Hypnotherapy

Excessive guilt moral code

Excessive guilt

Excessive guilt

Excessive guilt: Whether by intention or by accident, feeling guilty about something that you’ve done wrong is a natural emotional response. What causes your excessive guilt? Was it something that you said or did that caused offence? Did you neglect to invite someone to a social occasion? Or maybe you didn’t respond to someone’s message after saying that you would get back to them. These are common mistakes that everyone has made at some point in their lives. Your moral code will set the agenda for what constitutes that wrong, how intensely you feel guilt and for how long are likely to dwell on it.

Excessive guilt moral code
Your moral code will determine your potential excessive guilt

Feeling guilty in the short term isn’t necessarily unhealthy. The unease you feel in your stomach can contribute to your human growth by helping you consider how to temporarily resolve a situation e.g. by apologising for your wrongdoing. In your re-evaluation of your guilt and from the responses of those involved, it can also motivate you to make better choices if the situation was to happen again. However prolonged and excessive guilty feelings (sometimes called a guilt complex) can be unhelpful. Suppressing your guilt may offer some temporary respite, but like other unaddressed emotions, it can intensify over time, influencing you to feel worse about your actions and the past. Fixating on your “wrong” long after others have forgotten or forgiven what happened can damage your self-confidence and your self-esteem. It can influence feelings of inadequacy and shame. Feeling excessive guilt can be a factor that maintains symptoms of OCD, anxiety, depression, PTSD and prolonged grief.

Understanding your guilt, the background to your excessive guilty emotions and why these feelings persist can help you change the intensity of your emotions, change your reactions and improve your future behaviour.


Excessive guilt: What is guilt and what are the various types of guilt?

There are various “self-conscious” or “self-awareness” emotions that affect how you see yourself and how others might perceive and accept you e.g. pride, embarrassment and jealousy. Personal (and cultural) morals, rules and goals influence how these emotions develop. In its “appropriate” form, guilt can help develop empathy and regulate your social behaviour, acting as your “inner critic” or “guilty conscience”.

You can feel guilty when you imagine (perceive, believe) or become aware that you have undermined your own or somebody else’s moral standards. The guilt may be connected to the “wrong” that you did but (rightly or wrongly) you feel responsible for those actions.

You can similarly feel guilty for your omissions where you believe that what you didn’t do has broken your (or someone else’s) moral code e.g. feeling guilty because you did not intervene when witnessing another person being bullied but justified it at the time since you feared being targeted by the instigator (a form of compassionate guilt).  Or when you are unrealistically trying to care for too many people and ultimately believe that you are failing your own expectations.

Some people can experience a “false guilt” that is irrational or connected to other emotions e.g. you can feel guilty for having a “guilty pleasure”, which is connected more to a fear of disapproval. Additionally, you can feel guilty for wishing harm on others, which can derive more from anger, jealousy or envy. Some people can feel guilt accompanied with overwhelming feelings of responsibility for something going wrong even when they played no active part in predicting or contributing to that wrong (also known as maladaptive guilt).

In some cases, you can feel guilty for (what you believe to be) exceeding the moral expectations of your group. Compared to your family or peer group, your route to success and achievement can attract too much attention that you believe others in your social group deserve. To displace the guilt that you are doing better than others “less fortunate than you”, you may “protect” them from feeling worthless by sabotaging your own success and engage in self-destructive achievement-behaviours e.g. not sitting exams or by underperforming in exams. This type of guilt in which you believe that are doing better than someone else is related to “survivor’s guilt”, when you have survived a tragedy or disaster in which others have died or been seriously hurt. With survivor’s guilt, you are not directly responsible for the situation that has harmed others. This type of guilt is very common with combat veterans suffering PTSD who have survived a trauma when many of their troops have died.

Survivor’s guilt can fall into the category of existential guilt, a type of guilt rooted in feeling guilty about your existence rather than specifically doing something wrong. For some people, this type of guilt may surface when confronting the fear of death and reviewing the life that you have led.

There are many other forms of existential guilt such as feeling guilty for leading your life inauthentically (or when you are not achieving your full life potential), feeling guilty for who you are as a person with reference to human nature (and the responsibility of human nature), and feeling guilty within existential boundaries of human belonging, freedom, will and justice. Many of these existential guilt examples can be experienced when someone has set a (direct or indirect goal) to have children but your life partner does not share these procreative goals.

Knowing how much guilt has gnawed at your emotions from past events, you can also suffer guilt anxiety. Guilt anxiety is experienced when your moral code is compromised when you are preparing to deal with a future stressful situation e.g. when needing to break up a relationship or needing to fire subordinate staff due to company redundancies. Viewing it disproportionately from their perspective, guilt anxiety may cause you to delay or completely avoid taking assertive action.

Excessive guilt obsession
Excessive guilt can leave you obsessing over past wrongs

Guilt is closely associated with regret, remorse and shame. In its severe form, guilt can influence deeper feelings of unworthiness. When combined with low self-esteem, you can ruminate or obsess over past “wrongs” in which you believe that you are responsible and don’t deserve to move on from these wrongs. Sufferers of excessive guilt are prone to social isolation to avoid burdening others with your problems. However, you can then feeling guilty for not being sociable. Acts of self-harm or other damaging behaviours are also common with depressive modes that seem to have no solution.

With excessive guilt, you can be convinced and even paranoid that you’ve done something wrong, despite the evidence pointing to the contrary. With fear of harm OCD, your own senses can betray you, overestimating your actions as being serious in a situation in which your mistake only had minor consequences, if any at all.

As a psychological defence mechanism, some people suppress or repress guilt when having forbidden and taboo thoughts (common with guilty thoughts OCD). However the act of suppression or repression can strengthen those negative thoughts and keep them active often intensifying the guilty emotions and keeping the sufferer in a recurrent cycle of excessive guilt. Another defence mechanism is guilt denial. When you deny your feelings of guilt, you do not acknowledge responsibility for the wrong. Instead, you may project your guilt onto others by blaming the victim for the “wrong” in the form of a guilt trip.

When you are conditioned to use guilt trips to communicate needs, it can become habit-forming, as a natural way trying to get what you want from others (and vice versa). Guilt trips can take various positive and negative forms. In some cases it can be used to morally try to educate another person, to avoid conflict about the issue in hand or draw sympathy from the harmed person by appearing to be the victim. As a more devious form, a guilt trip can be manipulative, forcing another person to do something that they don’t want to do. In this extreme form, guilt denial can be a feature of psychopathy.


Excessive guilt vs. shame

It’s worth distinguishing between guilt and shame as it’s easy to confuse these emotions when you are reacting to feelings of distress. Both emotions can create similar symptoms, but they are not the same.

Guilt is a feeling of remorse and responsibility connected to the perceived wrongful act (or omission). You would probably say something like “I handled that badly” following the situation. Despite the perceived wrongful act, you believe that you are fundamentally a good person. You can appreciate that there are potential constructive steps to make amends for the wrongful act.

Shame, on the other hand, is related to your self-image. It is more connected to a violation of social norms or ideals that are focused on your character as a whole, rather than a specific behaviour or event. It is far more toxic and destructive to your self-esteem than guilt. You are convinced that “you” are what’s wrong and believe that there is no solution available to redeem your worth. You would probably say something like “I’m a horrible person and I don’t deserve good things” following the situation. As a reaction, you are more likely to self-destruct by punishing yourself (e.g. with isolation or self harm) or suppress your shame and be aggressive towards others.


What causes excessive guilt?

Core emotions such as guilt can develop as early as three years old. There are various factors that can contribute to excessive guilt. Whilst guilt can be shown in MRI studies, it is considered a reflection of that person’s learned social standards rather than what might be genetically inherited.

Causes of guilt can include:

Childhood experiences:  Parents who have grown up with a “guilty” belief system are more likely to use language patterns that will further embed guilty beliefs into children. Guilt can also be exacerbated within families in which the authority figures value harsh discipline, excessive punishment and additional responsibility for the young children. A child who is unable to communicate their guilt can live in fear of being discovered and severely punished. This may intensify their guilt and create further attempts to hide (or suppress) their wrongs, only to be caught at a later stage. In addition to this, a child will continue feeling guilty when parents maintain their disappointment and are unable to assert their forgiveness.

Low self esteem
Guilt has strong connections with low self esteem

Low self-esteem: Connected to childhood experiences is the early development of your self-esteem. Guilt is a potential symptom of low self-esteem. With low self-esteem, you doubt the value of your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and behaviour. You have a negative opinion of yourself and are more likely to value the authority of others’ opinions. Rarely feeling good about yourself, these recurrent inferior belief patterns will direct blame inwardly. You are more susceptible to accepting others’ judgements of you and are thus vulnerable to those who are blame averse. You often believe that you deserve blame and don’t deserve to be forgiven.

Anxiety: There is a strong connection between anxiety (the feeling) and guilt (the effect). Feeling guilty then causes more anxiety and continues this emotional cycle. This mutual cause-and-effect relationship can be a feature of OCD and depression.

Social anxiety: Having social anxiety as with low self-esteem, you are more likely feel social pressure to give authority to other people’s judgements that you are responsible for the wrong. You can then fear being excluded if you are deemed responsible for the wrong. With social anxiety, you may also isolate yourself because you fear doing something embarrassing. Being questioned about your absence (to a party for example) can influence guilty feelings because you fear offending other people.

Culture and society: Cultural norms can create deep and (often unrealistically high expectations) of how you should lead your life from the society’s perspective against how you personally want to lead to your life. You may be told from individuals that your behaviour is bad or imagine that “culture” will tell you that your behaviour is bad. Without conforming to these norms you can feel isolated, disrespected and disgraced. Your guilt can be heightened when the norms that you adopt from one social group may be in conflict with the norms of another social group e.g. teenage deviance may be admired by your teenage peer group culture but despised by your family culture.

Religion: Some religions (and their interpretation) can give more emphasis to guilt when your behaviour is not synonymous with the teaching of the religious values. With some religions, it is believed that your wrongful thoughts and actions are known to the religious deity and it is often necessary to confess, repent and atone for these wrongs to be forgiven by the religious deity.


Excessive guilt: Symptoms of guilt

Many of the symptoms of guilt are connected with anxiety, OCD and depression. They can include:

Physical symptoms: general muscle tension, diaphragmatic tension or “butterflies”, sleep problems, headaches, nausea, fatigue, upset, distracted, concentration problems, anxiety-related IBS etc.

Emotional symptoms (as a consequence of anxiety): feeling tense and irritable, oversensitive to the effect of your actions, feeling tearful and remorseful, feeling responsible to make life better, feeling overwhelmed by own mistakes, feeling inadequate etc.

Behavioural symptoms (as a consequence of anxiety): being indecisive, defensive, desperately apologetic, being preoccupied with past mistakes, trying to make amends for the wrong, blaming yourself, trying to gain other’s approval, overreacting to criticism, being deluded that you did something wrong, favouring other’s needs to the detriment of your own needs, isolating yourself from others, being fearful that you made the wrong decision etc.


Common treatment approaches

Excessive guilt can affect your mental well-being and quality of life. If the above symptoms are interfering with your life on a frequent basis, there are various treatment options available to you.

Medication: Your doctor may prescribe anxiety medication or anti-depressants to help with your symptoms. They may additionally suggest having therapy.

Therapy: CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) can help you confront the negative thoughts and behaviour that are contributing to your guilt.

Self-help: There are various self-help methods to cope with guilt including venting your guilt to a good listener, reading self-help books and online articles, engaging in online forums, etc.


How can hypnotherapy help excessive guilt?

Hypnotherapy can reframe your guilty event

Hypnotherapy excessive guilt treatment
Hypnotherapy can help you reframe a guilty event

There are many hypnotherapy techniques available to treat your guilt. Regression can be used to establish any underlying patterns of “guilt learning” that you’ve experienced in your life. Regression can also be used to access the initial sensitising event (ISE) and access the most immediate source of the emotion, also known as the symptom producing event (SPE). These events can then be reinterpreted by enabling the adult mind to heal the “inner child’s” perspective of the guilty trauma.

Hypnotherapy can facilitate your (self) forgiveness

As part of the reframe from above (and where it’s possible and appropriate), self-forgiveness can be explored to release you from the “grip” of the past guilty event. It can be difficult to apply this process for yourself when your excessive guilt is directing you to replay the guilt.

Many people know which event that is triggering the excessive guilt. Its constant “replay” may feel like you are absolving your guilt, but instead you are reliving the process, creating an unnecessarily long-term suffering without applying a therapeutic intervention. In hypnosis, you can gain a partial release of your guilt by acknowledging and accepting the accountability for the past behaviour. Anger and resentment can be further explored to continue this release.

As you work through your guilt, you can reappraise the motives of your original behaviour without excessive judgement. Then, by establishing potential changes for the future, you can facilitate an openness for relearning and continued self-compassion.

Using this dissociated reframing process in the focused hypnotic state, many clients can feel like the internal burden of guilt has been lifted from your shoulders.

Hypnotherapy can interrupt your guilt obsession

In many cases of OCD, guilt and anxiety play a dominant role in locking you into your rumination. You are desperately trying to liberate yourself from a negative thinking cycle, but those thoughts keep coming back. Thought suppression has a limited short-term effect and will swamp you when you are not distracted or at night when you are settling down to sleep. Hypnotherapy can give to effective techniques to eliminate this guilt obsession cycle.

Hypnotherapy can build your self esteem

When you suffer with low self-esteem, you have a low opinion of yourself and your beliefs. You give more authority to the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of others. When people blame you, you are likely to accept their judgement of your wrong as the “fact” of the matter, as if you deserve it. Hypnotherapy can be used to build your self-esteem and treat these associated issues that exacerbate your excessive guilt.

Hypnotherapy can release the physical sensations of guilt

The mind-body connection can be strong, influencing physical (psycho-somatic) symptoms of tension and postural changes derived from thoughts, emotions and beliefs. If you sense that you are “carrying” your guilt or it is “weighing you down”, these metaphors can create an embodiment of your guilt, as if acting like an emotion with “real” weight on your body. For those clients who bring this embodied cognitive framework into the treatment process, hypnosis can be used within this metaphor to release the “heavy” sensations that guilt is generating on your body.

Hypnotherapy can access your attachment to past judgements

(Existential) guilt can create a constant feeling of wrongness about who you are and taint everything that you do (or don’t do). You may be able to identify the source of this judgement before treatment and work through this in the treatment process e.g. with family or religious values. Sometimes, the source can be unconscious, leaving you confused about your authenticity and feeling responsible for events that are not your fault. You can fear the future, anticipating blame for something that you believe will go wrong. Hypnotic regression techniques can help you access the source of your previous judgement, releasing feelings of (over) responsibility. It can be used to realign your accountability for your past and feel more positive about your future.

Hypnotherapy can help you re-imagine an apology

Release with reimagined apology
Hypnotherapy can help you reimagine your apology

Not having the opportunity to apologise for the way you handled a situation at the time of the event can leave you with feelings of guilt. The situation may have passed a long time ago. Sometimes this feeling of guilt is connected to a negative grieving cycle in which you were unable to absolve with the deceased before they died. In a deep state of hypnosis you are more receptive to hypnotic suggestions. Hypnotic suggestions can be used to help you to visualise the apology and any helpful accompanied forgiveness (and self-forgiveness) to give you the much-needed closure that was unavailable at the time. This can enable you to be a peace with the event and with those people connected to it.

Hypnotherapy can help you identify why you don’t deserve to absolve your guilt

There may be deeper reasons behind your need to maintain your excessive guilt. These reasons are not always rational but can be a reaction to  background trauma or excessive conditioning. Being blamed with excessive punishment can engender a general self-blame perspective in which you then anticipate blame. Accompanied harsh criticism can then damage your self-esteem in which you form beliefs that you are not good enough to be free of blame. Hypnotherapy can help you identify these accumulative patterns of negative conditioning and any unrealistic standards of behaviour that felt controlling or abusive. The meaning of these events can be reframed to release your repressed feelings of blame, responsibility and guilt.

Hypnotherapy can help you reduce anxiety connected to your guilt

Having felt the distress of guilt in the past, anxiety can give you the warning to avoid this overwhelming sense of wrongness again in the future. How you stored, reacted to, and even suppressed the event can provoke confusion about how to cope with the way forward. You can then fear making an even bigger mistake again and intensifying your guilty feelings. For example, if you have made numerous mistakes in work that have needed other colleagues to rectify them, you can feel anxious about this chain of events happening again. You will then doubt your ability and worry about the potential burden on your colleagues.

Regression techniques are one of the many hypnotic strategies () that can be used to identify what events are suppressed or they can be used to reinterpret these events to release your guilt.


Excessive guilt: Summary

Feeling guilt is a natural emotional response to doing something wrong.

Obsessing on the guilty act long after the event can have a detrimental effect on your well-being. The need to fixate on your guilt may indicate a more traumatic background or other mental health issues. Hypnotherapy can offer many strategies to help you overcome your excessive guilt.

You can access treatment for excessive guilt in person and remotely by completing the Contact Form. There is more information about hypnotherapy in the hypnosis test.


For more information about treating your excessive guilt, contact
Richard J D’Souza Hypnotherapy Cardiff

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Fear of losing control rage

Fear Of Losing Control

Fear of Losing Control

The fear of losing control is a common fear that can be associated with many other anxiety-related conditions e.g., phobias, panic attacks, OCD, social anxiety and PTSD. You may not communicate this fear as an initial treatment goal, yet it can emerge as an important secondary issue that demands attention. Exploring your beliefs connected to “control” and what it means to “lose control” can be extremely beneficial to treating your main presenting condition and associated anxiety symptoms.

Fear of losing control rage
How do you define your loss of control?

What is a fear of losing control?

A fear of losing control can mean different things to different people. We all want to be in control of our lives, in the same way that we all want to pursue our model of happiness. However, there is a huge difference between wanting to be in control and living in fear of losing control, in whatever way that you define that negative reality coming into existence. As that negative reality threatens to materialise, you can anticipate your symptoms and you may become over-controlling with your emotions and behaviour to prevent it.

In more general terms, the prevention of this negative reality is characterised by an intense and irrational fear of losing control over:

  • Yourself – This can include your mind, emotions, memories, reactions, behaviour, bodily functions e.g., bladder or bowel,etc. You might fear losing control by making a fool of yourself, doing something irrational after drinking too much alcohol, being rash or aggressive (losing your temper), being emotional (crying), or saying something that you might regret. “Freaking-out” and “going crazy” are terms commonly used if you were to lose control or be “physically or mentally incapacitated” in some way. It often refers to having a panic attack and the struggle to breath associated with the panic attack. As a consequence of losing control, other secondary feelings of distress (blame, guilt, shame, embarrassment etc.) may also be related to the initial (primary) loss of control or panic attack.
  • A situation – This can include a work meeting, presentation, formal social occasion, or performance situation. You fear that the situation won’t go as planned, so you over-plan it, obsess and overthink it. You spend an excessive amount of time in your preparation and rehearsal. Your fear of something going wrong in the situation can overwhelm you and distract you from your ability to cope with the demands of the situation like listening and responding to questions.
  • Property – This can include items of financial and sentimental value. You fear that the item of value might be damaged or lost. For example, when you buy a new car, you then become possessive over it, fearing that it will be damaged or stolen if it is parked in a precarious place. To control this fear you then leave the car in your garage where it’s safe, rarely enjoying your “precious” new vehicle. Losing-control fear can also dominate how you maintain your property. It is prevalent with types of OCD including contamination behaviours, cleanliness, orderliness and hoarding compulsions.
  • Other people – This can relate to how you expect others to comply with your expectations to lower your anxiety because you worry about them. If others don’t comply, you fear that they might be harmed in some way. It can also include being controlling over others to prevent them from showing your potential incompetence.

