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| 04 Nov 2009 01:30:22 pm |
 Stress, Anxiety, Anger & Depression - part 2 |
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Treatment
Research suggests that adding appropriate therapeutic interventions to medication in the treatment of depression and anxiety increases the success rate (in terms of relapse) from around 60% to something like 90%. However there is also evidence to suggest that the new skills and learnings are state-related so that it is preferable (but not essential) to treat clients who are either coming off their medication, or have not taken medication in the first place.
We know that depression can be highly responsive to good therapy treatment, often within about 12 sessions. Getting the symptom remissions is not the difficult part - medication alone can do that. The difficult part is in preventing relapses and teaching the person how to re-interpret life experiences in a way that isn’t depressing. Hypnotherapy does not address biological factors but it can be valuable in addressing social and environmental ones - relationship problems, cognitive distortions, faulty attributions and other depressogenic patterns. I look at how this person thinks, how they respond, how they gather and organise information, how they decide on a particular course of action and how they establish contact with, or ignore, different parts of themselves in different situations.
Hypnotherapy has a great advantage when working with depressed clients in that it offers an opportunity to intervene on multiple dimensions simultaneously - some in awareness, others not. It means the unconscious can be engaged in the therapy process more immediately, which may be less limiting than the treatment being restricted to conscious, insight-oriented approaches exclusively.
Hypnosis may be used superficially to soothe anxiety, interrupt negative rumination, increase responsiveness and establish positive expectancy. It may be used more intensively to facilitate flexibility in rigid, distorted patterns of thinking or interpreting events, reframe meanings attached to experience rooted in faulty belief systems and build positive frames of reference for responding to life from a more effective framework.
You can contact me via www.theconsultingrooms.co.uk or by telephone on +44 (0)1278 784490. Personal consultations are available in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset which is easily accessible from Bristol, Bath and North Somerset, South Wales, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Dorset, and Devon. You will find me very close to the M5 junction 22 at Brent Knoll between Bridgwater and Weston-super-Mare. |
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Category : General Practice
| Posted By : consulting2 |  Comments[0] |  Trackbacks [0] |
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| 28 Oct 2009 03:11:06 pm |
| Anxiety, Stress and Anger Issues |
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Stress, Anger, Anxiety & Depression
You may not immediately think these are linked but its surprising how often they are...
Clients who present to me directly (i.e. self-refer) are more likely (in my experience) to present with ‘stress’ or ‘anger issues’ and are often unaware that they may also be ‘depressed’. This is particularly common when the depression is linked to an anxiety state. I am not qualified make a diagnosis of the medical term ‘depression’ because technically only a medically qualified person can do that but it may not always be necessary. If I feel an accurate diagnosis is required, I refer the client to their G P.
Depression
Probably the most common presentation to me is when the potential client has already been diagnosed as ‘depressed’ by their G P and is unhappy about taking medication alone for a variety of reasons. I would generally expect to liaise with the Doctor concerned in these cases. However I do not have the resources or expertise to help clients with a serious suicidal risk or those for whom depression is not the primary diagnosis and who may suffer depression linked to a personality disorder.
More on the treatment options for these conditions to follow.... or please telephone my receptionist on 01278 784490 during normal office hours if you would like to make an appointment for a personal consultation. |
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Category : General Practice
| Posted By : consulting2 | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 08 Apr 2007 09:08:17 pm |
| Relaxation Technique |
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Self-determined relaxation (or Self-hypnosis) is brought about by establishing what is termed a conditioned response - that is an automatic response in a person’s physical and mental being initiated by a cue, which is usually a word. I generally use the word RELAX as a cue, although almost any other word would suffice so long as it gives strong reference to a calm or relaxed state.
The first step in achieving this type of relaxation is to assume a comfortable position. This can be done easily in any straight-backed chair high enough to support your back and shoulder. Or you may use a reclining position, either on a bed or in a reclining chair. In the beginning it is best to practice in a quiet place, where you will not be disturbed. If sitting, be sure that your feet are flat on the floor and that your arms are resting, untensed on the arms of the chair or in your lap. It is not advisable to cross your arms or legs because as you become more relaxed you may find yourself acutely aware of your body and the weight of your limbs supporting each other may be disturbing. Also crossing arms and legs tends to limit good circulation!
The next step is the eye-rolling exercise. Simply do this: roll you eyes upward as high as possible. Try to get them high up into your forehead. While holding your eyes in this position, lower your eyelids and relax your eye muscles. Now, take a deep breath and hold it for five or six seconds. Then let it out slowly - all the way out until you must gasp for another breath. Now, think of the cue word “RELAX”. Let it float through your mind. By this time your feelings of relaxation will begin to be recognisable to you. You should have entered the light, or beginning stage of relaxation.
Now you must deepen this relaxed state. Count backward from Ten to One, allowing the cue word “RELAX” to continue to float through your mind.
