person who has been a bit of a bully at work to a major accident or physical attack. The amygdale stores this information in the form of our sensory perception, so that is sight, sound, scent, hearing and touch. That information can lay pretty dormant until a future time when the amygdale senses that there is potentially something similar in your environment to the things that it has remembered – then it goes on red alert and makes your adrenals fire of the chemicals to take you into the fight or flight so that you can run fast or fight hard. This is a brilliant reaction in the face of real danger but if
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