The term “Control-Freak” is coined for those who obsess over things being done in a perfect way or be left with feelings of inadequacy or failure. As a phobia it is also known as atychiphobia or kakorrhaphiophobia.

Perfectionist controlling lawn
Perfectionists are more prone to losing-control fears

“Control-freaks” are often perfectionists who battle with intense self-criticism, hopelessness and stress. They struggle to delegate to others as they are intolerant of those who don’t share their same flawless standards.

Unhealthy (or neurotic) perfectionists are more prone to losing-control fears as general trait or in specific areas of life. They can be distinguished from the healthy form of perfectionism, in which pleasure is gained from one’s efforts and the outcomes do not compromise your self-esteem.

What situations can a fear of losing control affect?

Family relationships – Parental fears of their children being harmed is very common. The parent’s protective behaviour can reduce their own worries, but it can damage a child’s confidence particularly when the behaviour is controlling. For example, if a parent suffers with social anxiety, they can inadvertently instil socially anxious fears into their child by controlling who they should be friends with and when they can see them.

Parents can also be over-controlling of their children to prevent themselves being labelled as an incapable parents. Controlling the child’s homework to help the child’s success can be a sign of good parenting but controlling all their free time to make them study (just to calm the parent’s fears) can overwhelm them. Some children can become averse to studying because of parental pressure.

Workplace – The fear of losing control at work can present itself in many ways, usually as a fear of failure. For the individual who wants to achieve high standards, the extra time and energy to revise completed work just to “cross every T” can take its toll on your productivity-efficiency with potential burnout. When you can’t perfect something, you may become defensive of it, procrastinate over the task or avoid it altogether since an “adequate” outcome (rather than a perfect one) can be viewed as failure. Other perfectionist behaviour can include hiding your errors from others for fear of criticism, then finding it’s too late to correct these errors before the deadline. You may also be very critical of others who don’t have the same perfect standards as you.

In some cases, being managed by a perfectionist boss who fears losing control of their staff can amount to bullying. Bullying behaviour includes being humiliating, insulting, offensive and intimidating towards subordinate members of staff. Bullying behaviour is not always “downwards” in the chain of command, it can extend to colleagues at a similar level, and “upwards” towards superior staff. The latter can apply when a junior member of staff is envious of a superior’s position and will reject their “control” by failing to complete requested tasks, being disrespectful and spreading rumours about them to colleagues.

Relationships – losing-control fear in relationships can take many forms. Perhaps the most obvious is the fear of a relationship breakdown and the potential rejection, isolation, worthlessness, and abandonment that can accompany it. To suppress these fears, partners can display many dominating and controlling behaviours like anger, jealousy, guilt-tripping, shaming, possessiveness, being critical (to avoid blame), “gaslighting” and being excessively inquisitive (snooping on your partner’s phone/emails).

Education – Similar to the work situation, fear of losing control in your education can be related to perfectionism. To under-achieve and attain low grades would generate intense feelings of self-criticism worthlessness. Perfectionism due to high expectations can cause conditions like writer’s block, burnout, depression and anxiety. Some students may resort to cheating and plagiarism due to the pressure to achieve high standards when completing assignments and exams.

Physical activity (exercise) – You would expect a degree of perfectionism to become an elite performer, but as with other situations, the pressure to perform can generate a losing-control fear. The pressure at elite competitions can generate sports performance anxiety, self-doubt, anger and fear of failure. Self-criticism can encourage the performer to dwell on mistakes and get distracted during the competition when the competition-performance demands are relentless. For the amateur (and elite performer), cheating using performance-enhancing substances can be appealing to reach the next level of achievement. Even for the informal fitness enthusiast, you can be susceptible to training compulsively.

Other performance situations – Fear of losing control of the performance can impact on other performance situations including driving tests, interviews, musical and stage performances and presentations. It can also affect informal performance situations like dating, sexual performance (premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction), and other social situations. A lack of control may be experienced as a fear of embarrassment, humiliation, judgement, and failure.

Home cleanliness – Devoting time and attention to something that is your pride and joy can become progressively controlling, preventing you from actually relaxing in and enjoying your own home. As with other situations (and objects), perfectionism can influence the achievement of high standards. DIY and gardening projects, tidying and cleaning can become compulsive (as a common type of OCD), continuously finding yet another job to do in an already-busy daily schedule. Your loss-of-control fears can relate to who might see those flaws and criticise something that could be cleaner. The expectations you have about your home can influence you to take those imagined judgements personally (i.e. that you aren’t good enough to keep a perfect home).

Your body – the pursuit of high standards (ideals) and self-criticism directed towards your body can be displayed in many ways.  Body-perfect behaviours can include compulsive exercising (e.g. bodybuilding outside of competitions), body treatments (plastic surgery and implants, beauty treatments, having numerous tattoos and body piercings), excessive dieting (to lose weight or to prevent health conditions) and eating disorders (e.g. anorexia and bulimia etc.). Body dysmorphia is the mental health condition that can be associated with many of the above behaviours. Comorbid conditions like addiction, self-harm, drinking excessive alcohol, depression and binge behaviour etc. can accompany this condition.

There are some situations in which this losing-control fear can be beneficial to your overall health, particularly when connected to making poor lifestyle choices. If you define the fear of losing control as developing chronic health conditions (e.g. diabetes, coronary artery disease, stroke, some types of cancer, etc.), you may make better lifestyle choices to try and prevent these chronic conditions from developing. These self-care behaviours can include having a mild form of heath anxiety that can encourage you to stop smoking, eat a healthy diet, exercise, reduce alcohol intake, sleep better etc. Similarly, those who already have chronic physical and mental health conditions may maintain their habit of taking medication to control and prevent their symptoms becoming worse.

What causes a fear of losing control?

Fear of losing control can be caused by a variety of factors related to the causes of phobias, including:

1. Genetics: Some people may have a genetic predisposition to anxiety disorders, which can increase the likelihood of developing this fear.

2. Traumatic experiences: People who have experienced “survival anxiety” (e.g. abandonment or separation fears) or traumatic events such as abuse, accidents, or medical emergencies may develop this fear as a reaction to these traumas.

Mother controlling teenager’s behaviour
Controlling behaviour can be a reaction to retrospective feelings of control

3. Learned behaviours: This fear can be learned through observing others or through your personal experience. If a person has seen someone else lose control in a situation and had a negative outcome, they may develop a similar fear. Feeling like you have experienced being controlled in your life may generate a deep need to balance (or take back) that control in a direct or disconnected way. When the reaction is unable to be asserted, it can generate losing-control symptoms.

4. Personality traits: People who have a tendency towards perfectionism may be more susceptible to developing this fear.

5. Mental health conditions: This fear can be a symptom of other mental health conditions such as panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder or bipolar disorder.

In many cases, a combination of these factors may contribute to the development of a fear of losing control.

The locus of control

The concept of the locus of control is not a cause of how some people have more control in their lives compared to others; it is more of a way of understanding the beliefs about “where control exists” in some people and not in others.

The locus of control is a concept that refers to the degree to which a person believes that they are in control of their own life. People with an internal locus of control tend to believe that they have control over and are responsible for their own fate e.g. “the reason I am successful is because I have worked hard”. However, people with an external locus of control tend to believe that their fate is largely determined by outside forces e.g. “I am successful because I was lucky”.

In relation to the fear of losing control, it is likely that those with a strong internal locus of control are less likely to experience this fear, as they believe that they have more power over their own lives and can do more to influence their outcomes. Those with a high external locus of control are more likely to experience this out-of-control fear, believing that they are helpless to the stronger authority of the outside world.

Another term associated with the locus of control of one’s thoughts and actions is personal agency.

What are the common symptoms?

The symptoms of a fear of losing control, can vary from person to
person, but common symptoms include:

  1. Intense anxiety or panic, especially in situations that are perceived as threatening.
    2. Avoidance behaviours: avoiding situations or activities that you associate with the fear to limit the feelings of panic and anxiety.
    3. Physical symptoms such as rapid heart rate, sweating, shaking, and muscle tension. Periods of insomnia is also common.
    4. Mental symptoms including racing thoughts, confusion, dread, disorientation, and a sense of detachment from reality.
    5. Emotional symptoms of distress such as feelings of shame, embarrassment, anger and hopelessness.

How is a fear of losing control commonly treated?

This fear is commonly treated with a combination of psychotherapy and medication. Some common approaches to treatment include:
1. Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT): This type of therapy helps individuals
recognize and change negative thought patterns and behaviours associated with
their fear.
2. Exposure therapy: This involves gradually exposing individuals to the feared
situation or trigger. It is done in a controlled and safe environment, in order to help reduce anxiety and panic.
3. Medication: Anti-anxiety medications, such as benzodiazepines, and
antidepressant medications, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
(SSRIs), can be prescribed by your doctor to help manage symptoms of anxiety and panic.
4. Relaxation techniques: Practicing relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing techniques, self-hypnosis, mindfulness and progressive muscle relaxation, can help reduce anxiety symptoms and improve emotional regulation.
5. Lifestyle changes: Making lifestyle changes, such as reducing caffeine and
alcohol intake, having regular exercise, and practicing good sleep hygiene can
also help manage symptoms of anxiety and improve overall well-being.
The most effective treatment plan will depend on the individual's specific needs and circumstances, and it's important to work with a mental health professional to develop a plan that is tailored to your needs.

Treating your fear of losing control with hypnotherapy

There are many ways that hypnotherapy can help you to treat your fears and phobias. Hypnotic techniques include using hypnotic suggestions to reduce your anxiety and anticipatory anxiety symptoms, assisting controlled exposure, regression techniques to identify sensitising events and visualisation of your desired outcome.

As mentioned earlier, a fear of losing control is related to your beliefs associated with control and what it means for you to lose control. In the initial stages of the treatment, it is essential to engage in a discussion about your beliefs to individualise your treatment. These strategies are commonly used in cognitive behavioural therapy. The treatment can then help you to confront your losing-control fears that “sit underneath” your treatment goals, enabling you to think and act positively towards them. This can include overcoming a phobia, treating specific issues within your OCD or social anxiety.

Some of the losing-control fear discussion points are listed below:

  • Clarify your domain of fear. The domain of fear is discussed earlier in this article. You will already know the significant areas that your losing-control fear is affecting e.g., if it relates to a loss of control over your body, your emotions (e.g., anger) or your trust in other people’s behaviour. You will also be aware of the sphere of your life that it affects (work, relationships, diet etc.).
  • Discuss whether your losing control fear is a primary issue (from the
    Fear of losing control humiliation
    It can seem like there is no recovery after the losing-control event

    domains listed above) or a secondary issue. Many clients over-focus on the primary issue, as if there is “no life” or recovery after the losing-control event. You can neglect to value the secondary issues that drive you to the primary issue and leave you ruminating over it long after it has Secondary issues can include feeling embarrassed, humiliated, responsible, blame-worthy, guilty, regretful, ashamed, angry etc. Consider anxiety-related overactive bladder syndrome for example. Having an accident may be the primary issue for most people who have the condition. You feel humiliated and believe that you will never recover from this experience. You now double your urinary urge to prevent your primary loss of control but until you validate and confront the beliefs related to your humiliation, it will continue to dominate your fear. Validating the emotion and giving it the attention it deserves will help dissolve your primary issue.

For some clients, these secondary feelings are the primary issue, but you mistake these feelings as the secondary issue. Ignoring these emotions can deepen your fear of losing control, since you get stuck in a situation that is in the middle, rather than at the top of your fear hierarchy. Feeling over-responsible is considered to be a major contributor to a loss-of-control fear.

  • Describe specifically what would happen when you lose control. When closely examined, many clients acknowledge the low probability and irrationality of the fearful “bad event” transpiring. Your description is meta-analysed in the session. This can enable you to acknowledge its improbability and give you the opportunity to rationalise the pathway of losing-control events.
  • Help you appreciate the boundaries of your control. Following a bad experience, it can intensify the belief that you have to try harder to be in control next time. You overthink and over-prepare yourself, trying to control what is realistically outside of your power or ability (rather than what is inside your ability, like mental attitudes). Your perfectionist mind is reluctant “to give up” on the situation and those unspent fearful urges convince you that you can really do the impossible. For example, after a flying trauma, you want to be in control of the flight. You struggle to delegate (or trust) the pilot and think that you can do a better job if you were in charge. Or due to your claustrophobic tendencies, you convince yourself that you can force the plane door open and flee the plane when you are in mid-flight. Maybe in the movies!
  • Establish what you are really trying to perfect in such an over-controlling way. This is another way of approaching your boundaries of control and identify what you fear if the perfect situation was not achieved. Many OCD behaviours are significant here when perfecting the locking-up routine at night to secure the house before going to bed for example. The routine has now become over-ritualised and cumbersome, taking nearly an hour to lock up. Would you feel guilty because you have not done the routine in a set way? Would your anxiety then influence you to stay awake because you struggle to control the uncertainty of another break-in? Would you struggle with the feeling of responsibility if the house was burgled? Are you trying to perfect behaviours or perfect feelings connected to those behaviours?
  • Reconsider the alternative view that “all responses are controlled”. This discussion can help you to challenge the concept of “control” and “being-out-of-control”. From a functional perspective, there is the view that panic attacks for example, are “controlled reactions” to the perception of danger; you are never really “out-of-control”, so this fear does not need to be pursued. Only those people who believe that you can be “out of control” and assign too much significance to the concept of being “out of control” are likely to be affected by this fear in the first place. If you tried to lose control right now, could you make it happen?
  • Examine any safety behaviours connecting to your fear. Safety behaviours are also known as avoidance or coping behaviours. They are used to help you temporarily feel better (your emotional control) when you feel anxious or threatened. You might do something that is unrelated to the threat, but the diversion feels more pleasant than the alternative. If you have an assignment due to be completed but are dwelling in the fear of failure (your loss of control), watching television (your procrastination or safety behaviour) can momentarily distract you from this fear. When the panic of submitting nothing and failing the assignment “screams at you”, you kick into action and start working on the assignment. The delay keeps you anxious through the experience and anxiety is likely to accumulate into the next assignment.
  • Identify your retrospective loss of control. You may have forgotten the previous situation in which you lost or nearly lost control. The trauma of that situation is exaggerating your fear of it surfacing again. What happened in that situation? Did your panic attack convince you that you are going “crazy”, or you’re going to pass out, have a heart attack, stop breathing and suffocate? What did you know about panic attacks when you first had one? What was your belief system before and when you lost control? How did your interpretation of the event reinforce this fear that you could lose control again? When a discussion is unable to recall the event, regression can be used to uncover the experience and the beliefs you held from your past. Further analysis can then be made to reframe the meaning of the event, and its significance to your future fear of it happening again.
  • Reframe your perfectionism. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) strategies integrated with hypnosis can help restructure your perfectionist  perspective in numerous ways. They can include helping you to reassess the “black-and-white-thinking” of your unrealistic standards; examine the perfectionist principles from another broader perspective (what is the worst case situation that can happen?); reconsider your catastrophic thinking of the situation being imperfect; compare your standards to “the bigger picture” (i.e. whether “it really matters” now or 2 years from now or whether the consequences of it not being perfect are survivable); and retrain your ability to compromise or be flexible with your own high standards.
  • Reappraise your unrealistic demand for certainty and fear of the unknown. In a world that is dominated by uncertainty, it’s natural to want to believe that you can cope with the outcomes of future events. Some people constructively prepare towards those outcomes, like when planning a presentation. With confidence, you can moderate your planning as you trust your previous experiences to guide your handling of future public speaking situations. You can then “think on your feet” without needing to be overprepared. You can focus on reasoned probabilities of hope and the potential to learn from those displeasing situations. You keep what you can control within your power. However, those with a fear of losing control are convinced that if the preparation is not perfected, something bad will happen. It is this perfectionist, “must-do” approach to meticulously predict and command the future that maintains your state of worry and hypervigilance. When you can’t control this certainty with perfectionist preparation, you ruminate over it. Those with a fear of public speaking can get stuck in the powerlessness of not being able to control your audience’s responses. Since you demand that certainty, you over-prepare answers to every possible question, then worry about the other questions that you haven’t prepared answers for. Developing a tolerance for uncertainty can help you
    Fear of losing control uncertainty junction
    Tolerating uncertainty can help your fear of losing control

    reduce your fear and promote courage to face the unknown. It can enable you to develop habits to act on the evidence that what you are doing is good enough, rather than using your feeling of disappointment as the outcome. The latter only serves to keep you locked in perfectionism. Developing a tolerance for uncertainty can help you forgive your mistakes and liberate you from the need to be perfect.

Fear of losing control: summary

If you are seeking treatment for a fear of losing control, then these discussion points will help identify your individual definition of fear. It will acknowledge specific or generalised perfectionist traits that are exacerbating your distress. Outside of this losing-control fear, these discussion points can help you identify invaluable secondary issues that are blocking your main treatment goal.

You can access treatment for your losing-control fear in person and remotely by completing the Contact Form. There is more information about hypnotherapy in the hypnosis test.

For more information about treating your fear of losing control, contact Richard J D’Souza Hypnotherapy Cardiff

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Regression Hypnotherapy

Regression Hypnotherapy

Regression Hypnotherapy

Regression hypnotherapy: As with other types of therapy, hypnotherapy can offer a variety of approaches and techniques to treat a client’s presenting condition. Each technique can have an aim and through its application, respective benefits can be observed. Behind the technique is a strategy to create change. Some strategies are brief and focused on treating symptoms, whilst other strategies deal with deeper core issues.

Regression hypnotherapy treatment
Regression hypnotherapy can help you reinterpret memories

When addressing a presenting problem, understanding the theories underpinning a technique can help improve your skills as a hypnotherapist. From a client’s perspective, understanding these techniques can help you appreciate what to expect during your treatment and how you can benefit from the applied techniques.

The application of regression hypnotherapy is often surrounded by misconception and controversy. However, it can be a beneficial technique in therapy when used appropriately to recall and reinterpret your memories. This article will discuss the uses, benefits and limitations of regression hypnotherapy.

Regression hypnotherapy: what you do or don’t do with memories

Our minds have an extraordinary ability to interact with time lines. Within a short conversation with a close friend, you can “time-travel”, recalling the events of last week that brought back events from a few years ago. Before you know it, you are recalling experiences even further back into your childhood. The conversation then takes a sudden change of direction and you jump forward to today and then to anticipate the possibilities of next week and next year.

