Hypnotherapy

Hypnosis is a medium from within which therapeutic interventions are delivered straight to your subconscious neural processes. What does that mean? It simply means that the important forces that direct and maintain your life, are processed subconsciously before you become consciously aware of them. That's right, everything you think, say or do has already been processed by your brain before you take any action! Seemingly with a few exceptions; reflex responses! How your subconscious does that is mostly through what we know of as memory (although not necessarily in the same context of remembering). Everything you do is, in some way, reflective of a past memory or associated derivatives of it. Memories can be experienced in various forms or representations, a simplistic model could be enjoyable - neutral - unenjoyable. I am very sure you'll have an awareness of memories of good, bad or neutral (no emotion aroused) experiences? These processes are ultimately what determine whether we go in the right way or the wrong direction in life.

Good and bad memories elicit feelings equal in significance to the intensity and effect of the memory. Therefore, hypnosis is a means of eliciting changes, by the delivery of therapeutic interventions, at the level of cells and synapses, the very place where memories are stored. Basically, hearing my voice stimulates the auditory cortices, which can then stimulate other sensory areas, e.g. vision, touch, taste or smell. This leads to either the creation of a new memory or the updating of an existing one. Eventually, this new learning becomes an integral part of one's life experience!

A major cause for clients seeking therapy is predominantly entwined in bad memories of past experiences and often these memories are exacerbated over time and subsequent experiences. Brain-based memory can take a relatively uneventful occurrence and make it much worse over time. Jealousy is a good example, where some past experience (maybe that of the self or a parent etc.) makes one think that their current partner will be unfaithful. This jealous feeling often happens in the absence of any real proof! As long as it is believed by the mind; it's as real as if it actually happened.

Fortunately, for clients seeking healing, our brain is a very malleable organ, it changes progressively according to the extent that which our belief systems are enhanced. Essentially, at the heart of all talk therapies, is the process of thought enhancement. By changing the way a person thinks, a set of correlative actions are set in motion, which, if positive in nature, create a system of positive feedback loops. The effect of this in neural terms is, that one positive thought spawns another. Search engines, cookies and scripts etc. work this way too. They monitor what you have previously done or looked at in order to improve your forward internet experience. For advertising purposes, they produce a series of relative positive feedback loops. The essence of what they are trying to accomplish is an experience they think you want. This is exactly what your brain and minds are attempting to do at any given point in time. And, it is why AI is attempting to mimic the human brain! In that same sense, memories are tantamount to algorithms. If your past experience of life is bad, then stimulation of certain memories elicits a protection mode and consequentially, the fight or flight response is activated. Very often this brings with it a whole series of unwanted and inappropriate feelings, behaviours and/or responses. These responses equate to your overall experience of life and this is what leads you to seek therapy!

What has this to do with customizing a therapy treatment for you? Well, in the brain, one way or another, everything is connected and because of that, your forward experience of life will be somewhat reflective of past experience. If the way you have dealt with a bad past experience has kept you alive, essentially it has achieved its objective. Your brain's defence system cares little or nothing about the quality of your life, its objective is the continuity of it, i.e. how you survive, not thrive! However, at the heart of humanness is a desire to thrive, to get better, bigger, faster, stronger etc. What prevents us from achieving this good experience of life is the way memories express themselves. The more intense the feelings, the more entrenched the defences become. Fortunately, memories are as malleable as the brain itself and that is what I seek to achieve with each client. In order to do that I listen to your story. Meaning, that I look for threads of memory, negative linguistic references, facial expressions in response to words, pictures, memories etc. (negative and positive). In essence an indicative understanding of the neural processing behind your experiences of life.

From there I develop a hypnotic prescription, medication in the form of words would be a good description of what I mean. This is delivered in the form of a script, a functional narrative, whilst you are in a state of trance. The theme of this prescription is repeated and updated (with progress made) during the period of your course of treatment. During the period you are in hypnosis, and those that follow, the brain physically begins to change. This sometimes happens with the addition of new neurons (neurogenesis) and other times by the creation of new synaptic connections (neuroplasticity). This happens the very same way your brain changes after you learn a skill, say driving, your brain is no longer the same brain. After each learning experience, it is an enhanced form of your brain with greater functionality in a specific area. Now, just for a moment think about how driving (or a similar skill) has changed the way you think? The very same processes are at hand with therapy.

So once you have experienced life from a different neural perspective, you will begin to subconsciously believe what you experience as being either achievable or accomplished. Dreams offer us a perfect example of what I mean here. If you have ever had a dream of falling, you will know that it felt very real but was, in fact, a total fantasy. It felt real because your brain believed you were falling. In hypnosis, the very same process is at work. If what you want to achieve is experienced, then it is felt, if it is felt then in some sense it is a reality. That is why hypnosis works so effectively!

Like all things in life, trying is believing; that is why I offer a full one-hour Free Consultation; trying is believing. To claim your Free Consultation, go to "Book App't" on the NavBar at the top!