TEN Take a deep breath, hold it for five or six seconds, release it slowly , think of the cue word, “RELAX”.
NINE Breathe, hold, release, “RELAX”
EIGHT Breathe, hold, release, “RELAX”
and so on until you get to ‘One’. By the time you have reached the count of one in this exercise, you should be completely relaxed. If you are not, begin again, repeat the process until you do feel totally relaxed.
Now you can give yourself suggestions. Keep them short and simple and confine them to a single idea. BE SURE THEY ARE POSITIVE.
After a suggestion has been repeated two or three times whilst in this state of self-determined relaxation, you can simply suggest to yourself that you are going to count to five, open your eyes and feel good. Do so and the state will be broken. This entire exercise, kept purposely short, should take you about two minutes to complete. With practice however, you may be able to eliminate the counting down portion of the exercise and use your cue word to enter a relaxed state instantly.
Good luck. Keep practising!
For help with learning other self-hypnosis or relaxation techniques, check out my website at
www.theconsultingrooms.co.uk or call me on +44 (0) 1278 784490 |
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Category : General Practice
| Posted By : consulting2 | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 13 Mar 2007 09:06:18 pm |
| Sleep for Insomniacs |
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Your brain has a natural cycle of sleep and wakefulness. It knows how to sleep, just as it knows how to breathe and pump your heart at the correct speed.
There are six golden rules of sleep which you must follow until they become automatic habits. As you do that, the mind exercises will work to re-calibrate the settings of your unconscious mind to release your capacity for deep, comfortable, refreshing sleep. You have to be patient for a few days only and your sleep will improve. Many years of research in sleep laboratories have proved that these are the most effective behavioural changes to improve your sleep.
(1) Set a new, earlier wake-up time – and stick to it!
Wake up and get out of bed every day 20 minutes earlier than your current wake-up time. Clinical research at sleep laboratories has demonstrated that it’s the singe most effective strategy for curing insomnia. Because sleep is a natural cycle – and falling asleep is something that happens to you – you don’t do it deliberately. But you can control when you get up – this re-adjusts your body clock and the rest of the cycle moves with you.
(2) Go to bed only when you are sleepy
This might seem strange, but far too many people think they ought to go to bed at a certain time, or believe that going to bed early will help them ‘catch up’ on their sleep. But you can’t force yourself to sleep. In fact, you must take a cue from your body.
When you feel tired and ready for sleep, your brain releases melatonin. It makes you feel it is so warm inside and so cold outside, all you want to do is cuddle up and let your mind wander. As sleep begins, your mind wanders more and more, your breathing becomes slower and deeper and gradually your brain-waves change. Feeling sleepy is the body’s signal of readiness for sleep. Once your new sleep-cycle is established, this will tend to happen at a regular time.
(3) Limit what you do in bed
There are only three things you are allowed to do in bed: make love, read these words and sleep. Don’t eat, read books, watch TV, chat on the phone or socialise. As you follow this rule, you make sure that bed is associated with sleep, not with being alert and active. Your bed should be a quiet, comfortable place dedicated to sleep.
(4) Get up if you’ve been awake for 40 minutes
If, after getting into bed and trying to get to sleep, you are awake for more than 40 minutes, get up and do something boring. The mind needs to learn that it will not be rewarded with anything interesting if it keeps you awake. Get up and do your accounts or clean the floor!
If you wake in the middle of the night, the same rule applies: if you are not asleep again within 40 minutes, get up and do something boring, Then, when you are drowsy, tired and sleepy, go back to bed.
(5) Don’t rest during the day
Sleep researchers have identified four distinct phases of sleep. Stage one occurs as we are just falling asleep when our thoughts continue from our waking state but are not longer under conscious control. Researchers have discovered that many people who are awoken in stage one sleep do not realise they have been asleep. That’s why napping during the day is disruptive. Resting with your eyes closed, you could drift into stage one sleep without realising it. That would upset your sleep pattern and reduce the impact of the urge to sleep at bedtime.
Most of your sleep at night is spent in stage two. The brainwaves show a pattern called sleep spindles and muscle tension decreases. In deep sleep, stages three and four, slower brainwaves, delta waves, appear. We normally get all the deep sleep we need, less than two hours, early in the night.
Later, we spend more time dreaming, most of it in what’s known as REM sleep, named after the rapid eye movement that can be observed beneath the eyelids. The best way to make sure stage one sleep at night leads into stages three and four, is to make sure you are awake all day, so you are ready for sleep at night.
(6) Sort out your worries during the day
Sometimes our unconscious mind waits until we have stopped the ‘busy-ness’ of the day to get us to think things over. If you find yourself worrying about something at night, follow this procedure: -
First, find the positive side of the worry. For every worry we don’t want, there is a corresponding solution that we do want. For example, if you worry about your overdraft, what you do want is more money. Now think of at least one step, however small, that you can consciously take the very next day to move towards your solution. Make a note and promise yourself to take that step tomorrow.