The benefits of living in the present are advocated by many of the proponents of self help. The practice is encompassed into the many aspects of meditation, mindfulness and self hypnosis. Outside of the practice of these disciplines, your mind is prone to wandering, making associations with events outside of the present.

At times, it can be fulfilling to reminisce and daydream, recalling meaningful pleasant moments from your past, but this ability to recall your past can vary from person to person. Even if you can remember the details of past events, it can be difficult to recall how these events have directly affected you. This is because your mind engages in a constant filtering process, giving attention to some memories more than others. Some painful memories can be filtered out of normal memory, as if to unconsciously forget: a process called repression.

The idea of repression of memories can be attributed to Freud. He theorised that memory repression served as a defence mechanism against traumatic events. These traumatic events are dumped into the mind’s “non-conscious” zone to minimise discomfort experienced at the time of the event. Nonetheless, they can continue to play a significant role in your everyday life, provoking negative symptoms that have no clear origin.

Sometimes the process of dealing with traumatic events is managed at a more conscious and voluntary level. Suppression is the deliberate intention to forget or block painful or traumatic events, even though you are aware of them. Suppression can help store the painful events in the “holding bay” of your mind. You can then return to them again when there’s more time, it’s more appropriate or you have more effective resources to deal with the event in a beneficial or less destructive way. Sometimes the associations of that suppressed event prompt a need to deal with what’s in the mind’s “holding bay” because there’s just too much material accumulating in there. You can no longer avoid it because the contents are spilling over, causing chaos in one or more areas of your life.

Regression hypnotherapy: working on these memories

Your memories and ability to imagine are some of the basic elements of your unique psyche. Some memories and projected imaginings can be negative and distressing, others positive and strengthening, but all of them determine who you are and how you experience the world around you.

When you have been previously betrayed by an intimate person and you develop trust issues or jealousy with someone that you want to get close to, you know that those vulnerable memories are the problem behind the formation of your new relationship. Sometimes you can consciously work on healing those memories yourself. Maybe your new partner is able to help you rebuild trust.

Bad memories affect your daily life
Past traumas can affect your day-to-day life

There are times, however, when some memories are not open to your consciousness. Maybe they have been simply filtered out or knowing the source of your trauma, they continue to have an overwhelming effect on you. Living “within” the traumas, you can struggle to understand how they affect you or how to objectively find a way through to resolve them. Healing those bad memories or traumas with a therapist can help you overcome that feeling of being stuck and overwhelmed by your past. By releasing the emotion of your past traumas, it can enable you to move forward. Regression hypnotherapy is an excellent way to reappraise the meaning of past events.

What is regression hypnotherapy?

In general terms, regression therapy is a type of therapy that explores past events with the belief that they continue to influence your thinking, beliefs, emotions and behaviour. You may enter the therapy very aware of past events that you want to re-analyse, knowing how they are causing your symptoms. Or you can be aware of presenting symptoms that you want to treat in a regressive style to understand why you have these symptoms, establish their “cause” or explore if you have “buried” memories of events that you want to uncover. In this context, the treatment is still solution-focused because it is acknowledging that you have a goal that you want treated in a certain way, but it aims to approach the problem from a past perspective. Having worked through those memories, you can feel more at peace with your past and liberated from your current symptoms.

Hypnosis is commonly used with regression therapy. Hypnosis can be an extremely powerful tool to regress your mind and access the most subtle details of events that have been mishandled, overlooked or buried in the deeper part of your imagination.

Hypnosis is a state of heightened suggestibility that encourages hyper-focused attention and concentration into what you imagine. A hypnotic induction is typically used to create this focused state. Suggestions are then employed to facilitate an imagined “time travelling”, going back in time to recall specific memories. You may travel back to events from a few weeks ago or any significant event further back in your lifetime.

Depending on the therapeutic context of your goal, different techniques can be used to access the memory, then observe and reframe the meaning or significance of the memory. You may want to reframe events that left you with pain or feelings of embarrassment, guilt, shame, distrust, worthlessness and fear. At that time, you may have been surrounded or compromised by conflicts, limited resources, biased values and other stresses. These blocks self-sabotaged your secure and confident handling of the past event.

Regression hypnotherapy applied by a skilled hypnotherapist can transform and reframe the meaning of the event. When applied carefully, it can add new understanding and insight into the beliefs that shaped your perceptions and your reactions to the event. The process can transform, heal and resolve the memory “wounds” without “planting” false memories or accusations of wrong-doing. In the session, counselling often follows the hypnosis to help evaluate the development of these insights and new states of awareness. They can be further embraced with hypnotic progression to apply the new learning into associated goals.

Is regression hypnotherapy the same as past life regression?

Regression hypnotherapy aims to explore past events from your “current” life experiences. The general form aims to access and observe memories within your “subconscious” mind.

Age regression is another type of hypnotherapy that explores past events from your “current life”. It aims to regress you back to a specific age and relive the state of mind from that age. Some clients may think, speak and act in ways appropriate to that age. The client can then reinterpret their present life with new insights. Clients who are highly suggestible and imaginative may respond favourably to “age-related” suggestions. Some people consider this type of regression controversial.

Past Life Regression is based on the (spiritual) belief and existence of past lives - long before your current life. Some hypnotherapists may believe in past lives and are prepared to treat you within your religious beliefs. Others do not share the same spiritual beliefs or recognise it as a valid therapeutic treatment. Instead, they view it as controversial or an indulgent imaginative experience.

As the client, you may already believe in past lives and want to access and benefit from past life regression therapy. Or maybe you are just curious about which “past lives” will come to the surface in a treatment session.

Some people want to access past life regression treatment because you cannot identify any valid reason for your current negative symptoms. This does not mean that there aren’t any valid reasons – you may not have engaged in an objective therapeutic process to establish any validity.

Different techniques are used in the treatment process for all of the above types of regression hypnotherapy, depending on the approach of the hypnotherapist. Some hypnotherapists are more client-centred and others therapist-led in their style.

Regression hypnotherapy reflect on past
Various techniques can be used to heal your past

The techniques used may also depend on the client and the presenting condition. For example, inner child therapy encompasses many of the general techniques used to re-evaluate the meaning of past events and address unmet childhood needs. Gestalt therapy can be integrated into regression by taking the adult empathic mind back to the childhood mind. The two perspectives can communicate in a “here and now” interaction to encourage understanding, healing and compassion. “Sensation” therapy focuses into the bodily sensation as the cue to connect you with the past event that is causing your current symptoms. This cue-accessing technique can be used with other cues e.g. an emotion or other sensory experiences.

What happens in a typical treatment session?

Hypnotherapy treatment sessions will follow a typical hypnotherapy practice session. The preparation stage can include a discussion of your goals, presenting symptoms and background. The right questions analysis and responses given by the hypnotherapist will draw your attention into the pathway of relevance, build rapport and expectation. In a client-centred approach, the hypnotherapist will be using many of your reactions and dialogue patterns to build relevant suggestions. In a therapist-led approach, the hypnotherapist will have a more authoritative style and use fewer questioning techniques.

A discussion of hypnosis will precede the hypnotic induction stage in which suggestions are used to focus your attention and imagination to the regressive process. It may use breathing techniques or other suggestions of relaxation. In the regression stage, the hypnotherapist will take your imagination back to a past event to analyse the details. A client-centred hypnotherapist will use open-ended questions to guide your recall and will be careful about leading your mind and “planting” memories.  You may (or may not) interact with the hypnotherapist verbally or by using ideo-motor responses (or you may just discuss the regressive experience after the hypnosis is complete).

The emotional expression stage enables the repressed (or suppressed) emotions to emerge and be identified. Depending on the past event and the techniques used, it may be re-experienced in a complete or detached way. In the relearning stage, the past event is re-interpreted and connecting negative emotions released. New positive emotions are identified and reintegrated into the past event. The conclusion stage may involve discussion and counselling to evaluate the process alongside the treatment goals or presenting condition.

The process may be complete or be just one stage in the treatment plan. With regression hypnotherapy, it isn’t necessary to painstakingly regress you back through every event in your life as is often criticised by advocators of solution-focused hypnotherapy. Often, the initial “causal” event, the most emotional event and the most recent event may be sufficient to influence therapeutic change.

What conditions can regression hypnotherapy treat?

The aim of regression hypnotherapy is to identify and treat how past events affect your day-to-day life. For some people, establishing a past cause, where the behaviour comes from or the reason “why” you have your current symptoms can release internal conflicts about your history. When you know why, you can feel more at peace with your underlying motives for current feelings and actions. In your treatment, you can then establish a more coherent way forward.

Numerous benefits have been cited including removal or improvements in symptoms, reductions in fear, increased purpose and ability to cope with life, etc.

Regression hypnotherapy can be used to treat many conditions including:

Concerns and limitations of regression hypnotherapy

Regression hypnotherapy is surrounded in controversy for various reasons, over and above what can come from general misconceptions of hypnotherapy from the media and films with similar titles (e.g. Regression, 2015):

The risk of creating false memories: Memories are malleable and are prone to suggestion, especially when the treatment is therapist-led. Not all claims of sexual abuse are false, but jumping to conclusions on the basis of a hypnotherapy regression treatment can harm relationships, lead to damaging legal action and cause distress for all people concerned. A client-centred hypnotherapist is more likely to ask open-styled questions without contaminating the client’s memory.

A therapist may have preconceived notions about a client’s past:  Therapist bias can enter the therapy room from generalisations made from past treatments. Whilst therapists continuously work on their “blind spots”, it can be a reason for leading a client into creating memories that aren’t real and wrongly diagnosing a client’s cause of symptoms.

Not all “hypnotists” are trained hypnotherapists: Untrained and novice therapists may use scripted approaches and are unable to treat emotional reactions to a client’s past traumas.

Regression hypnotherapy daydream
Healing can take place within your beliefs

There’s limited scientific research: There’s limited research in the efficiency of regression as a treatment approach and some people question the need to “dig up the past” when there are other treatment approaches are available. There is also limited evidence in the existence of past lives and it is considered controversial to force these religious (or any other) beliefs onto a client who is not seeking this type of therapy. However, treating a client who does believe in past lives with past life regression is more likely to create a favourable outcome for the client. Past life regression therapists argue that past life stories don’t have to be factual as healing takes place within the metaphor of the past life story.

Some clients may not benefit from regression treatment: Treatment obstacles can include a client's receptiveness to hypnosis, those who struggle to visualise or who may fear being regressed to a major trauma, especially those with serious mental health problems. Furthermore, a client having secondary gains can be a reason to maintain their negative symptoms and resist the emotional relearning from the regression treatment process. A skilled hypnotherapist will adapt their approach to the client’s needs and will use regression selectively.

Despite concerns about regression, many people say that they benefit from this type of treatment. However, its effectiveness is very much in the eye of the beholder and some may consider regression to be a “helpful” placebo. Trying to prove whether something did or did not happen can be a pointless exercise without evidence. However, when a client “thinks” that something has happened in their past before hypnotherapy treatment has begun or when a past event is uncovered during the hypnotherapy treatment, it’s more beneficial to establish how to deal with this memory and its connected emotions when going forwards.

Regression hypnotherapy: a client-centred approach

Some people question the need to “go back to the past when it is already over”. Dwelling on the past and rereading the same chapter in your life can seem like you are reopening wounds and encouraging self sabotage. It can be argued that technically, you don’t go anywhere. You are always in the present, only going back to the preserved past that your carry now. You recollect the events from your past that continue to impact on your emotions, behaviour and formation of new beliefs.

Regression hypnotherapy turn back clock
Liberating your past traumas can help you move forward

Undoubtedly, going back to the past with a fixed mind-state would keep you stuck in a loop of regret, anger, guilt and shame. Regression hypnotherapy can help remind you that you are the author of your past. You can rewrite the meaning of that past chapter or continue the book of your life with new chapters that demonstrate your growing acceptance, trust, gratitude, forgiveness and self appreciation. Regression hypnotherapy can be enlighten and liberate you from your past and open the way forward into your future.

If you have exhausted all of your conscious efforts to resolve your psychological problems and are prepared to dig deeper into resolving your condition, regression hypnotherapy can offer you a potential solution. Regression hypnotherapy is just one tool in a hypnotherapist’s toolbox to influence therapeutic change. For an experienced and skilled hypnotherapist who uses a client-centred approach, it can be combined with other methods to form an individualised and beneficial approach to your condition.

For more information on regression hypnotherapy, contact Richard J D’Souza Hypnotherapy Cardiff

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Revenge Bedtime Procrastination

Revenge Bedtime Procrastination

Revenge bedtime procrastination: Does this sound familiar to you? You’ve just finished your day’s work, whether it’s a homework assignment, a work-related project, parental responsibilities or a combination of all. It’s time to go to bed and go to sleep. When you check the clock you know that it’s late and your much-needed sleep quota will suffer if you delay. But instead of calling it a night, you decide to open your laptop, browse through social media, watch another episode of your favourite show or play a few games on your phone. Before you know it, you’re into the early hours of the morning.

Revenge bedtime procrastination tiredness
Is it time to go to sleep? Just one more episode...

This might start as a harmless habit, but it can soon become a destructive cycle that can affect your mental and physical health. It can be frustrating enough battling with sleep problems when you’re suffering with anxiety you try, “you just can’t sleep”.

When you are actively postponing settling down to sleep, some might consider the delay more akin to a stubborn “you just won’t sleep”. But maybe there’s a much deeper issue behind this delay. Is it such a conscious act of delaying bedtime? It can be agreed that in both situations, you end up with insufficient sleep that ruins your day ahead. The “can’t sleeper” deserves empathy but maybe the “won’t sleeper” is struggling with their emotions too?

A psychological phenomenon called revenge bedtime procrastination has been used to describe this failure to go to bed at the intended time. So what causes this postponement and what is it a revenge on?

 

What is revenge bedtime procrastination?

In its basic form, revenge bedtime procrastination is the habit of delaying going to bed (and going to sleep) for no apparent reason even though you are aware it will have negative consequences on your day ahead.

Distinctions can be made about bedtime procrastination (delaying getting into bed) and whilst in-bed procrastination (delaying going to sleep), but both ultimately result in the deprivation of your sleep.

Bedtime procrastination is considered a form of revenge on your sleeping hours due to not having had enough pleasure, fun time or “me” time (in whatever form that might take) in your daylight hours. The perceived control that you lose from one or several areas in your life (e.g. the day’s working obligations) is balanced by removing it from (or in this case inflicting harm on) another area of your life (your sleep).

Although procrastination is not a new concept, with the rise in electronic gadgets and social media, they have become one of the most common modern methods of procrastination including activities such as binge-watching your favourite series, playing games, online shopping and keeping up with your peer group on social media apps. These electronic-based activities (also known as cyber leisure) can be enjoyed during your free time. It’s when they replace time doing something more important like sleeping that it becomes a destructive activity.

Is it necessarily an online problem? Not always. Some people find an escape in reading fiction until early morning, whilst others take up their creative knitting hobby or watch TV for endless hours.

The term bedtime procrastination was proposed by Dr. Floor Kroese et al. They investigated how procrastination can transfer into other important life domains such as health behaviours (e.g. sleeping, healthy eating, exercise, relaxation time, etc.) and consequently damage your well-being.

Whilst other studies gave emphasis to sleep deprivation being connected to sleep disorders, the psychological phenomenon of bedtime procrastination aimed to highlight that sleep deprivation could “simply” be caused by the act of going to be late. The study reinforced that bedtime procrastination is a problem of emotional self-control (or self-regulation) in common with the general form of procrastination.

By 2020, the term developed the additional revenge theme in East Asia by Daphne K Lee. Revenge bedtime procrastination was given prominence possibly due to the harsh “996 working routine” in China, in which some organisations enforce a 72 hour working week, consisting of 12 hour days (from 9 am to 9 pm), 6 days a week. By vengefully suffering through the night, employees were refusing to sleep early to recover a sense of freedom during their late night hours.

Revenge bedtime procrastination tiredness
Sleeping can seem like wasting time when there’s work to do

Without having “control” of the working day and recreational time in the evening, going to sleep can seem like “wasting” time. Of course, the act of delaying bedtime offers no obvious long terms benefits to one’s health. If anything, it deepens the feelings of powerlessness and disappointment of one’s lifestyle. Some may see it as a type of compensation, a defence mechanism or an act of resistance to redirect one’s frustrations, inadequacies and possible loneliness from one area of your life into another.

Another feature of revenge bedtime procrastination can be connected to an increasing cultural emphasis on “active leisure”. For those who want to impress others that “life is interesting” and having something to talk about in work the day after, working and sleeping with nothing in-between may be viewed by others as dull and likely to disappoint them.

With little time to engage in something “active” late in the evening, filling it with what’s easily available like online activity may be the only way to impress others and talk about what’s vogue. Sleep can seem like an inconvenience to what’s “hot” or yet another obligation to fulfil on your priority schedule.

 

The Signs of Revenge Bedtime Procrastination

Bedtime procrastination is a common feature of modern living. In the study by Floor Kroese et al, 74% of those surveyed indicated that they delayed going to bed later than they planned at least one or more days per week without having a good reason.

Just because you are staying up late to complete a work deadline or taking care of your child, does it mean that you are participating in the phenomenon of revenge bedtime procrastination? No, this concept should not be confused with sleeping late when you have good reasons to do so, but the psychology behind it can be subtle.

Revenge bedtime procrastination has distinct behaviours. They include:

You delay – Bedtime procrastinators consistently go to bed later than originally intended. Non-bedtime procrastinators have the intention to delay bedtime to catch up with some work, are planning to sleep in the day after or by chronotype are typical “night owls”.

You lack valid motives – Bedtime procrastinators don’t have a credible reason for staying up late. You find something “trivial” to do that could easily have been done at an earlier time. Non-bedtime procrastinators stay up late for important reasons like caring for someone who is ill or waiting for an urgent call from a family member who has forgotten their front door key.

Is there a difference between a valid reason and an excuse? Yes, the bedtime procrastinator will kid themselves that staying up late was justified to watch the important “hot” series that everyone is talking about or to shop for that urgent sale item.

Awareness - Bedtime procrastinators recognise that actions will have negative consequences in the morning accompanied by feelings of guilt, but yield to the delay nevertheless. Non-bedtime procrastinators are aware of the need to sleep and will be confident of the decision the following morning.

Although a lack of self control is common with general procrastination, there are other notable features of bedtime procrastination that could make it distinct from general procrastination e.g. perfectionism, fear of judgement and task aversion. Some might argue that the issue of perfectionism (common with the general form) doesn’t apply at bedtime. However, the bedtime procrastinator could be trying to perfect the mood of “readiness” to then surrender the control of the delay. Similarly, fear of negative feedback may not apply to the bedtime procrastinator. But the bedtime procrastinator may keep the delay a secret due to the embarrassment of what seems a simple solution and judgement to just “just go to bed earlier!” Furthermore, task aversion (common with the general form) may not apply to the bedtime procrastinator. However, anticipating that you will struggle to have self control and discipline to switch off in the night ahead can convert the night time routine into a dreaded “task” that you “hate” doing.

