How can hypnotherapy help me to make positive changes by Beverley Underwood, hypnotherapist, Worthing

Hypnotherapy can be a powerful tool in making positive changes to your life.

How we can change ideas and thoughts to change our behaviours is the topic of this blog. To enable positive change, you must first however be ready to want it and to accept it.

Behaviours are born from ideas which have become fixed in our subconscious mind. It is the concern of the therapist of those fixed ideas that have generated frustrating, restrictive or counterproductive thoughts. That will be the focus of therapy and hypnosis can work, sometimes very rapidly, to change these fixed ideas.

The treatment may work to intensify the feelings linked with fixed ideas, which may have been established through initial events, possibly as a child and maintained by secondary reinforcements throughout life till now. The aim is to change the emotional and interlectual perception to enhance a new understanding and awareness.

Insight in to the past, whilst enlightening, rarely changes the triggers to change in the now but it can help to understand why these patterns exist. It allows the therapist to gage where patterns of belief may have become distorted or interpreted incorrectly. The hypnotherapist is then able to begin the process of re-education and reprogramming of the subconscious mind.

In hypnotherapy, the aim is to change inappropriate interpretations though uncovering the past and what has affirmed thoughts and re-educating the mind. As an adult, any ideas which are presented to us are screened against what we know from the past and our experiences and beliefs of the past. We look for rational content and decide how the new thing fits with our stored thoughts and beliefs. If we are unable to make a connection or if the incoming information is irrational, we reject the idea. If the new information is totally new we may also reject unless there is a really positive reason not to do so.

Using hypnosis it is possible to create a mind state in which the critical factor becomes temporarily inactive. It has not gone, it just stops looking for rational content and stops evaluating in terms of past knowledge or unrealistic beliefs that have previously been accepted.

Much of the things we say are not realistic in fact just in belief. For example, personally I feel “ I just know I cannot stand up in front of a crowd to do a speech”. I of course can do this, but I believe I cannot and I believe X will happen if I do. In my case X could be I will forget my words, faint, be sick, mess it up, embarrass myself, the list goes on. I say I just know I can’t as I do not want to feel these feelings that may occur if I do.

With hypnosis the aim is to create an uncritical acceptance of the new ideas. People do however have to be ready to make the change and want to change for this to work well. We need to initiate a process of change to make it happen and this means engaging in different behaviour.

Change should be seen to be a combination of excitement and mystery. It can really transform life. To make this change you need to be ready for it and seek the assistance required to make it happen.

For more information and to discuss your own situation, please call the practice and ask to speak to Beverley Underwood, our hypnotherapist.