As you think, you will hear your inner voice speaking the thoughts. The voice might sound stressed, alert or excited. But you need to change that voice to make it sound tired and sleepy. Whatever you think, it must be in a relaxed voice that sounds as if it is about to yawn. That way, your mind will start to feel as if all it wants to do is snuggle up and be comfortable and warm and asleep.
There are four further points that research has shown will provide the optimum state for a good night’s sleep –
(1) Make sure you have a warm bed in a cooler room. Your bedding should be snug and the air around you slightly cooler.
(2) Take some exercise early in the evening, such as a brisk walk. This stimulates your muscles and heightens your alertness, which increases the need for rest later on. The sleepiness of your natural cycle is reinforced by physical tiredness when you go to bed.
(3) Make sure you eat in the evening, preferably a light meal.
(4) Cut down on alcohol and caffeine. It is not true that alcohol helps us sleep. It does emphasise tiredness at first, but it can wake many people later in the night. And even one cup of coffee during the day can affect your sleep at night if you are sensitive to it.
Adapted from Paul McKenna ‘Mindpower’
You can contact me via www.theconsultingrooms.co.uk. Personal consultations are available in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset which is easily accessible from Bristol, Bath and North Somerset, South Wales, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Dorset, and Devon. You will find me very close to the M5 junction 22 at Brent Knoll between Bridgwater and Weston-super-Mare |
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Category : General Practice
| Posted By : consulting2 | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [0] |
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| 30 Jan 2007 09:01:52 pm |
| Hypnosis is the Most Effective Way of Giving Up Smoking |
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The Government ban on Smoking in enclosed public places effective in England from 1 July 2007 has given greater emphasis to the National No Smoking Day (14 March) campaign this year. For anyone wishing to stop smoking, there are now numerous resources available. However, did you know that
· An extensive research project published in the Journal of Applied Psychology has shown that hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up smoking.
· By utilising the completely natural phenomenon of hypnosis, hypnotherapy can enhance the responsiveness of the subconscious mind to positive and helpful suggestions, give access to subconscious resources and facilitate the remarkably rapid treatment of redundant habits, conflicts and fears.
· Many of my clients change the habit of a lifetime in just one 50 minute session!
One of the most popular and widely accepted uses for hypnotherapy is as an aid to those who wish to stop smoking. It is also one of the areas in which it is easiest to measure success – after all, it really comes down to whether you stop or whether you continue to smoke. For most smokers, with their oral-compulsive personality traits, there is no middle ground – it’s a question of either black or white, good or bad, liking it or hating it and smoking or not. The person able to enjoy the ‘odd social cigarette’ and keep it at that level is rare.
To find the most effective method to stop smoking Frank Schmidt and research student Chockalingham Viswesvaran from the university of Iowa used a meta-analysis, utilising the results of more than 600 studies totalling nearly 72,000 people.
The results were published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and reported in the New Scientist (Robert Matthews). They included 48 studies of hypnosis covering 6000 smokers, showing that hypnosis was (for example) three times more effective than Nicotine Replacement Therapy. In fact compared with the success rates of smoke aversion therapy, acupuncture, G.P. advice, sheer willpower, self-help (books or mail-order advice) or nicotine replacement, the research concluded
Quote : “Hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up smoking”
I believe that one of the reasons for this is because simplistically, there are two parts to the mind – conscious mind and sub-conscious mind. The conscious mind situated on the left side of the brain, deals with logical, rational thought and sophisticated language. The sub-conscious mind, on the right side of the brain, deals with all the rest – for example memories, intuitions, habits and learned responses (like braking when someone runs in front of your car). The sub-conscious mind understands language visually in images and I gather that its language capability is limited to that of around a six year old (I wonder how they tested that!).
Most clients who come to me for help with stopping smoking usually know all the rational reasons as to why they should give up (these are well documented elsewhere) but they find themselves smoking anyway. They are also often aware of the internal conflict between the part that wants to smoke and the part that wants to stop. Since the part that wants to stop usually has logical reasons for doing so, it seems likely that the problem lies with the sub-conscious mind.
The state of hypnosis allows better access to the sub-conscious mind and hypnotherapy offers the tools to create visual images and language forms that the sub-conscious mind easily understands. Once the subconscious mind realises what needs to happen, the conflict is usually resolved and both parts work together for the general good of the whole person. Common side-effects of smoking cessation such as 'grumpiness' and weight gain (caused by substituting one oral compulsion for another!) are minimised. Clients report feeling more focussed, happier and of course, healthier.
You can contact me via www.theconsultingrooms.co.uk. Personal consultations are available in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset which is easily accessible from Bristol, Bath and North Somerset, South Wales, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Dorset, and Devon. You will find me very close to the M5 junction 22 at Brent Knoll between Bridgwater and Weston-super-Mare |
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Category : General Practice
| Posted By : consulting2 | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [0] |
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