 

What causes revenge bedtime procrastination?

People engage in this psychological phenomenon for a variety of pressing causes rather than for radical vice. The primary cause of general procrastination is a lack of self-regulation or self-control.

procrastinating bedtime using phone
Procrastination is caused by a lack of self-regulation

What makes revenge bedtime procrastination prevalent is the lack of self regulation in your daily routine. The daily actions and activities that you undertake can generate long-term or short-term benefits to your well-being. But, if you lack self-regulation, your intentions and plans won’t match what you end up doing throughout your day.

Instead, you succumb to pleasures, forget or displace your tasks, or delay the important things for later. This results in a disorganised routine and accommodates your pleasures after midnight as a reward. Furthermore, these pleasures may seem even more exciting and rebellious in the moment because you are “stealing” or reclaiming time back from what has been “taken away from you” in another area in your life.

There is some evidence that the self-control mechanisms that procrastinators struggle with are exacerbated at a time when you lack the mental energy to apply the willpower needed to switch off electronic devices. Additionally, whilst tiredness or exhaustion in the evening is a common motivator to go to bed, bedtime procrastinators who are sat in the living room watching TV might be too tired and apathetic to overcome the inertia to leave the sofa and prepare to go to bed.

An alternative view to the lack of self-control explanation of revenge bedtime procrastination is one related to inter-individual difference in biology. One study emphasises that bedtime procrastination can be attributed to those who have the evening “night owl” chronotype as opposed to the early bird or “lark” chronotype.

“Night owls” are forced to accommodate lifestyles or biological clocks that suit “larks”. This creates circadian misalignment stress for the “night owl” who will then attempt to recover time by delaying bedtime to balance this stress. This process can become habit-forming.

Lastly, with revenge being a cultural buzzword for defence strategies, can anxiety also be a cause of bedtime procrastination and a reason for which you also seek self-revenge?

Revenge bedtime procrastination anxiety
Are you taking revenge on anxiety when you can’t sleep?

Anxiety and the potential to ruminate on your problems is often worse at night when you are trying to settle down to sleep. Unless you are exhausted, many people find this night time phase typifies when those anxieties demand attention. This ultimately contributes to sleep problems and insomnia. When you “can’t sleep”, it’s easy to lie there mulling over your worries. It can be frustrating and wasteful of those precious hours.

When you form these insomnia habits, you begin to anticipate an anxious night ahead and rather than waste time being anxious, it can seem more fruitful to be doing something rather than nothing. Cyber leisure can be the momentary “distracted” alternative to laying there worrying. So instead, you fill the “anxiety window” with activity until over-tiredness and sleep eventually replaces the ability to focus on the next cyber task.

Is this revenge? When you “can’t sleep”, it may not start with the intention to delay bedtime, but it soon develops as a coping strategy to take revenge on anxiety when you persistently struggle to sleep.

Why it develops can be related to “distraction” strategies being the (very limited) solution to anxiety. During the day, you are habitually task-focused. This can serve as a distraction from your anxiety and the belief that you are managing your anxiety effectively. But this “distraction” solution is temporary. When you are doing routine activities or have nothing but your mind to work with at night, anxiety can win and disrupt your sleep.

 

Who is most affected by this psychological phenomenon?

Anyone can experience revenge bedtime procrastination. The more you dislike the activities in your daytime, the more likely you will struggle to detach from work and attempt to attempt to reclaim the night time with pleasurable activities. Your negative daytime activities can include the type of work that you do, the control you have over that work, the number of hours you work, the additional obligations that you have in your free time etc.

These factors contribute to or take away from the balance of (perceived) “me” time. For example, working in a caring role can be a passionate vocation for some and would lower your need for revenge in the night because you go home feeling fulfilled. For others, it’s a vocational “trap” and increases the need for revenge.

Stress can also create intermittent periods when you seek revenge. Being a student, having a high-pressure job and working shifts can have revengeful periods when demands are high. One study suggests that woman and students are particularly prone to bedtime revenge when under stress.

As previously mentioned, general procrastinators and “night owls” can be prone to this phenomenon. Additionally, those with sleep disorders and generalised anxiety can also divert the frustration of not sleeping into cyber leisure.

Use of blue light emitted from electronic devices when you have not been able to access natural daylight in your day may add an additional factor into sleep deprivation. According to this study, “blue light” activities can further disturb the quality of asleep rather than help it. So even though you believe you are achieving your delay strategy, it is having a deeper negative effect on the quality of your sleep (when are able to fall asleep).

More recently the effect of the Covid global pandemic has further blurred the work-home life distinction and increased revenge bedtime procrastination. It has had a notable effect of reducing women’s leisure time hours and the ability to balance “me” time. It has been noted in another study that nearly 40% of the research sample had sleep problems during the Covid work-from-home mandate increasing the prevalence of this psychological phenomenon.

This suggests that those affected by revenge bedtime procrastination cannot be explained by one factor alone. Who is affected by this psychological phenomenon involves a number of interlinking factors.

 

How revenge can revenge bedtime procrastination affect your health?

Staying up late once in a while may not have drastic consequences to your health but it can be problematic in the long term. Regardless of your method of distraction (i.e. cyber or non-cyber activities), sleep deprivation will lead to fatigue. It can then affect your work concentration and your work performance in your day ahead. In the long term, sleep deprivation can also cause an increase in stress responsivity, mood disorders and memory loss.

Revenge bedtime procrastination couple on phones
These late-night acts of indulgence can seem like normal behaviour, even for couples

With continuity, these late-night acts of deserved indulgence can seem like normal behaviour in which you lose the motivation for maintaining a sleep pattern. People want to believe that they can cope with minimal sleep, but it inevitably impacts on your irritability, decision-making ability and physical health. Taken to the extreme, the compensation to delay bedtime can become an overcompensation in which you enter a deeper cycle of self hatred.

 

How can you prevent revenge bedtime procrastination?

If revenge bedtime procrastination has become a bad habit that is affecting you your day-to-day life both mentally and physically, the following tips can help you reconnect with good sleeping habits.

Reappraise how you spend your daytime obligations – How much control do you have over your working life? Are you in the right career? Changing your work situation won’t happen overnight, but finding your passionate vocation in the long term can balance the scales of leading a satisfactory life on one side of the equation and the need to compensate it on the other side when going to bed. Practising gratitude can shift some of the emotional negativity in your work.

Identify some new relaxing activities - If you cannot control your hours of work, review how you spend your leisure time. Do you feel like you have achieved anything when you have spent a few hours on social media? Does reading a good book or having a brisk walk offer a better solution to social media? Schedule some down-time associated with something that you do each evening to anchor the habit and help to separate your work and sleep boundaries. Even better, learn breathing techniques with affirmations or other mindfulness activities to guide or direct your mind into relaxation.

Re-evaluate how you perceive sleep – When an activity has become something to avert, rehearsing a positive meaning can change the experience. Learn self hypnosis to validate sleep as a healthy and beneficial part of your life rather than a chore.

Rehearse a new bedtime routine – Waiting until the moment to change the routine can be too late to be effective as you are swayed by the expectations of habit i.e. repeating what you did last night. Visualising your sleep routine can help you plan your new sleep hygiene rituals. A wind-down routine helps you to trigger your natural sleep cues. Practising breathing techniques can help you to relax in bed.

Give electronic devices their bedtime too – Powering down your devices and turning off auto-play at least half an hour before going to bed will initially feel discomforting. Persist with your new habits and it will empower you to open your mind-space to the new sleep rituals that will revitalise you.

 

 

How can hypnotherapy help your revenge bedtime procrastination?

Some ingrained night time habits can be challenging to change when you are dominated by your internal beliefs to fulfil these rituals. When your health is suffering professional help can assist your changes.

Hypnotherapy to break bad habits can help explore and treat your underlying motives, goal-formation strategies, background causes, stress triggers etc. It can help you develop self hypnosis (https://www.clinicalhypnotherapy-cardiff.co.uk/practise-self-hypnosis/) to disconnect your bedtime procrastination and your revenge strategies.

 

For more information treating revenge bedtime procrastination contact Richard J D’Souza Hypnotherapy Cardiff

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Social Anxiety Treatment

Social Anxiety Treatment

Social anxiety treatment: Social anxiety is an anxiety disorder characterised by an intense and persistent fear of one or more social situations. Also known as social phobia, social anxiety disorder and a fear of embarrassment, it is one of the most common phobias in UK, affecting about 10% of the adult population. Social anxiety usually starts in childhood and adolescence, with the majority developing the condition by the time you reach your twenties. Very few people develop the condition later in adulthood.

Social anxiety treatment phobia word cloud
Social anxiety is one of most common phobias in UK

Most people can recall a social anxiety triggering event or situation e.g. when being taunted at school or changing schools. Others believe that it has always been there, varying in intensity or gradually increasing depending on your level of social interaction and social anxiety.

As you reach your adulthood, you can outgrow your social anxiety, but the severity of social anxiety rarely eases without social anxiety treatment. The majority of those suffering with social anxiety will have other associated mental health disorders (co-morbidity)  like panic disorder, low self esteem, generalised anxiety, depression, PTSD, OCD, health anxiety and a level of substance dependency e.g. drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, using recreational drugs. By the time that someone seeks social anxiety treatment, many of these associated conditions will be salient.

Social anxiety treatment: Social anxiety as a phobia and a disorder

Simple phobias tend to affect how you respond to particular objects or situations e.g. fear of spiders or dentists. Social anxiety can be specific too, impacting on how you deal with one situation e.g. when you have a fear of public speaking yet have an enjoyable and active social life.

As a generalised condition, social anxiety more commonly disrupts several situations or triggers that can be classified into:

  • Interaction: such as starting spontaneous conversations, speaking with strangers, making eye contact, dating, speaking (in class, meetings or in groups), talking with (aggressive) authority figures or extroverts, socialising in large social gatherings e.g. parties, attending concerts, sports events, night clubs, bars, etc., coping with being teased, being assertive, returning items to a shop, etc.
  • Observation: being in view of others when performing new or unfamiliar everyday tasks, such as when working, eating and drinking in public, attending school, walking in public, shopping, exercising in gyms, physical examinations, security checks, entering a room in which other people are already seated, entering a bar/restaurant by yourself, etc.
  • Performance: such as using public toilets, public speaking, speaking on the phone or by video call, giving an artistic performance, being interviewed, introducing yourself and speaking in class and meetings, completing practical tests or exams, etc. Many of these situations can be considered as a category of performance anxiety.

Further categories of specific and general social anxiety distinguish between those who fear social situations (e.g. public speaking, dating, exams, parties, etc.) and those who fear their anxious outcomes (e.g. fear of blushing, fear of sweating, fear of stammering, fear of saying something foolish, fear of doing something that will be criticised, etc.).

More significance can be given to the following criteria in these subtypes that distinguish social anxiety from social anxiety disorder. It includes the:

  • Severity and persistence of your symptoms.
  • The degree of anticipation and avoidance.
  • How much that you rely on safety behaviour to alleviate your anxiety (e.g. smoking, drinking, comfort eating, etc.)
  • The dysfunctional ability to think and communicate in the social situation.
  • An overly critical self evaluation of your coping that can integrate low self esteem and low self confidence.

On the whole, generalised social anxiety intensely interferes with how you lead your life. On this basis, social anxiety is classified as a complex phobia, upsetting many formal and informal situations.

You can be affected by both a simple phobia and social phobia e.g. when you feel embarrassed about showing your arachnophobic panic attack to your peer group.

You can expect a social anxiety treatment programme for a specific issue to be more concise than for the generalised condition.

Social anxiety treatment: what causes social anxiety?

There are many underlying causes of social anxiety. It is best understood as an interaction between bio-psychosocial factors. They include:

Genetic factors – You can have specific genes that predispose you to suffer with social anxiety due to a defect in serotonin processing.

Environmental factors – You can “learn” to be socially anxious from authority figures (which may also infer a combined genetic link). A parent who is socially anxious is likely to condition you to perceive embarrassment as a source of danger and condition your beliefs and worries accordingly. They will protect you from social experiences rather than helping your confidence in those social situations. In some countries, cultural values may also play a role developing socially anxious fears.

Social anxiety treatment bullying
Bullying is considered a major cause of social anxiety

Direct learning of traumas (e.g. when being teased or bullied) is likely to play a major role in acquiring a fear of embarrassment. However, you can also observe others suffering embarrassment and project these reactions onto yourself (indirect learning).

A social phobia trait called behavioural inhibition in which toddlers become severely upset when placed in new situations of unfamiliar people may also be an environmental and/or biological factor in the development of social phobia later in life.

Biology – Brain structure and the imbalance of neurotransmitters in the regions of the brain associated with fear are factors that can cause social anxiety. A research study involving PET scans of those with social phobia highlighted how these areas of the brain are affected when public speaking.

Other risk factors can include having other mental health disorders, a lifestyle change involving new or excessive social demands e.g. when moving to a new school or new job with obligations to speak in public. Additionally, having physical or medical conditions that increase feelings of self consciousness and can draw attention from others e.g. a disfigurement, stammer or tremors caused by Parkinson’s disease can increase your risk of developing a social phobia.

Social anxiety treatment involving therapy is more likely to help you address the environmental factors that have caused or reinforced your fear of embarrassment.

Living with social anxiety

Often dismissed as shyness, social anxiety is a more severe condition. In common with all phobias, you can experience high anxiety and panic attacks during the social situation that you fear. Your panic reaction may be disproportionate to the actual danger that confronts you, but knowing this information rarely offers any consolation to the way that you cope.

Your fear of embarrassment can associate with many other personality traits including introversion, insecurity, conflict handling, self criticism, assertiveness, low self esteem and low self confidence. You may also fear upsetting other people and ruminate on feelings of guilt, shame, self blame, over-responsibility, regret, etc.

Sometimes termed as emotional and behavioural symptoms, living with a fear of embarrassment can include:

You live in fear

  • You fear situations in which you may feel embarrassed, judged, criticised, humiliated, rejected, intimidated or given excessive attention (usually negative attention is most embarrassing, but positive attention can also trigger embarrassment too).
  • You fear that you will do or say something foolish to embarrass or humiliate yourself. This can include not knowing what to say to people.
  • You have a fear of communicating with people who you’ve never met before (strangers).
  • Desperate to hide your anxiety symptoms e.g. blushing, shaking, distorted voice, sweating, etc., you fear that others will notice them and judge you as weak or incapable.
  • You fear offending others, troubling them with your problems or upsetting people, so you rarely talk about other people’s behaviour and how their behaviour affects your feelings.
  • When meeting people for the first time, you fear that others will judge how you present yourself. You spend too much attention on your appearance, clothes, make-up, hair, etc.
  • Despite social anxiety being a common condition, you are convinced that you are the only one who suffers with it.

Your behaviour is dominated by avoidance

  • You avoid social situations, speaking to people or doing activities in which you might draw attention due to yourself.
  • You avoid situations in which you might be (or be perceived as being) in the centre of attention. This can include being seated in discrete locations out of people’s view.
  • Even though you enjoy being with people that you trust, you may avoid a larger gatherings, preferring to self isolate.
  • You may lie about your avoidance behaviour to preserve your self-image rather than admit that you suffer with social anxiety.
  • In conversation, you avoid eye contact to reduce feelings of embarrassment. Where you stare instead can be another source of embarrassment.
  • Your social anxiety may combine with your introversion, intensifying your avoidance of larger group gatherings.
  • Whilst avoiding social situations, you may also experience feelings of loneliness when you are unable to communicate with people who understand you.
  • In order to manage your social phobia, you may avoid specific social situations that associate with another phobia e.g. when you also have a fear of flying, fear of confined spaces, fear of open spaces, fear of heights, etc.
  • You may limit your career choices and promotional prospects by avoiding jobs that involve a high degree of social observation, interaction and performance.
  • You may have higher levels of absence in social situations that you feel obligated to attend e.g. school, college, work, work meetings, work socials, etc.

You conform to other people’s expectations and behaviour

  • To avoid standing out from your peer group, you may imitate the majority’s codes of behaviour e.g. wear similar styled or branded clothing, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol etc.
  • Convinced that you are being scrutinised by your audience, you may change your everyday functions to fit the group’s expectations e.g. walking, eating, speaking, etc. as others in the group would do.
  • You believe that conformity will prevent you from being ejected from the social group.

You suffer with anticipatory anxiety

  • You worry for days or weeks prior to a social event, affecting your how you lead your lifestyle e.g. comfort eating, smoking, drinking alcohol, losing sleep etc.
  • Your anticipation keeps you locked in procrastination, inhibiting you from developing skills or rationally dealing with social situations e.g. proactively developing your presentation that would relieve some of your anxiety.

You suffer with anxiety and panic attacks in social situations

Social anxiety treatment panic attacks
With social anxiety, a panic attack is a common physical symptom

 

  • Various physical symptoms can include erratic breathing, fast heart rate, blushing, sweating, trembling, frequent urination, upset stomach, loss of concentration, memory loss, muscle tension, vertigo, etc.
  • Your social anxiety may also affect your ability to speak, being closely related to selective mutism.

You struggle to deal with authority and over-confidence

  • Following bullying and/or abuse, you feel nervous when in the presence of authority, aggression, and over-confidence.
  • To prevent feelings of intimidation, you avoid conflict by being unassertive.
  • You struggle to accept criticism (and praise) from authority figures.

You ruminate over your fears

  • You dwell on what you did and didn’t say or do after the social event, often reinforcing your fears that you have offended someone or said something embarrassing.
  • You can dwell on embarrassment from your past for years after the event.
  • You are convinced that your imperfect performance, traits or abilities will lead to your rejection from a relationship, the social group or organisation.
  • You imagine the worst possible consequences from a negative social experience (catastrophic thinking), despite praise from your peers or audience.
  • You are convinced that your anxiety is a sign of weakness.
  • You are very sensitive to embarrassment and can experience it vicariouslye. when others suffer embarrassment you feel it too.

You use safety behaviours to alleviate your social anxiety

You lack assertiveness

  • You struggle to communicate the value of your needs. This may also be related to your low self esteem and low self confidence
  • Already critical of your own abilities, you take other’s criticism as facts rather than as their opinions.
  • Instead of viewing rejection as a momentary lapse in your abilities, you take rejection shamefully.
  • Whilst you prefer praise to criticism, being praised can draw attention from others, triggering feelings of embarrassment.
  • You have a high level of self criticism and can be distrustful of other’s praise.
  • You may fear commitment since you will struggle to communicate your future need to leave and would then feel guilty that you have upset them.
  • You fear commitment since a future rejection would confirm fears that you are not good enough.

As indicated above, living with social anxiety can affect your life in many ways. In reference to others it can alter how you perceive yourself, creating negative self-labels and self-doubts on your ability to make social choices.

