IBS

IBS is highly prevalent in the Western world, but despite the advancement of many theories, no clear cause has yet been established. IBS may be a conglomeration of disorders with similar symptoms but multiple different root causes. All cases of IBS should be checked out by your doctor, so that physical problems are not the cause, and to establish it may be psychological, and stress related.

Dr Peter Whorwell at Manchester's Withington Hospital, uses hypnotherapy to help his IBS patients. He maintains that hypnotherapy is effective in the treatment for two reasons, one is it lowers anxiety and two, it acts as pain management, and decreases the sensitivity in the gut. NICE has receommended hypnotherapy for the treatment of IBS.

The symptoms of Irritable Bowel may include:

• Abdominal pain and spasm
• Diarrhoea
• Constipation
• Bloated stomach
• Rumbling noises and wind
• Urgency - a need to rush and open the bowels
• A feeling of incomplete emptying of the bowels
• Incontinence if a toilet is not nearby
• A sharp pain felt low down inside the rectum
• Nausea, belching and vomiting

Stop Smoking

The physical side of addiction to smoking is less than 10% the remainder is all in the mind - the subconscious mind where behaviour patterns are stored. Your smoking is not a conscious behaviour, which is why trying to quit with conscious will power alone just isn't enough. Hypnotherapy can access the subconscious mind, suggest new perspectives on the habit, and remove your desire for smoking.

Smoking is one of the major causes of stress and anxiety because it increases your blood pressure levels. You may think having a cigarette is calming you, but it is in fact stressing your body. Once a person regains control by quitting smoking, they are able to regain control in other areas of their life.

People who smoke throughout life are 80% more likely to suffer severe anxiety and clinical depression in middle age than non-smokers, because it depletes the body of the motivational hormone Seratonin.

Smoking does not just cause lung cancer and heart disease. There are many poisonous substances in cigarettes, including Benzene, Formaldehyde, Carbon Monoxide, Arsenic, Acetone, and Nicotine, which many people don't realise is used commercially in insecticide. This puts a strain on the liver, pancreas, bladder and kidneys, and you risk your chances of developing cancer in these areas too.

I find doing 2 sessions instead of 1 two hour session works more effectively as it helps the client relax especially if they've never had hypnotherapy before.

Also see Stop Smoking page

Phobias

It is generally accepted that phobias arise from a combination of external events and internal predispositions. Some phobias such as arachnaphobia (fear of spiders) and ophidiophobia (fear of snakes) however, may arise more easily due to an evolutionary trait that conditioned humans to fear certain creatures that could cause them harm.

In a famous experiment, Martin Seligman used classical conditioning to establish phobias of snakes and flowers. The results of the experiment showed that it took far fewer shocks to create an adverse response
to a picture of a snake than to a picture of a flower, leading to the conclusion that certain objects may have a genetic predisposition to being associated with fear.

Many specific phobias can be traced back to a specific triggering event, usually a traumatic experience at an early age. Social phobias and agoraphobia have more complex causes that are not entirely known at this time. It is believed that heredity, genetics, and brain chemistry combine with life-experiences to play a major role in the development of anxiety disorders and phobias.

I myself was cured of a phobia of driving, which I had for 13 years, using hypnotherapy and NLP techniques. I am now back behind the driving wheel and enjoying every moment.

Performance Anxiety

Whether you are budding pop star or have to perform presentations for your company, hypnotherapy can help with reducing your anxiety. Using specially designed NLP techniques to help lower your emotional response and gentle guidance and visualisation to motivate, it is the perfect solution to help get rid of performance nerves, stage fright and fear of public speaking.

Weight Loss

We lose weight when we consume fewer calories and burn off more during exercise, unfortunately, life is usually not as simple as this and we find ourselves cutting corners, eating the wrong foods and making excuses. Poor self-image, fussy diet, and issues such as Anorexia add to the problem.

By making careful choices, monitoring our eating habits and our body mass, gaining control over our habits and emotions, hypnotherapy can help you achieve your ideal weight. The number of sessions involved will depend on your targets and how motivated you are.

What hypnosis will NOT do regarding bingeing

Hypnosis is not about reprogramming the brain, but allowing your subconscious mind know what is best for you and relay it to your conscious mind. A session will not automatically turn a switch in your head and you'll wake up NOT bingeing. It will instead help you to gain control and understand the mechanisms that are making you binge. You can then monitor all aspects of your life and put in place the habits you need to loose and maintain your perfect weight.

The weight loss programme operates over 3 months, and about 8 - 10 sessions. It is the aim to lose 2lb per week.

Also see: Weight loss / Why diets fail / Things you should know / What to expect

Sports performance

Improve your performance in sports.

Many sportsmen and women use hypnotherapy to focus on their skills and to enhance their performance. From athletics to boxers (Bristol's world champion middleweight boxer Glenn Catley used hypnotherapy to help him gain his world championship title) It is also excellent for concentration and helps with improving your golf, darts and pool matches too.

Create positive focus and new automatic response patterns to achieve your full potential.Whether you need to deal with the pressure of competition or simply wish to overcome nerves or negative behaviour patterns

Hypnotherapy allows you to remove the triggers and negative responses that can be encountered due to pre-competition nerves or self-belief issues. Through simple relaxation and various other techniques, you can become focused on what you really want to achieve.

For more details see Nailsea Cricket Club

Anxiety and Depression

Hypnotherapy will work for any mind or stress related problems. By learning how the mind works and by understanding how we are affected by our states of mind, we can get back on the road to recovery in no time. Where as counselling can often go back over old wounds, which the client may not want to uncover, hypnotherapy instead focuses on what the client wants to achieve, and how they want to achieve it.

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Panic attacks
• Insomnia
• Lack of confidence
• Self esteem
• Exam nerves
• Grief
• Divorce
• Separation
• Unwanted habits
• Physical and mental exhaustion.
• Recovery after a nervous breakdown
• Unnecessary fears and worries
• Work stress

For more information see > Depression / Depression symptoms / Pathology of depression / treatment of depression / Anxiety / Anxiety symptoms / Pathology of Anxiety / treatment of anxiety

Goal setting and getting motivated

Using positive thinking and realistic goal setting, you can become focused to achieve anything. From alleviating exam and interview nerves, to really sorting out what you want in your life. Examining what you can do and using focused, positive visualisation to achieve it. We can't make a brain surgeon out of someone with a GCSE in ICT, but we can help you gain insights into your weaknesses and more importantly your strengths.

Bed Wetting

Bedwetting in children and adults can be the result of stress and depression. When someone is depressed, they have a tendency to sleep deeper and longer, so the mechanism that sends messages from the full bladder to the brain, take too long for the person to regain consciousness. Quite often the anxiety caused by bedwetting prolongs the symptoms and the person falls into a self-fullfilling cycle. Using hypnotherapy to reduce the anxiety, and to regulate the sleeping, I also look at what the person is doing to help or make worse the symptoms and suggest methods of overcoming some of the problems.

See case study

Past Life Regression

Many people come to a hypnotherapist wanting to find out why something happened in their life thinking it has to do with previous lives. Please read my findings from the research I have done into Past Life Regression