It can also alter how you view others. As a projection of your fears, you believe that strangers are a danger to your well-being, and you may generally view people as distrustful and judgemental. This is likely to create a self fulfilling prophecy as others are likely to read your behaviour as being aloof and antagonistic.

In addition to this, convinced by your own beliefs, social anxiety can affect how you view the world, responding by wanting to feel safer from your perceived (social) threats. It’s common to be more house-bound (agoraphobic), limit your social network, and avoid careers that involve high sociability and social performance situations.

Fear of embarrassment hiding from others
With social anxiety you can dwell on the embarrassment of your past

Connected to your socially anxious belief system, is how you imagine and reflect on your time-line of experience. You dwell on your past as definitions or convincers of your social anxiety. These emotionally-charged embarrassing experiences continue to haunt you as (depressive) fixed judgements that you can’t change.

How you relate to your past can affect how you similarly view your future. With social anxiety, you believe that your future will be determined by how you perceived your past. In other words, you are stuck with social anxiety forever and there’s nothing that you can do about it.

These thinking patterns are likely to create your physical symptoms of anxiety in the moment. When you are experiencing anxiety symptoms, it will overwhelm how you cope with the present. It can be ambitious to attempt a presentation whilst experiencing high anxiety. It usually overwhelms your ability to focus purely and clearly on your presentation content.

When you bring social anxiety into how you cope with what’s happening in the social world around you and within you, you will consider social confidence developmental opportunities as potential catastrophes to deepen your social anxiety. Opportunities will be defined as threats and when you don’t participate in a social event you will reinforce (without evidence to the contrary) that people are talking about you and judging you.

Common social anxiety treatments

The main options for social anxiety treatment include:

Cognitive behavioural therapy – A therapist will use CBT, a type of psychotherapy to help you to challenge negative thought patterns and behaviours related to your social anxiety. This is sometimes completed in a group and with your family.

Medication – Antidepressant medication (SSRI’s) are commonly prescribed by your doctor to treat the persistent symptoms of anxiety.

Guided self help – Improvements to your social anxiety can be made using workbooks that can help challenge your negative thought patterns and behaviour.

A combination of the above may be used to treat social anxiety.

Hypnotherapy as a social anxiety treatment

There has not been much research that has specifically validated hypnotherapy as an effective social anxiety treatment. There has been a small case study that has demonstrated the effectiveness of hypnotic visualisation rehearsals to overcome social anxiety and again in literature reviews of hypnosis to overcome performance–related social anxiety.

However, as an anxiety-related condition, social anxiety has common associations with general anxiety and phobias. These anxiety-related conditions all share anxious thoughts, beliefs, emotions, behaviours, avoidance patterns, panic attacks, etc. The same medication is used to increase serotonin levels in the brain across these anxiety-related conditions. Similarly, therapists will adopt a behavioural hierarchy of controlled exposure from other anxiety situations and modify them so that the social anxiety treatment is specific to the patient’s social anxiety situation.

There is more research (literature reviews and meta-analyses) to demonstrate how hypnotherapy can be used to treat anxiety as an individual treatment, with CBT, and in the treatment of phobias. Similarly, hypnotherapy can adopt the same principles of controlled exposure when the skilled hypnotherapist is analysing the client’s social anxiety background and can then apply them into a hypnotherapeutic treatment model.

How can hypnotherapy treat your social anxiety?

Hypnotherapy can help you challenge your social anxiety beliefs

There are many types of hypnotherapy. Each hypnotherapy technique can be used to target different pathways of your social anxiety. Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy techniques acknowledge that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviour are linked. In hypnosis these negative thoughts in can be identified, changed and replaced with more objective and realistic thoughts that have become automated in the maintenance of your social anxiety. In a hypnotic state you can access these cognitive changes in a more accessible way.

Hypnotherapy can target your anxiety symptoms

Some social anxiety clients are overwhelmed by anxiety symptoms e.g. breathlessness, voice distortion, blushing, sweating etc. affecting how you function in the social situation. Anxiously, you can absorb your attention into your anxiety symptoms and fear that others are seeing and judging your symptoms. Hypnotic suggestions can be used to lower your symptomatic physical reactions and combine them with affirmations to have more control over these symptoms.

Hypnotherapy can help you control your panic response

Panic attacks are intense fearful physical reactions without any apparent danger or cause. When you have panic attacks, you have lost conscious control over your body. A study has demonstrated how individualised hypnotherapy techniques can help in the treatment of panic attacks. Your hypnotherapy treatment will help connect you with this thought-emotion-physical reaction pathway. Suggestions can be incorporated into common relaxation techniques e.g. breathing techniques to boost the alleviation of your panic symptoms.

Hypnotherapy can treat your anticipatory anxiety

Your past experiences will heighten your alertness to future threats. You are likely to build up anticipatory anxiety to “prepare” you for the danger of embarrassment. Losing sleep days or weeks prior the event, the anxious alertness can be a betrayal of something that rarely happens. Hypnotherapy can help to disconnect your anticipation and explore proactive ways to prepare a moderated alertness.

Hypnotherapy can boost your social performance anxiety

If you can perform well in practise but then go to pieces when performing in front of a live audience, then hypnotherapy can use several techniques to help you to build confidence in your ability. There is evidence that hypnotherapy techniques can build self confidence in student’s fear of public speaking ability. Social performance anxiety can affect many more situations like exams, sexual performance anxiety (erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation), sports performance etc.

Hypnotherapy can improve your mental rehearsal

Social anxiety treatment mental rehearsal
Visualise social confidence and you are projected into your reality

Positive mental rehearsal is a powerful tool that can project you towards the achievement of your goal. There is evidence that athletes use mental rehearsal to improve sports performance and help them access their performance zone. Mental rehearsal prepares the brain to access how you want to function in the absence of being in the real world. Hypnotherapy can focus your mind into the imagined situation enhancing your ability to visualise your positive experience.

Hypnotherapy can develop your self-hypnosis

There are many benefits of the application of self hypnosis, more notably in the management of anxiety. Your hypnotherapy treatment will help you to learn self hypnosis so that you can use these techniques independently in the various situations that are exacerbating your anxiety.

Hypnotherapy can assist your controlled exposure

Controlled exposure (also known as systematic desensitisation) is considered to be an effective treatment for many anxiety-related disorders. Hypnotherapy can serve as a positive mental rehearsal or “virtual reality” for the controlled exposure to social situations. This can help you to feel ready to put this rehearsal into practise and confront the situation that triggers your fear. Depending on how much you want to “future pace” your controlled exposure, you can prime the situation in hypnosis as if it has already been completed successfully.

Hypnotherapy can reframe the “cause” of your social anxiety

Regression is a technique that enables you to observe the various beliefs and values that shaped your handling of a past experience. It can also add insight into what you learned from the experience. Sometimes the learning (in the case of a phobia) can be exaggerated and unhelpful for future reactions. The regression technique is in contrast to solution focused hypnotherapy which prefers to leave the past behind, but has been shown to be effective in a multi-modal hypnotherapy treatment. Regression can help reframe the trauma of the “cause” and add insight into “why” some habitual patterns of negative coping persist.

Hypnotherapy can treat associated fear and phobias

You may bring to your treatment social anxiety as a core issue or a symptom connected to other anxieties, fears and phobias. In any case, your goals and the issues that you present will be discussed in the treatment session. This will enable your treatment to be individualised to your needs.

Social anxiety treatment: conclusion

Some researchers argue that humans are inherently social. Social interaction is considered to be important for mental health and can be a useful strategy to manage stress. For those with social anxiety however, the situations that others thrive on can, in the short term at least, be damaging to your emotional health.

It’s acceptable to want your own space “with yourself” and be “asocial”, particularly if you don’t suffer with loneliness. Having your own space can also be a useful time to relax and recharge. However if you are afraid to interact with others and have an overwhelming fear embarrassment, hypnotherapy can be a beneficial social anxiety treatment to build your self-confidence and social confidence.

Social anxiety treatment accessibility

Face to face consultations are available at the Cardiff hypnotherapy practice. If you are unable to travel to the practice, you can also access social anxiety treatment online.

For more information on social anxiety treatment, contact Richard J D’Souza Hypnotherapy Cardiff

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Sports Hypnosis

Sports hypnosis to improve your sports performance

Sports hypnosis to improve your sports performance

Sports hypnosis: If you are serious about taking your professional, semi-professional or recreational sports performance to the next level, then you are already investing time and energy into a number of key performance strategies. This can include expert skills coaching, a training schedule to practise and integrate these skills, performance monitoring, achieving and maintaining high levels of fitness, exercise recovery, diet and hydration.
Sports Hypnosis
Training your mind is an important sports performance strategy
Training your brain or your “mental muscle” to get the best out of your body is another key performance strategy. It will enable you to access your peak performance potential. At the elite level of professional sports, there are few differences between an athlete’s performance skills, physical characteristics and innate talent. What can distinguish a good performer from a competition winner is your state of mind. Sports hypnosis can help you achieve a strong mental game and a winning mindset by overcoming your own internal limitations. Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Dan Luger, Andre Agassi, Nigel Benn, Billie Jean King and Andy Cole are just a few of the elite sports professionals who have used sports hypnosis. It has enabled them to develop key ingredients like focus, confidence and self-belief into their game. I can appreciate the importance that you give to your sports performance. I bring to your hypnosis treatment sessions a strong personal background in sports participation, sports coaching, and health and fitness. Before qualifying as a hypnotherapist in 1997, I previously played basketball at county level, graduated with a Sports Studies degree, have coached adults and children in various sports and then worked in the health and fitness industry.

Is it sports hypnosis, sports hypnotherapy or sports mind coaching?

Sports hypnosis is the application of hypnosis techniques to improve your sports performance. It’s also a type of hypnotherapy, sports mind coaching, and a branch of sports psychology techniques specific to sports (and athletics) situations in which your psychomotor skills are optimised. In sports psychology journals it is often referred to as “mental training”. The brief hypnotic treatment process is not unlike dealing other performance problems in hypnotherapy that can affect situations in education, the work place, the performing arts and relationships. In all performance situations you assemble and apply your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and learned skills into a specific task or situation with the intention of maximising your ability. The non-sports hypnotherapy treatment sessions will often follow the same structure and goal as sports hypnosis sessions: to reframe your negative performance issues. As a Cardiff hypnotherapist, I commonly treat performance-related issues like fear of public speaking, exam and test anxiety, sexual performance issues like erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation. These conditions can be affected by performance anxiety, stress, low moods, self doubt, low self esteem, low self confidence, perfectionism etc. Similarly, these are just some of the negative traits that can affect amateur and professional athletes at any stage of your sporting career. These various terminologies like sports hypnosis that embrace hypnotherapy for athletes all give emphasis to improving your sports performance. With my sports background, I can draw from my own coaching experiences, empathise with your sports situation and give value to what you want to achieve in your specific sport.

What is sports hypnosis?

Hypnosis can be referred to as a state of heightened, focused attention. Positive mental rehearsal or guided imagery in sports hypnosis is one technique that hypnotherapists commonly employ to help sports clients rehearse a desired “mind-body in-action confident performance”. At its best, the technique will give the sportsperson a positive new or renewed kinaesthetic and emotional sensory experience that resets a performance that (for different reasons) has become negative. The term “hypnosis” may not be used in many of the “mental training” techniques employed by sports psychologists to enhance performance, yet when you engage someone to visualise or mentally rehearse a situation whilst say, being sat, stationary in a chair, the process is almost identical. There is so much more than visualisation that hypnosis can do to enhance an athlete’s performance, however. Are sportspeople responsive to hypnosis? There are many factors that affect your level of suggestibility e.g. client need (i.e. you have a problem that you are struggling to resolve), expectations about hypnosis, common fears and misconceptions of hypnosis, level of rapport between the hypnotherapist and the client, effective use of suggestions etc. This hypnosis test and the article that follows it give more details about the hypnotic experience, when hypnosis works and why it works. Many of these points are also reinforced in this article about the role of hypnosis in sport. In my previous hypnotherapy treatment experience of sportspeople and other clients who perform on stage (dancers, musicians, singers etc.), they have been highly responsive to suggestions and the hypnotherapy treatment. It’s not surprising when those previous clients have been actively involved in using their imagination, emotions and kinaesthetic (bodily) functioning into their performance.

How effective is sports hypnosis?

Athlete visualisation upside down
Psychological sports performance approaches have been hanging around for a while now
Elite athletes are more than aware of the power that cognitive, emotional and psychological qualities can have on sports performance. With the growth of hypnotherapy as a therapeutic modality, combined with the search for broader performance-enhancing strategies, hypnosis for athletes is becoming an increasingly popular mind-coaching tool within sports psychology programmes. Although psychological approaches for sports performance enhancement have been used for over 60 years, studies on the effects of hypnosis on athletic performance are only recently becoming more established. In a study of mental training techniques for professional athletes, it was concluded that hypnosis and biofeedback had a significant positive impact on athletic performance. In another study that examined various complementary and alternative practices using secondary data, hypnosis was identified as one of the practices that benefited athletic performance. Hypnotherapy was also reinforced as a viable treatment method in another study. In other research on small test groups, hypnosis had a positive impact on golf-chipping performance and “flow states”. One particular study states that it is evident from the review of research and conceptual literature that hypnosis can enhance self-efficacy and improve athletic performance.

Who can it benefit?

Sports hypnosis is beneficial for any level of participation including professional, semi-professional and amateur sportspeople. If you are serious about your sport, have hit a performance block, are feeling the pressure of a commitment or competition, then hypnotherapy could benefit you. It can also be used to help performance in any sport. There are various ways that sports can be categorised. Below is a list of some of the more common sports that have been helped with hypnosis. Individual sports: Skiing, archery, athletics (track and field), bodybuilding, bowling, boxing, cycling, darts, diving, fencing, golf, gymnastics, horse riding, martial arts, motor sports, power lifting, running, self-defence,  swimming, tennis, skating, snooker, squash, shooting and other target sports, swimming, trampolining, triathlon, weight lifting, etc. Partner sports: (Any of the above sports that can be partnered), figure skating, volleyball, etc. Team sports: (Any of the above that can be played in teams), American football, baseball, basketball, cricket, hockey, ice hockey, netball, rowing, rugby (league and union), soccer, etc. Extreme sports: bobsleigh, BMX, climbing, kayaking, water skiing, motor racing, etc. Mind sports: Chess, poker, etc. Any sports not listed above can still benefit from hypnosis.

How can hypnosis help your sports performance?

Hypnosis can improve your concentration Achieving and maintaining a narrow focus of attention into the task in hand is a key mental skill that sportspeople aim to perfect. Your focus of attention is constantly shifting internally and externally to make the best decision to fit the demands of the situation. However, distractions can come in many forms e.g. worrying about what others might think, intrusive thoughts of self doubt, having flashbacks from past failures with the potential to magnify your mistakes in the present. Hypnosis can help reconnect you with a concentration “trance” to be fully immersed into the moment. The treatment process can also help you reframe and release those nagging distractions that are affecting your focus of attention. Hypnosis can reconnect you with your “performance zone” Taking your concentration to the next level is another name for being “in the zone” or achieving a state of “flow”. The performance zone is a state of complete absorption into your activity. Your thoughts and actions are flowing freely with spontaneity and fluency. There is some evidence that hypnosis is an effective tool for helping athletes access the zone with badminton players, golfers and cyclists. There are more tips to help you access your performance zone in this article. Hypnosis can treat your performance anxiety Performance anxiety can strike you long before the competition starts. Anticipatory anxiety can overwhelm your build up to the competition causing sleep problems and associated mental and physical fatigue. Feeling the pressure of the Wimbledon Championships last 16 in 2018, Emma Raducanu famously experienced anxiety-related breathing difficulties and withdrew from the competition, before overcoming her nerves in her following US Open Championship title. Various terms are given to how issues like stress and performance anxiety can affect the performer’s body and associated skills in a specific sport. With anxiety, the body can experience physical tension affecting how the muscles function. Some people refer to it as a type of sports phobia.
Yips sports performance anxiety
It’s common to “choke” with performance anxiety
It’s common for the muscle groups being used to tense up, “lock”, go into spasm or start shaking, preventing the necessary skilled movement from being completed.  For example “dartitis” affects darts players ability to release the darts, “cueitis” affects a snooker player’s ability to follow through with the cue, “trigger freeze” prevents those in shooting sports from squeezing the trigger. The “yips” is another general term that can affect sports like golf, cricket, archery, bowling, tennis, football and rugby in which you “choke” or panic at the last moment and particularly when performing a “closed skill” like taking a penalty in the sport. Hypnosis can be used to alleviate the build up of anxiety and the management of your performance skills during your competition. Using visualisation, there is evidence that sports hypnosis can help you to feel calmer and more adapted to stressful competitive situations e.g. when taking penalties. Alternatively, hypnosis can also create a visualised “virtual reality” for competition anxiety. Simulating the high pressure of competition (e.g. penalties to decide the winner) in practise can be difficult if you aren’t experiencing the same adrenaline rush that you would experience in a cup final. Hypnosis can be used to help you revisit and re-create past stress-evoking situations, drawing attention to the stress sensations within the body. With repetition, the athlete can adapt to the stress response and visualise successful performance in competition with reduced anxiety. Hypnosis can help you create a winning mindset You’ve probably heard the phrase “You get what you believe!” Beliefs have a huge impact on how you perform. Your beliefs produce your emotions that direct your actions. When your beliefs are positive, they can energise your behaviour into success. However, your beliefs can be self-limiting without you realising that you are holding yourself back from reaching your potential. World records continue to be broken because athletes train to the best of their ability and believe that it is possible. During early 1950s, people doubted the ability to run the mile in under four minutes; their mindsets were fixed, until Roger Bannister achieved this feat in 1954. Suddenly, this barrier had opened up people’s beliefs that the four minute mile could be done. Over one hundred people run the sub-four minute mile the following year. The “Bannister effect” is term given to this phenomenon that when one person achieves something, it prompts others to change their mindsets that the achievement is now possible. You may have self-limiting beliefs that are acting as your personal obstacles e.g. “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not ready for this”, “I failed this in training” etc. Past criticism and doubt from authority figures can be the source of these negative self beliefs. Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy can help you identify these automated thought patterns and irrational beliefs. Positive affirmations can then be developed to restructure your thinking patterns and help you reframe them into a winning mindset. Hypnosis can help you control your aggression Controlled (instrumental) aggression can be tactical in many sports especially where there is contact between players. Within the rules of the game, controlled aggression can be a necessary part of winning. However, some (verbal and physical) aggression can be considered hostile particularly when it is aimed at another person and with the intention of harming them. There are notable examples of acts of hostility such as Zidane’s retaliation towards the Italian defender in 2006 World Cup Final. Hostile aggression is preceded by anger and frustration, and can be inflamed by many factors such as past conditioning, revenge, loyalty to one’s teammates, your biology, social facilitation e.g. crowd incitement and having over-inflated expectations. Emotional control is a desirable feature in life as it is in sport. If your anger has become a negative feature in your performance, hypnosis can help you deal with your anger and help you to develop a more admirable level of assertiveness. Hypnosis can help you develop a healthy perfectionism Perfectionism in your practise can reap good rewards later in your competition. But it’s important to leave that trait on the practise field so that you are free to automate those learned processes when it’s needed. It’s too late to perfect the finer details, reflect on them and over-think them when the demands of the situation are live and relentless; quite simply, during the competition, it’s time to get on with it! Perfectionists struggle to disengage the “practise mindset” from the “competition mindset”. Perfectionism in the competition can keep you dwelling on your mistakes and missed chances. When you are expecting perfection, you will become more self-critical, give too much attention to your errors and lose confidence. Your “practise mindset” during the competition will hurt you and steal your concentration needed for the demands of the live competition. Understanding and accepting the differences between these stages is the start of adopting healthy perfectionism. Hypnosis can be used to reframe past criticism from authority figures that is driving your perfectionism. Building your self-esteem will help to convince you that you don’t have to prove them wrong and help you release the fear of what failure might say about you. Hypnosis can build your self-belief (self efficacy)
Female boxer confidence self belief
Confidence in your abilities is an important part of being successful
Although the mind is a powerful tool, it is vulnerable to variations in performance when training. Confidence in your abilities is an important part of being successful. When there are positive outcomes in the build up to a competition, it can reinforce your self-belief that you will perform well during the competition. However, external issues and a continuous run of poor training days can damage your self-belief. This can create a cycle of self-doubt that adds more pressure into a competition. It can change how you might perform a skill and be stuck in fear of the outcome. Self belief is considered to be one of the most powerful predictors of successful achievement in sports. When your self-belief has diminished, sports hypnotic suggestions treatment can strengthen your self-belief. Common treatment strategies include accessing your personal or a teammate’s past positive performance states. This will help you change your inner dialogue and help to diminish the effect of poor performances. Hypnosis can be used for powerful visualisation (mental rehearsal) The ability to picture and feel your future success can have a powerful affect on your state of mind and your body. Visualisation is frequently used to build an athlete’s self-belief and confidence in performance by imagining your desired future positive achievement. It can also be used to “over-trace” recent dips in performance by retrieving past positive resourceful states of success and paste them into the present. There is evidence that guided imagery, when combined with physical practise, can be more beneficial to an athlete’s acquisition of skills, than when compared to practise alone, without additional visualisation. Mental rehearsal is described as a process of “passive exercise” that primes the neural pathways and muscles (kinaesthetic sensations) to perfect the minute details of a technique. It can also speed up the rate at which you learn motor skills and be retained in the memory  as if the movement has actually occurred. Combine the physical hard work of training with hypnotic visualisation to give you that additional edge over your competitors. Hypnosis can boost your motivation You can hit a motivational slump for so many reasons e.g. training fatigue, boredom, long-term injuries, changes in your lifestyle, a lack of goal achievement, etc. As your desire and determination weakens, it can damage your training habits, mental preparation, lifestyle issues like diet and sleep patterns, and your relationships. This can cause an even deeper disconnect from your self-belief, who you are and what defines you. An objective discussion to review your intrinsic and extrinsic goals can be the start of your turnaround, refreshing what you want to accomplish. Suggestions can also be given about how to anchor some fresh motivational triggers to lift your inspiration and pride. Hypnosis can re-connect you with past emotional motivated periods and paste them into your renewed goal. This can lift your mood, your desire and determination to succeed again. Hypnosis can reframe your negative self-talk Your internal dialogue (conversation) says a great deal about how you are performing, your attitude towards yourself, your teammates and competitors; it is integrated with your thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Modifying your self-talk can be a useful way to empower yourself, boost your self-belief, stabilise your mind from a bad run of play or let off some frustration “steam”. Recurrent negative internal dialogue that is self-critical can be damaging to your performance, lowering your self-confidence and motivation. When negative self-talk is the trigger that brings down your performance, hypnotic cognitive restructuring techniques can help you to internalise alternative affirmations to keep your focus in the moment. It can also improve the precision in your fine motor skills. Hypnosis can teach you self-hypnosis In my sports hypnosis sessions, I aim to teach you self hypnosis with breathing techniques so that you can apply your learned techniques as part of mental practises when resting, training or competing. Helping you to develop you internal script, self hypnosis can be used for many of the benefits of sports hypnosis listed in this article e.g. with performance anxiety, motivation, self talk, visualisation etc. Hypnosis can help you maintain good self care habits Setting up and maintaining good habits are essential for a good quality of life including those for a performing athlete. Habits are automated ways of thinking and behaving. Underpinning the habit is a motive and combined with repetition, the natural expectation of the habit will encourage it to happen without needing to give it too much thought. Your training and performance habits will be balanced with self care habits like nutrition, hydration, rest and recovery, a good sleeping routine, practising mindfulness exercises etc. These habits will change with the demands of the performance schedule and how the season affects this schedule. Good habits can turn into bad habits however, particularly at the end of season, following a run of bad performances or after an injury. Comfort eating, drinking excessive alcohol, smoking and skipping training are just some of the bad habits that can take you out of your performance zone. Hypnotherapy can help your self-care routine by reintegrating your good training and lifestyle habits and eliminating the bad from your routine. Hypnosis can help your emotional recovery from injury, trauma and pain
Sports injury mental recovery
Mental recovery is an essential part of your return to competition performance
Following an injury, you will have consulted your medical professionals to diagnose the injury and the best way forward for rehabilitation. Physical and mental recovery is an essential part of your return to competition performance. Athletes can be plagued with emotional setbacks following an injury or trauma. The way that you were injured (e.g. a hard tackle, fall etc.) and the severity of the subsequent physical injury (e.g. muscle rupture, fracture etc.) can leave an emotional scar in your mind. You can then become over-protective of the injured part of your body, withdrawing from tackles or dynamic phases of a complex skill to guard against another injury. Some injuries can create post traumatic stress with flashbacks and anxiety. This can be particularly common in combat and contact sports. But can also be evident in other non-contact sports in which there was an unexpected trauma e.g. if your pole vault snaps and causes you injury in your fall. Traumas don’t have to involve injuries though. Some emotional traumas are triggered after you have “choked” under the pressure of competition e.g. by missing a penalty that causes your team to lose and your audience to feel disappointment. The subsequent distress can have a long-lasting effect on the sportsperson’s confidence. Hypnosis can help reframe your lost trust, confidence and self-belief caused by the trauma and subsequent reaction. Managing pain is another area that hypnosis can benefit. Hypnosis for the treatment of chronic pain (longer than 6 months) is well documented. Pain and suffering is a subjective experience and can be affected by many factors, notably the context of the injury, perceived loss of control, the attention that you give to pain, general anxiety and expectations about how the injury will be in conflict with current lifestyle and future plans. Jurgen Klopp may have inferred this ability to manage pain with reference to the injuries sustained by Daniel Sturridge. Hypnosis can help you reduce pain by analysing the emotional issues that surround it. Hypnosis can help you get psyched-up Hypnosis is often considered as a relaxing treatment. Relaxation is part of the treatment process to increase your suggestibility, but is rarely the treatment aim. During your sports training and competitions, there can be moments when under-arousal can be just as limiting as being over-excited or having high anxiety at the other end of the (focused) continuum. Hypnosis can help you develop “regulation arousal” or the desirable “psych-up” (or “psych down”) to empower you to perform with the necessary emotions during precise moments in your sport. Self-hypnosis pre-performance “psych-up” rituals are often used just prior to the start of the competition to be ready, alert and appropriately powered-up. They can be developed in your hypnosis treatment. Using hypnosis for performance “psych-up” rituals can also serve useful during performance rest periods e.g. in tennis and during your sport dynamic changes of open and closed skills. (Some sports have closed skills in which the same technique is applied in a fixed, predictable and self-paced situation e.g. when diving or when performing a vault in gymnastics. Open skills require decisions to made on the basis of a more externally paced unpredictable situation or position of the opponents e.g. when passing a football in mid-play. Some skills are on the continuum of being open and closed e.g. when teeing off in golf.) Hypnosis can help you practise overcoming “what if scenarios” Coming up with ideas to brain storm and solve individual or collective team problems can help you take the heat out of the situation. Having identified and discussed your strategies, you can use the learned self hypnosis (or mindfulness) as exercises to mentally rehearse and visualise strategies to solve problems. Problems can include issues like “what if our best player is sent off?”, “what if we arrive late at the venue?”, “what if we have penalties?” etc. Hypnosis can help you manage stress Exercise can be a useful way to alleviate stress, but sometimes external stress can be a trigger that negatively impacts on your training and your sports performance. A stressful life outside of training and competitions can affect concentration, performance and self-belief. It’s important to individualise your hypnosis treatment by working holistically, exploring coping strategies or treating the specific external issues that are affecting you and your performance. For example, you may be suffering bereavement, feeling guilty about being away from your family, having interpersonal issues with other teammates, have financial worries, worrying about how to cope with a family member being ill etc. Some therapists may disregard offering more obvious practical solutions like assertiveness training, in their pursuit of helping you by using deep and meaningful psychological strategies. It’s important to use pragmatic strategies too.

Sports hypnosis can help you achieve your optimum sports potential

Sports hypnosis sprint
Using hypnosis is not limited by the sports activity
Sports psychologists and trainers often use hypnosis or hypnotherapy but may not label it as such. Listed in this article are the numerous ways that sports hypnosis can help athletes. As the research evidence continues to grow, many famous athletes continue to benefit by the practice of sports hypnosis. Using hypnosis is not limited by the sports activity, any sport can benefit. Each sports client brings with them personal and situational traits and issues that can be helped in a therapeutic context. Many hypnotic techniques can be applied to suit the individual and the situation. How receptive you are to hypnosis is again individual, but the biggest impact on your treatment progress (not just with hypnosis) will be related to the therapeutic relationship between you and the hypnotherapist.

Sports hypnosis accessibility

Face to face sessions are available in the Cardiff hypnotherapy practice. If you are unable to travel to Cardiff, you can access sports hypnosis online.

For more information on sports hypnosis, contact Richard J D’Souza Hypnotherapy Cardiff

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Coping with OCD

Coping with OCD

Coping with OCD: Obsessive Compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts and repetitive compulsions. Whilst many sufferers take refuge in medication and therapy to treat OCD, the work is often incomplete and requires self-care and coping strategies to manage it. Coping with OCD takes practice and a lot of dedication to be well-implemented. With focused strategies, the benefits can change the way you lead your life. In the following article, ten of the best coping with OCD tips are listed that can help you become an expert of your own condition.

Coping with OCD word cloud
OCD coping strategies can complement your treatment

 

 

Coping with OCD tip #1: Use Relaxation Techniques

OCD, like many mental health disorders, manifests with physical and psychological states of stress and tension. It throws your mind and body into anguish as you battle with nagging obsessions and intrusive thoughts. A good coping mechanism that many sufferers use to manage these effects is to practise relaxation techniques such as deep breathing techniques to centre your mind. Relaxation techniques can take many forms, including self-hypnosis, meditation and mindfulness. Relaxation techniques can involve the use of imagery, visualisation and affirmations to focus your awareness in an engaging way.

There is growing evidence that relaxation techniques can play a significant part in your overall treatment. They have the advantage of being mobile; you can practise them anywhere, whether at home, at work or just relaxed breathing when you are on the go.

If you have tried relaxation techniques and found them to have limited benefit when coping with OCD, sampling a live hypnotherapy treatment will intensify the effect. Whilst relaxation is not the overall aim of hypnotherapy, hypnotherapists who specialise in teaching breathing techniques will transform your relaxed breathing ability to another level.

 

 

Coping with OCD tip #2: Challenge Your Thoughts:

Obsessive thoughts make up half of the struggle when coping with OCD. If you are exposed to triggers, they tend to rush in almost immediately and can set off your anxiety for hours afterwards. Some OCD patients with different types of OCD for example, describe that they have intrusive thoughts about harming someone; others worry about whether they have locked their doors securely, turned off the oven, or even have paranoid scenarios about the safety of their loved ones if they are away from them.

When these thoughts perpetuate, you can feel like you are a victim of these thoughts. Managing these distressing thoughts or reducing their power, will alleviate many of the compulsions that stem from them. But, unfortunately, trying to resist these thoughts by fighting them might achieve the opposite result, as it is the lack of flexibility with these thoughts that give them their power over you. In a sense, you can end up repressing them and giving them too much importance.

Coping with OCD effectively requires techniques like exposure to these thoughts or the expression of these thoughts to deprive them of their power. For example, you can benefit by using a journal and writing your thoughts down, or typing them on your smart phone or laptop. The method is to simply write these thoughts as many times as you want or express your feelings or worry regarding them. Alternatively, you could use a daily writing period of 15 minutes specifically made for worry. To your mind, this will be a time where it can vent all that disturbs it in a “safe zone” but it’s important to stay limited by a timeframe so that constructive worrying doesn’t take over your day.

Question thoughts to cope with OCD
Questioning your thoughts can help deprive them of their power

If free expression of your thoughts isn’t always effective, it is also useful to “question your thoughts”, again on paper or your “tech” device. Ask hard questions about the truth and credibility of these thoughts. Do you have evidence for their truth? Is it strong evidence? How do you know you are not wrong? And what would be a realistic understanding of the situation if you are certain?

As an additional or alternative activity, make an audio recording of your written content. Then listen to your recording, interacting with your content to vent or challenge your obsessive thoughts.

 

 

Coping with OCD tip #3: Identify Your Triggers

Your OCD compulsions and thoughts do not arise in a vacuum. They are the result of triggering cues, situations or beliefs that make the distressing compulsions necessary to please. They create doubt and worry or generate irrational fears over which you have very little control. However, whilst such triggers play this important role, many OCD patients who haven’t studied their situation well can remain oblivious to how and why certain triggers set off their symptoms.

When you are coping with OCD effectively, you are able to identify your triggers and pay attention to how they create your fears and anxiety. General examples of such triggers can be using a public toilet seat that you believe is contaminated, attending a job interview or a social meeting where you obsess about what you did wrong, or the lack of symmetry and order in certain places that you visit.

Without a good understanding of how and what affects you, you can be a constant victim of OCD. One good technique to use is to keep a notebook and record your triggers, and then rate their emotional intensity out of 10. Since the most intense are likely to give you sustained distress and severe OCD symptoms, focus on managing the lower levels to build confidence. Then gradually approach the higher levels. For example, you could focus all of your attention whilst wiping the public toilet seat so that you can be assured that it’s cleaned well enough and won’t contaminate you. If it’s a job interview that you obsess over, set moderate standards about how it can progress. This will enable you to deal with it more effectively at the interview and in your review of your performance to pre-empt your OCD symptoms from emerging.

 

 

Coping with OCD tip #4: Confront Your Fears

The next step that can give you power over your triggers is your ability to confront your fears. Of course, all OCD fears can be very distressing to you, but they are, in fact, quite illusory. You can confront your fears with graduated exposure, paced at a level that suits you. For example, a source of panic can be a dirty floor, disturbing asymmetry in objects, or a job assignment that fills you with debilitating perfectionism. Sometimes, your worst fear can be to lose control and feel contaminated, feel guilty or fear failure.

Use a grading notebook to rate your fears out of 10 and then make a plan to expose yourself to the least fearful thing in the list. When you withdraw from the fearful situation, use the relaxation techniques (from tip #1) to visualise remaining in the “fear zone”. Immerse your mind in that low level of fear, gradually allowing it to disperse without the need to physically do anything. The achievement is to keep it as a mind process, gradually noticing that the fearful emotion at these lower levels can be diminished without force.

Like many sufferers who are coping with OCD effectively, this is a highly useful practice to be able to tolerate your anxiety over time, even for your worst fears.

 

 

Coping with OCD tip #5: Do some physical activity (exercise)

Coping with OCD exercise
Exercise can have a positive effect on irrational thinking

The benefits of exercising are vast, and they certainly include the efficient coping with OCD symptoms. Regular exercise (with integrated rest days) can have a lasting positive effect on your susceptibility to stress and tendency to adopt negative and irrational thinking.

Following a medical health check to investigate if you have any contraindications to exercise, regular enjoyable exercise has the ability to rewire your body and mind. With enough commitment you can escape the dark pit of constant reactivity to triggers and repetitive OCD behaviours.

If you want to keep your OCD under control, take up an easy exercise plan that suits your schedule and stay committed to it. Coupled with other coping techniques, exercise will have a major role in changing your OCD symptoms for the long-term.

 

 

Coping with OCD tip #6: Talking to others about your OCD

This tip is one of the most dismissed and underrated ways to cope with OCD. While many other techniques have a direct effect on your behavioural and psychological symptoms, the act of talking about your OCD and sharing your experiences can completely reframe your attitudes to the condition.

OCD is not just a simple compulsive reaction to disturbing triggers; rather it’s a complex mental health condition where your symptoms can also thrive in the feelings of shame, lack of self-knowledge, and psychological vulnerability. In times of anxiety and obsessive thinking, for instance, you can lack realism and the psychological fortitude that talking about your condition can bring about.

Sharing your struggle and outlook on your situation with other people builds acceptance and openness to your inner world. It also fosters social belonging and the realisation that you are not alone. You may know some isolated sufferers with OCD. You will find they are more likely to engage in distorted thinking and feelings of worthlessness. These negative moods can aggravate your symptoms.

So, to step away from an isolated perspective, it is important to find friends or close individuals who make you feel safe and are interested in listening to your struggles. Some those people are probably good listeners and with an understanding of your OCD condition can follow helpful listening guidelines.

 

  

Coping with OCD tip #7: Seek effective Therapy

Research shows that Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is most effective form of treatment for treating OCD. It represents a treatment of the two forms in which OCD presents itself; recurring obsessions and connected behavioural compulsions. Research has also shown that ERP can be incorporated into other treatment modalities like hypnotherapy.

Making use of ERP therapy will address your issues at a more fundamental level, especially with the help of a therapist. ERP will challenge your believed fears using questioning techniques, exploring your over-generalisations, catastrophic thinking and other cognitive distortions. It will then focus on exposing you to your fears and developing your self-control to resist doing your compulsions. For example, if you fear contaminated toilet seats, you are helped to use a toilet seat and then to proceed without any de-contamination behaviour such as “excessive” hand or body washing. You are supported as your contamination-fears diminish. Breaking that thought/emotion-behaviour pathway is the essence of ERP.

All obsessions remain fearful and disturbing when they are not tolerated at first. For that reason ERP tries to reveal to your mind and body how the fear of the trigger is harmless and recoverable without behaviour. Initially it’s very discomforting, but the longer you stay in the presence of those situations and triggers, the more you develop the strength and flexibility to cope with them.

 

 

Coping with OCD tip #8: Explore help from your community

Other than help from your therapist, seeking out extended forms of help will complement the work that you are already doing to assist your condition. There is a huge amount of resources and mental tools to be gained from other people and communities. Ignoring that resource will slow down your progress and make your strategies limited.

Anything from joining OCD associations, finding online communities, and making friends with other OCD sufferers can boost your skills and mood to cope with OCD. Reach out and ask questions or request help from your peers and friends. Many of these individuals can share with you their practical strategies that they use to handle their own OCD, strategies that you may not have thought about before. They might also help with recommending therapists, books, or local groups to join.

You may believe that you have all of the information that you need but even the exchange of sharing your learning with others will help you reflect on aspects that are specific to your condition. Discussions can also help you analyse the process and build confidence into what makes your learning so useful.

 

 

Coping with OCD tip #9: Maintain a healthy lifestyle

Attending to other lifestyle issues will help to stabilise your anxiety and impact on your OCD. If you are constantly lacking sleep and eating unhealthily, you will be an easy prey to fatigue. Poor sleep and diet can create a cycle that thwarts the efficiency of other coping techniques.

Coping with OCD sleep
Restful sleep can help stabilise your OCD

Start first by regulating your sleep habits and making sure to “hit the bed” on time. Your 7 or 8 hours of sleep needs to be a non-negotiable part of your day, preferably starting early at night to wake up early for a fresh and clear-minded day. As for diet, have your full meals well-spread throughout the day and make sure they consist of healthy foods. With commitment, sufficient sleep and healthy eating and will give you a firm baseline which can improve your energy levels and positive moods.

Other lifestyle issues than can impact on your physical health include limiting caffeine intake, quitting smoking and moderating your alcohol consumption.

 

 

Coping with OCD tip #10: Celebrate your wins and guard against relapse

In common with understanding your addiction triggers, it is often said that full recovery is only 50% of the solution and that maintaining your recovery is the other 50%. Many OCD patients fall for the mistake of thinking that once their recovery is achieved in the short term, their OCD is gone forever. However, this is a grave error as OCD is a chronic condition and can resurface if you don’t keep an eye on your routine, stress levels, and lifestyle habits.

A relapse is possible if, for example, you stop taking medication without informing your clinician. A relapse can also be common when, having partially confronted your fears and not performed any compulsions recently, your over-confidence lowers your guard and the OCD rituals gradually worm their way back into your life.

Being clear and honest about your progress helps you to pay attention to possible scenarios that can give room for OCD to reappear. In addition to this, it’s highly useful to celebrate your victories and keep progress of small achievements. Feeling proud of your consecutive wins against OCD will motivate you for your next challenges and, more importantly, remind you of the serious work that is still needed.

 

More information on professional treatment for OCD.

 

For more information on coping with OCD, contact Richard J D’Souza Hypnotherapy Cardiff

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Find Lost Items With Hypnotherapy

Find Lost Items With Hypnotherapy

Find lost items with hypnotherapy: Have you lost* something valuable recently? The timing of “losing” something important and the urgency of needing it for its purpose can be impeccable. You’re rushing to do something, you get distracted, put the item down and then...it’s vanished! Keys, phones and glasses are the favourites to be “lost” and with a frantic search these items are usually found again.

Find lost items with hypnotherapy
When you are in a rush, it’s so easy to lose something

It’s surprising how common it is to lose things. For the average adult, approximately nine minutes per day is spent looking for something that has been lost. Stress, rushing around and multitasking are common reasons given for why it’s so easy to lose something. With modern lifestyles, you could say that losing something is part of being human. Some researchers argue that there is a genetic predisposition to losing things.

Are you prone to losing things and searched everywhere for it? Don’t hit the panic button just yet! If what you have lost is invaluable to you, you may want to find lost items with hypnotherapy.

* The term “lost” is used throughout this article to refer to items being “misplaced”. Items that are misplaced may be put down in the “wrong” place due to you being distracted or because you are unable to remember where you placed them (i.e. the items are hidden from your memory). Lost items, however, could have fallen out of somewhere e.g. out your pocket or a bag or fallen behind large furniture without your active intervention. You would not have seen them fall or been aware of this event. In addition to this, someone else could also have moved them, changed the identity of them e.g. wrapped them in something, place them into another container or taken them without your prior knowledge.

 

 

Find lost items with hypnotherapy: Why do you lose things?

There are two main reasons why people lose things. The first reason is related to your attention. Where was your attention at the time that you placed the item down?

Stress, even when it’s temporary, can impair the usual processing stages of your attention. Your mind is absorbed into what you temporarily identify as the urgent priority and you are less thoughtful about what you are doing in that moment.

For example, a former client of mine had been burgled. They discussed how the burglary felt like their privacy had been violated. To their relief, their treasured possession had not been stolen. Still dominated by the trauma of the burglary and worried that the burglars may return, they decided to “hide the item, safe from harm’s reach”. Some weeks later they wanted to access the item. The “distraction” of the trauma and the motive for hiding the item was still so strong in their minds that they couldn’t remember where they had hidden it. It’s as if their motive had hidden it from everyone, including themselves. They used hypnotherapy to help them to relocate their treasured possession.

When under stress, the other less urgent functioning processes are running on an “emotional autopilot”. Ritualised organisational thinking habits of “this item normally lives here” or “I’m going to put this down in this location” can be momentarily displaced. You can fail to give the item (or the act of placing the item down) its usual “cue” (or something that will make it easy to retrieve from your memory later). When an action of placing the item down has not been encoded with a cue, it’s as if the item is placed down “anywhere”. If it’s not in your usual sight line or in its respective “home” (if it ever had one!), finding it again can take some effort.

As that effort increases and you are convinced that it is lost, it can have a direct affect on the second reason. The second reason that people lose things is related your memory. Your reaction to you noticing that the item is now lost and the desperate panic of trying to find it can affect your ability to recover the memory of where you placed it.

The more distressed your reaction, the harder it is to recall the lost item’s whereabouts. Torturing yourself for losing it, effectively buries the memory deeper into your mind. Wanting to know where the item is can help direct your search, but the individual emotional distress that you give to losing it and not being able to find it again can become a self-perpetuating cycle that inhibits this memory recovery process.

 

 

Find lost items with hypnotherapy: the distress of losing something

Whether you have lost something of sentimental value or financial value (or both), losing something churns up a whole host of grieving emotions that, as mentioned above, makes it more difficult to recover the memory of the item’s whereabouts.

Emotional distress when lost something
Losing something can churn up a whole host of grieving emotions

An open-ended situation like this demands closure, but there can be many negative emotions that stand in your way. Your deeper traits and background traumas can compound the stress in your search to locate it. Typical emotions include:

Embarrassment - Those of you who believe that you “never, ever lose anything” can feel embarrassed that you (of all people?) could actually end up losing something. You may not want to admit it in case others taunt you for being absent-minded.

Confusion and distrust - Is it the first time? Maybe these absent-minded rumours are forming true. If it’s happening time and time again, you can feel confused about how your brain is functioning and wonder if you can ever trust your mind again. Have you lost your mind too? Being told that it’s an “age thing” won’t reassure you.

Frustration, anger and despair – The time you spend searching and turning a room or the whole house upside down can drive your anger to rage. After the fifth search, you think that you are going crazy, especially when you can recall thinking about moving it to a “safe place”. Ironically, it’s a place that’s so safe that not even you can remember where it is. How many more times can you search before your frustration hits despair?

Guilt, shame, blame and denial - Have you let yourself or somebody else down? Failing to take care of your possessions (however it came to be being misplaced) can trigger guilt, shame and even blame that you have been negligent. For some, the shame may lead to denial by not admitting that the item is lost and then pretending that you’ll return it later. Or maybe it’s easier to blame somebody else for losing it like your partner who has a tendency to move your possessions when they tidy up. They must have moved it; otherwise it would be where it always is!

Fear – Can you cope without your treasured possession? When you lose something invaluable, you can grieve the material and emotional void in your life. This can leave you feeling anxious or panic-stricken that you may not ever be able to find it again. Can it be replaced? You can feel particularly anxious when the lost item belonged to someone else. Convinced that you have betrayed their trust, you fear that they may never forgive you for losing it.

For some, losing something activates a much deeper insecurity and fear of failure. It’s as if by losing something, you failed to “win” in this situation. Your competitive mindset to win at everything feeds your ego to always be right and not be wrong. A “must” win fixation here drives a deeper obsession that you can only stop your search when you have found it and “won” the situation. This fear of failure makes it difficult to access the memory of misplacing it.

Within the grieving cycle, the down moods may be mixed with some positive emotions:

Hope, determination, sadness and acceptance – Moments of hope can regenerate a deeper determination to search for your lost item again, especially when there is a search party to share your frustration. Building up your hopes again has the risk of an even deeper fall into sadness if you are unable to locate the lost item. Do you accept the loss or is there another option?

When it seems like your search is going around in circles, you may want to find lost items with hypnotherapy. Building up stress in your search to find your treasured possession has the effect of pushing the item deeper into the back of your mind. The harder you search, the harder it is to remember where you left it. If you believe that the item is extremely valuable and worth a deeper “mind” search, you can find lost items with hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy can reconnect you with the memory of where you left it.

 

 

How you can find lost items with hypnotherapy?

Find lost items with hypnotherapy
You can find lost items with hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy can calm your mind to help recover a memory

The emotional distress of losing the item is blocking your memory recovery capabilities. Hypnotherapy can be used to relax the mind and lower your emotional distress. In a relaxed state, your attention can be focused into the details that lead up to loss, enhancing your memory potential to recall where the item was misplaced. This might include visualising experience-rich features about the location, other people present, feelings, what you were doing at the time and recalling your emotional state of mind.

Hypnotherapy can use regression to focus you into the event

Regression techniques are essential in this process to help you recall specific details of an event that you may not be able to recall under normal circumstances. They can be even more effective for recalling something when your mind is distracted.

With regression techniques, references are often made to the conscious and unconscious mind. Using this analogy, regression helps you to access the deeper levels of awareness in the unconscious mind, not normally accessible by the conscious mind. Some people believe that the unconscious mind acts like a continuous recording device and with the right prompt those memories can be recovered.

With a skilled regression hypnotherapist, the specialist techniques can enable you to observe these events objectively with new insights, guiding your mind through the precise details of event, the location and time period when the item was misplaced.

The specific language used by the regression hypnotherapist is also important. “Leading” language patterns (as opposed to “open” language) can “plant” false ideas that might deceive your imagination in to filling in the gaps with what is suggested to you. However, “open” questions and open language patterns and can enable you to view the situation with reduced bias.

Hypnotherapy can help you explore your retrieval memory cues

Whilst the hypnotherapist can be attentive to the language that might lead you in the “wrong” direction, progressive techniques can be used to trigger hidden memory cues that will bring you “closer” to the memory of the situation. This process of hypnotic context reinstatement can help you to visualise and recreate the details of the event, focusing on sensory stimuli like sounds, smell etc. Or attention can be given to your body awareness (kinaesthetic) cues to activate the memory of placing something down.

Similarly, by identifying the motive that distracted your attention e.g. “I need to hide this item”, progressive hypno-analysis techniques like “parts therapy” can be used to analyse your motive as a “part” of your mind with its own thinking strategies. When this “part” or motive is accessed, it may then communicate how “it” was thinking when you misplaced the item and then divulge to the other parts the likely location of it.

Hypnotherapy can help you develop an effective search strategy

Endless searching can cause a frustrated search mode that keeps you looking in the same “wrong” places. Your own beliefs about where the item ought to be can cause you to block seeing them in another location; you’re just not expecting to see them in a different place. Ask someone else to search with you and they might find it because they search with an “open” mind.

Devising a systematic strategy after you have dissociated your stress can recreate a strategy that is disciplined, methodical, organised and thorough.

Find lost items with hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy can treat some of the emotions affecting your memory loss

Do you regularly lose things?

If you are prone to losing things, your hypnotherapy treatment can treat some of the emotions that are overloading your mind. It can help install some memory cues and habits to reduce the frequency of you misplacing items in the future.

Will hypnotherapy help you find something if you were under the influence of alcohol or recreational drugs at the time of misplacing it?

Whilst there may be some level of recall whilst under the influence, the ability to remember where you misplaced the item will be diminished. It may be worth exploring hypnotherapy treatment if what you have misplaced is extremely valuable.

 

For more information on how you can find lost items with hypnotherapy, contact Richard J D’Souza Hypnotherapy Cardiff

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Teeth Grinding and Jaw Clenching Treatment

Teeth Grinding and Jaw Clenching Treatment (Bruxism)

Teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment: Bruxism is the medical term for teeth grinding and jaw clenching. Mild bruxism may not need treatment, but as a severe condition, it can cause the sufferer a number of complications affecting your teeth, jaw, face, head and quality of your sleep.

Teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment
Bruxism can affect your teeth, jaw, face, head and quality of your sleep

Teeth grinding and jaw clenching are involuntary reactions to negative emotions. Performed repetitively, these reactions can become unconscious habits without the sufferer being aware of an immediate stressor.

Bruxism can be categorised into “awake bruxism” and “sleep bruxism”. As a reaction to certain stimuli, the involuntary daytime habit of jaw clenching is predominant with “awake bruxism”. With “sleep bruxism” however, both teeth grinding and sustained episodes of jaw clenching can become automated nocturnal behaviours.

Primary bruxism is a further categorisation of bruxism in which it occurs without any prior or connected medical conditions. Secondary bruxism has links with certain medication, lifestyle-substances, medical and psychological conditions. Sleep bruxism can also be associated with certain sleep disorders.

Both children and adults can suffer with bruxism, but the condition is most common with adults aged between 25-44 years old.

There is no specific cure for bruxism. Teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatments usually focuses on the management of physical symptoms. Since negative emotions contribute to bruxism, hypnotherapy can play an essential part in your jaw clenching and teeth grinding treatment.

 

 

Teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment: Bruxism causes

The exact cause of bruxism is not completely understood. It can be due to a combination of psychological, physical and genetic factors. Any potential teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment would match the underlying cause.

There are certain factors that will increase your risk of developing bruxism:

Age – Bruxism is prevalent in young to middle adulthood.

Personality – Certain personality types can increase your risk of bruxism including those who are might fall under the classification of Type “A” personality. It includes competitive, aggressive, perfectionist, hyperactive and impatient personalities. Those with generalised anxiety and non-assertiveness characteristics can also be prone to bruxism.

Family members with bruxism – If your family has a history of bruxism, you may be genetically predisposed to developing the condition. You may also learn bruxism behaviour from relevant authority figures.

Medication and other lifestyle substances – Teeth grinding and jaw clenching can be a side effects of certain antidepressant medication. Other lifestyle substances that may increase the risk of bruxism include drinking alcohol or excessive caffeinated drinks, smoking tobacco, and using recreational drugs.

Other medical conditions – Bruxism can be associated with medical disorders, mental health disorders and sleep-related disorders. These include dementia, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, GERD, ADHD, depression and anxiety. Sleep related disorders include obstructive sleep apnoea and other parasomnias like sleep talking and hypnagogic hallucinations.

 

 

Teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment: Psychological factors

Stress and anxiety are considered as the originating, predisposing and perpetuating factors for many medical conditions. Stress and anxiety are major contributing factors for teeth grinding and jaw clenching habits.

Teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment
Stress and anxiety is a major cause of bruxism

Along with the diaphragm, pelvic floor, and neck and shoulders, the jaw is a primary area to hold stress-related muscle tension. When you are in the “fight or flight” survival mode triggered by alertness to danger, the muscles around the jaw may contract as an innate or learned symptom of stress. The survival response of a general panic attack (which may also include jaw tension) is easily observed with phobias.

Consider another situation like when you have crossed the road, but not noticed a car speeding towards you. You can identify the source of your immediate “danger” as the speeding car. For most people, the survival response will create a reaction where you contract the necessary voluntary muscles to dash out of the car’s pathway. In that situation, your jaw contraction may have been part of the “flight” physical template.

With anxiety, the intensity of the danger is not usually as acute as the stress of the “speeding car” situation, but it can be recurrent. In addition to this, the situation triggering your anxiety may be weeks ahead and you may not always be able to identify the source of your “threat”. Teeth grinding and jaw clenching habits may persist throughout the period of anticipation and become a “standard” habitual coping mechanism when you worry about impending situations like an interview, exam or presentation.

Other negative emotions such as frustration and anger can also trigger this recurrent survival response from a situation that has already happened. With frustration or anger the “danger” could be a threat to your self-esteem. For example, when you are angry, there is a “threat” that you are not being understood, your expectations are not being met, that you may lose control of a situation, or that you appear worthless or stupid.

Constructively releasing your frustration or anger can help lower the stress related to your survival response. There are many ways to achieve this. Being able to “voice” your emotion is one useful venting method. However, in situations where you are unable to express these emotions in that moment, you may repress your frustration or anger. The emotion may then be “shelved” and “resurface” to be processed at a later time in other emotionally-related or non-specific situations.

Some previous clients who have received teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment have mentioned that with daytime bruxism, the bruxism habit can be automated when concentrating on important work, where there is “danger” of being criticised from your boss or failing something like an assignment. The bruxism habits can also be active when doing something routine like housework or driving. For some drivers, driving is the trigger for anger (!), especially when you are stuck in traffic or you are running late and then are at risk of being judged for poor time keeping.

Other clients who have received teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment have mentioned how their bruxism symptoms have acted as repressed coping mechanisms in past “double binding” situations. With these clients, previous abuse and excessive control from cruel partners or overly strict parents had compromised their ability to express their frustration or anger. They were abused when they remained silent, yet any attempt to answer back the abuser would have been met with more abuse or severe punishment (a double binding situation). In these toxic relationships, clamping your jaw shut to “say nothing” was the method of survival. After leaving the relationship, these bruxism symptoms had stayed with the abused clients until seeking therapy.

Is there a link between “awake bruxism” and “sleep bruxism”? Some researchers suggest that when you are unable to fully discharge these negative emotions and physical symptoms in the daytime, they can then be “replayed” during your dreams. Sleep bruxism thus potentially serves this nocturnal reprocessing function in an attempt to release the “unspent” frustration or anger from prvious situations, or to manage the anxiety of future negative situations.

 

 

Bruxism signs and symptoms

Signs and symptoms of bruxism can include:

Bruxism dental attrition
Damaged teeth is a major symptom of bruxism
  • Audible (loud) teeth grinding and jaw clenching that can wake your sleep partner.
  • Damaged teeth with eroded enamel or teeth that have become flattened or fractured. This can affect how food is chewed sometimes causing you to bite the inside of your cheeks or your tongue.
  • Teeth that have become sensitive and painful.
  • Jaw joint problems – The TMJ (or temporomandibular joint) can become painful, fatigued especially when chewing food (abnormal bite), displaced (pops or clicks with movement), locked or cause other complications.
  • Structures (muscles) surrounding the TMJ can become painful e.g. neck, face, ears (causing earache) and temples (causing headaches).
  • Disrupted sleep and general fatigue caused by bruxism symptoms.

 

 

How is bruxism diagnosed?

The early stages of mild bruxism may be self diagnosed or identified by your sleep partner. You usually experience mild intermittent symptoms of discomfort and pain which may be treatable with pain killers prescribed from you GP. Progressive symptoms of teeth grinding are usually diagnosed by your dentist and then observed over subsequent visits.

 

 

Common teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatments

Common teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment usually falls into the following categories:

Dental treatment: Prescribed splints and mouth guards and help to keep the teeth surfaces apart. Your dentist may also correct teeth surfaces to reduce sensitivity and the ability to chew properly.

Medication: Your GP may prescribe muscle relaxants, antidepressants or anti anxiety medication. Botox injections can also help severe bruxism.

Treating associated conditions: Treating an associated condition such as changing the medication or having a referral to a specialist may help reduce the bruxism symptoms.

Therapy: Therapy can help you manage the emotions behind your symptoms

 

 

Teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment: Hypnotherapy

With nearly 70% of bruxism being caused by stress and anxiety, and hypnotherapy’s reputation for treating automatic unconscious behaviours (habits) like nail biting and hair pulling, hypnotherapy can be considered the ideal choice for teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment.

Is there any hypnotherapy research related to bruxism? Hypnotherapy research is limited, but there is some evidence of its effectiveness. There is a case study exploring causal emotional connections with bruxism e.g. with a client’s hostile childhood. Another study noted the benefits of hypnotherapy within a small test group using post treatment self reports and EMG recordings.

How can hypnotherapy contribute to your teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment?

Hypnotherapy can treat the emotions connected to your bruxism

Your teeth grinding and jaw clenching habits will be associated with emotions that launch you into your negative behavioural patterns of coping. Anger, frustration and anxiety are the common emotions that drive the behaviour. Identifying and treating these emotions will help break down the surrounding cognitive structures that maintain your bruxism.

Hypnotherapy can help you manage stress and physical tension

Incorporated into the hypnotic treatment process are stress management techniques that can help your physical reactions to stress e.g. learning self hypnosis and breathing techniques. Your hypnotherapy treatment will also target the areas of your body most affected by bruxism, particularly the muscle tension in your jaw. In hypnosis you are more open to accept suggestions to relax these muscles and integrate these physical changes when you feel under pressure.

Hypnotherapy can identify and remove the cause of your bruxism habit

Habits have an origin with a surrounding belief system that fulfilled your needs in that moment. Over time, the habit became integrated. The physical habit is now redundant but the needs continue to influence your behaviour. Regression techniques can be used to identify these “causal” issues and reframe the needs-habit association. You are then open to change your perception of your past needs and to embrace new behavioural ways to cope with these needs.

Hypnotherapy can break the triggers that surround your habit

The repetition of your teeth grinding and jaw clenching will have converted a conscious habit into an unconscious one. In the early stages of the treatment, you will be more conscious of these situational triggers and your urge to grind your teeth and clench your jaw. Positive suggestions will target this urge to relax the muscles that are now primed to tense up when the situations prompt you.

Teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment
Hypnotherapy can help you reprogram your unconscious behaviour

Hypnotherapy can help you reprogram your unconscious behaviour

The unconscious mind is considered to hold many automated behaviours like nervous blushing and sweating. Unlike the conscious mind, the unconscious mind acts without thought or reason, maintaining habits once they become established. Teeth grinding and jaw clenching are more examples of unconscious automated behaviours that happen during your day. These behaviours can then leak into your sleep patterns where you have no control over your actions. It can be difficult to consciously “will” yourself to change these behaviours, bypassing the cognitive command centres of the conscious mind and accessing your unconscious mind directly. When you are in a hypnotic, relaxed state, the “doorway” to these unconscious habits is accessible. You can then embrace suggestions to change these unconscious bruxism habits without the interference of the conscious mind.

 

For more information on teeth grinding and jaw clenching treatment with hypnotherapy, contact Richard J D’Souza Hypnotherapy Cardiff

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Overactive Bladder Treatment

Overactive Bladder Treatment

Overactive bladder treatment: Overactive bladder is term used for a group of urinary symptoms. Overactive bladder can have a significant effect on the quality of your life provoking an intense “gotta’ go” feeling when you least want or need it. Overactive bladder has the following symptoms:
Overactive bladder treatment
Urinary urgency can be unexpected and uncontrollable
Urgency: The most common symptom of overactive bladder is the urge to urinate. This urge is often unexpected and uncontrollable. Frequency: Depending on the amount you drink and other lifestyle factors, some people’s frequency to urinate is considered manageable and healthy. Most people pass urine 6-8 times per day without any concern. With overactive bladder however, the frequency to urinate is another symptom of the condition that can be excessive and accompanied by this intense urge. You may also pass or feel the need to pass urine several times during a short interval. Urge incontinence: Your urge to urinate in that moment can be so strong that it causes you to leak urine (also known as urge incontinence). This adds to one’s feelings of embarrassment and humiliation. Others may get to the toilet on time and remain continent, but the fear of having an accident can make the urge feel increasingly more desperate. Nocturia: Overactive bladder can affect you during the daytime and through the night. Also known as nocturia, the need to pass urine through the night can be exhausting, disrupting your normal restful sleep patterns.   Overactive bladder affects about 12 % of the adult population. It can affect people of all ages, including young children and the elderly. If you are seeking overactive bladder treatment, first consult with your GP to identify any if there are any underlying health problems that are connected to your overactive bladder symptoms. Your GP may refer you to a consultant for further tests. If no underlying health problems have been identified or if you have not benefitted from any prescribed overactive bladder treatment from your medical practitioner, hypnotherapy can help treat your (neurogenic) overactive bladder symptoms. It can also help you cope with the stress and anxiety associated with your symptoms alongside other medically prescribed treatments.    

Overactive bladder treatment: bladder functioning

The kidneys produce urine that drains into your bladder. With normal bladder functioning, the bladder muscle (detrusor) is relaxed as urine progressively fills the bladder. The gradual stretching of the bladder triggers the urge to want to pass urine when the bladder is about half full. This moderate sensation can be controlled for most people for a reasonable period of time until it is convenient to use a toilet. When you want to urinate, nerve signals instruct the bladder muscle to contract and push urine out of the bladder and into the urethra. These nerve signals are coordinated with the relaxation of the pelvic floor muscles and urethral sphincter muscles as urine passes out of the body. With overactive bladder, the nerve signals between the bladder and the brain become “faulty”. Sensations of bladder fullness may be triggered prematurely. The bladder muscle becomes overactive and involuntarily squeezes on the bladder too early. This creates the sudden, persistent and uncontrollable urge to urinate even when the bladder isn’t full. The volume of urine passed each time by a normal adult can vary between 250-400 ml. Most people can hold on between 3-4 hours between visits to the toilet. With overactive bladder the volume of urine passed each time may be between 100-200 ml. Your urination frequency may be hourly.    

Overactive bladder treatment: what causes overactive bladder?

There are many medical conditions that may contribute to an overactive bladder which should be discussed with your GP. These include:
  • Diabetes.
  • Urinary tract infections.
  • Menopausal hormonal changes in women.
  • Neurological conditions like multiple sclerosis, stroke, Parkinson’s disease and following spinal cord injuries.
  • Specific bladder abnormalities like bladder stones and tumours.
  • Other factors that can affect bladder flow and incomplete bladder emptying (voiding) including enlarged prostate, constipation, weakened pelvic floor muscles from childbirth and previous incontinence surgery.
  • Reduced cognitive function affecting bladder control e.g. related to aging.
  • Taking medication that has a diuretic effect.
An overactive bladder treatment will be relevant to your underlying medical condition. Treatments can include medication, incontinence products and surgical procedures.   In many cases of overactive bladder, the exact cause of the symptoms is not fully understood. There are lifestyle factors that can contribute to your overactive bladder symptoms. Changing your lifestyle could form part of your overactive bladder treatment. Contributing factors can include:
Overactive bladder treatment drinking alcohol
Consuming large alcoholic drinks can contribute to overactive bladder
  • Drinking too many fluids, particularly those that may have a diuretic effect e.g. caffeinated or alcohol drinks.
  • Not drinking enough fluids. This might seem sensible to lower your frequency, but a lack of fluids can cause your urine to become too concentrated and irritate the bladder.
  • Having an excessive amount of acidic food and drinks. These can be considered bladder irritants e.g. fruit juice, tomato-based products, spicy food etc.
  • Suffering with constipation. The pelvic floor can be damaged when straining during bowel movements. Eating a high-fibre diet, drinking enough fluid and being active and help reduce constipation.
  • Having limited mobility. Restricted mobility can make it difficult to get to a toilet and increase your bladder urgency. Being physically active can increase bladder control.
  • Smoking. Smokers are more likely to have bladder control problems with a chronic cough. Quitting smoking can reduce these symptoms.
  • Urinating more times than is necessary. It can seem logical to go to the toilet “just in case”, particularly if you already fear being able to use a toilet for a while, but it can build a habit of urinating more than times than is necessary. Frequent urination does not prevent overactive bladder; it can make the symptoms worse in the long term as you get used to holding less urine and more sensitive to milder stretches of the bladder. Bladder retraining can help you prolong your urination urge intervals.
  • Being overweight. Obesity can be a contributing factor for overactive bladder in females. Excess body weight can increase abdominal and bladder pressure. Losing weight can help this possible cause.
  • You have weak pelvic floor muscles. This can be one of many causes of stress urinary incontinence and urge incontinence. Kegel exercises can strengthen your pelvic floor muscles (tensing the muscle that would stop urination midstream). General exercises (performed under supervision) that develop your core muscles, hips and leg muscles can also help strengthen your pelvic floor e.g. pelvic tilts, knee-ball squeezes, squats, bridges, bird-dogs, split table tops etc.
   

Overactive bladder treatment: emotional factors

Digestion can be affected by your moods and contribute to some symptoms of anxiety-related irritable bowel syndrome. Similarly, there is a strong connection between overactive bladder and those suffering with mental health issues like anxiety and depression. In a study, nearly 50% of patients with overactive bladder symptoms were also found to have anxiety. Does overactive bladder cause anxiety or vice versa? One study argues that there is an association between conditions like incontinence and anxiety. The physical and emotional link has been further substantiated in another study of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). Your physiology and psychology can exacerbate each other, perpetuating a cycle of increased physical symptoms and heightened negative moods. The relationship doesn’t have to exist, but emotional states like anxiety and depression remain as risk factors for overactive bladder.
Nocturia waking several times in night to go to toilet
Nocturia-induced insomnia can be exhausting
When a medical condition is not treated and becomes long term, other anxiety-related conditions can accumulate and make the symptoms worse. As well as anxiety, those who suffer with overactive bladder can also have nocturia-induced insomnia, social isolation, agoraphobia, claustrophobia, fear of embarrassment (social anxiety), shame, low self confidence and low self esteem.   Stress can also be a risk factor for overactive bladder. When you are faced with a highly stressful situation like being chased by a wild animal, your evolutionary stress response or “fight or flight” system is activated by your emotions. Stress hormones are released to help you “fight” the danger or “flee” from it. Priorities are given to certain bodily functions over others. Most people can relate to the physical responses triggered by these stress hormones when you feel under pressure or feel overwhelmed. Physical responses include your heart beating rapidly, your muscles feeling a bit shaky, your breathing becomes rapid and shallow, you sweat profusely etc. Even with moderate stress, these mild physical responses can be are activated and experienced. Your bladder is also affected by these stress hormones. Acute stress can cause your pelvic floor muscles to involuntarily relax and your bladder to suddenly empty. Relating this function to an evolutionary response, some people would argue that it’s easier to fight or run away from danger with an empty bladder. When you are under moderate pressure or stress, hormones can trigger a milder response in your body a moderate urge to urinate. The stress response can affect the urinary system in other ways too. When some people are experiencing stress, the urinary sphincter can clamp or tighten, making it difficult to urinate (also known as shy bladder or paruresis). Why it affects some people in this way is not fully known, but as another evolutionary response when you sense danger, it would be practical to “shutdown” some bodily functions until it’s convenient to urinate. With stress having the potential to over-stimulate bodily functions, some functions can become faulty. When you are in a state of constant hypervigilance, some researchers argue that the normal communication between the brain and urinary organs can become erratic. One urologist suggests that when you are anxious or stressed there may be an increase in urine production by the kidneys. With more urine being produced, it would have the natural consequence of increasing your normal urinary frequency.    

Living with neurogenic overactive bladder

Anxiety can weave its way into the management of any physical condition including overactive bladder. The fear of embarrassment or humiliation of having an accident in public may be central to what makes overactive bladder so problematic for those people who already suffer with a generalised social phobia. Even without having a social phobia, a condition like overactive bladder can become a specific feature of your anxiety when you consider a typical historical development from a young age. You may personally have had an accident, had near-misses or heard others mock those who have had an accident. Young children can feel embarrassed to ask a teacher to use the toilet in school. Even if you have the courage to ask the teacher to leave the class, your request may be met with an embarrassing public refusal. Unless there is a recognised medical reason, teachers often think that going to the toilet can be a reason for “bunking off” from the lesson. If you are allowed to leave the class, the awkwardness of leaving the classroom and then returning with the whole class looking at you can be unnerving for some children. Being taunted for something that is different to others is typical of how young children deal with insecurity. Trying to keep overactive bladder a secret from your peers can backfire if you have to keep leaving your peer group and disappearing somewhere. Unfortunately, suppressing a condition can make your anxiety worse increase your urinary urge symptoms. Being constantly worried and distracted about your overactive bladder and hoping to “ride it out” until break time can have a negative effect on your learning. Your distress may be heightened when you have the pressure of coping in exams. Strategies like limiting fluid intake can seem like a positive way of managing the condition but being excessively thirsty can also affect cognitive functioning. Cognitive functioning at school can also be impaired by the fatigue of insomnia. There is a strong connection between anxiety and insomnia. Anticipating and worrying about how you will cope with overactive bladder during the next school day can affect the quality of your sleep. Persistent waking can then start early patterns of nocturia-induced insomnia, creating the habit of going to the toilet each time you wake up and urinating when your bladder is only half full. As an older teenager, the quality of your social life can be disrupted knowing that alcohol will act as a diuretic. Using the toilet at the social venue allows you some respite, but the journey home can be agonising when you are inebriated with a large intake of alcohol and you have less control over your bodily functions. Rituals to urinate before your bladder is full can seem sensible when attending something important. You will habitually use the toilet before exams, lectures, work meetings, presentations, going to the cinema, theatre or to a concert performance. You may try to sit on an aisle seat or towards the exit to minimise disruption to the performance, developing a type of urinary-induced claustrophobia.
Overactive bladder treatment queue increasing urge
Waiting for the toilet can be a performance!
Managing public performance situations can leave you feeling on edge. You don’t want to leave it until there is a scheduled interval/break as the queues might be too long. You then fear that the toilet could be out of order. For women, you may feel disgusted that the public toilet is too filthy to use. You then build up your urge dashing to use another toilet situated in the other side of the building. Travelling with overactive bladder can be troublesome, particularly on public transport with groups or where you will only stop at scheduled intervals. You may feel too embarrassed or ashamed to communicate your overactive bladder to the driver. Travelling by car on motorways can seem like you are counting the miles to the next service station, even when you are in the driving seat. Flying can also be problematic with periods when you are advised not to use the toilet and need to remain seated. When the seatbelt sign is off, you have built up your urgency and you rush for the toilet to avoid queuing up. Even though you strategically plan the location of toilets in urban areas when you leave the house, fear of being stuck in traffic during peak times can intensify your urge. Travelling away from your home towards open spaces has the uncertainty of finding a toilet and can develop a type of urinary-induced agoraphobia. With a progressive overactive bladder, home becomes the safe place. You can live in the moment and feel relaxed. You have a toilet that you feel comfortable using and can (usually) use it at your convenience. Ironically, you may use a toilet less frequently when you know that one is available. The thought of leaving the house changes your feeling of security. This is how anxiety can affect the management of conditions like overactive bladder    

Overactive bladder treatment using hypnotherapy

There is some evidence that hypnotherapy can benefit your overactive bladder treatment. One study compared behavioural therapy alone with behavioural therapy using hypnotherapy. Both groups benefitted from the treatment, but the latter produced slightly better outcomes. In another study, patients with interstitial cystitis (a condition that also has symptoms of urinary urgency and frequency) were offered hypnotherapeutic imagery for their symptoms, others were offered rest. The hypnotherapeutic imagery used suggestions to heal the bladder, relax the pelvic floor muscles and calm the nerves that caused the condition. Three times as many people who used the hypnotherapeutic imagery reported moderate or marked improvements compared to the group that were offered rest only. Reporting these studies and other case studies, researchers argue that hypnotherapy can be used as an adjunctive procedure for overactive bladder treatment, helping to reduce the severity of symptoms and self efficacy. How can you benefit from hypnotherapy? Hypnotherapy can help you lower your general anxiety High levels of anxiety can keep you locked in a negative emotion-behaviour cycle. Your treatment will treat your general anxiety and explore if your condition has stemmed from other emotional issues. Hypnotherapy can integrate relaxation suggestions as part of the general hypnotic process. Your treatment will also teach you relaxation exercises and self hypnosis to empower you to control your anxiety outside of the treatment sessions. Hypnotherapy can target your specific overactive bladder anxiety In hypnosis, you are more receptive to accepting suggestions and affirmations without the interference of your conscious mind. Your overactive bladder condition will be discussed exploring your urgency, frequency, incontinence and nocturia symptoms. Hypnotic urinary-directed suggestions will also be personalised to treat your individual condition and treat your symptom-coping abilities. Hypnotherapy can lower your stress-related tension By overreacting to the subtle sensations of lower abdominal tension, you have formed habits that are exacerbating your condition. This may be causing the neural pathways to your urinary system to become faulty. Your treatment will examine how you are generally managing stress and develop new techniques to deal with lower abdominal muscle tension. Your treatment can also integrate recommended procedures like controlled voiding and pelvic floor exercises. Hypnotherapy will help you visualise your positive changes
Overactive bladder treatment visualisation
Visualisation can actualise your desired responses
Visualisation (also known as mental rehearsal and guided imagery) is a powerful mind tool that can prime your desired behaviour. For example, when you visualise controlling your urge response in a positive way, you are stimulating the neural networks to sense and feel changes in those parts of your body. With repetition, those positive changes become expected and it feels natural to behave as you want to imagine yourself. As your treatment progresses, visualisation can be used integrate other essential issues like trusting your body again, building your self confidence and your self esteem. Hypnotherapy can improve your nocturia-induced insomnia Waking up to go to the toilet several times through the night can be exhausting. You lay there wasting time, wondering whether you can drift off back to sleep or whether the urge will get stronger as your frustration builds up. Waking up drained of your energy can confirm that it’s easier to give in to your urinary urge. Hypnotherapy can improve your sleep quality and how you are controlling your nocturnal urinary urge. Hypnotherapy can reframe your past traumas The effect of previous accidents or near-misses can traumatise you, creating a surge of anxiety each time you feel anxious or deal with similar situations. Like a phobia, you feel threatened by those situations overwhelming you again. A regressive approach can be combined with solution-focused approach. Regression can help you to release the emotion from your past traumas and help you embrace the positive changes of your treatment goals.  

For more information on overactive bladder treatment using hypnotherapy contact Richard J D’Souza Hypnotherapy Cardiff

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