Combat Stress; Think Happy Thoughts!

As Mental Health Awareness Week is approaching at the end of the month (21 - 28 May 2012), I thought I would write a post to highlight how hypnotherapy can help you cope with stress by generating positive images of the future.

A recent survey shows that 3 million people in the UK suffer with an anxiety disorder. The good news is that recent research into the relationship between what we think and how we feel could help you think yourself happier.

It seems that worrying thoughts and imagining unpleasant situations can produce physical stress in the body. A study in 2007 found that performing guided imagery of moderately unpleasant situations results in physical responses such as accelerated heart rate, faster breathing and sweating.(1) It seems that imagining unpleasant events can activate the brain’s fear network and result in an activation of the sympathetic nervous system.(2)

If we ever needed proof that worrying is not good for us, well here it is! Just by imagining these unpleasant situations, it triggers the "fight or flight" response as if it were actually happening to you at that precise moment, resulting in all those unpleasant physical sensations which are associated with anxiety.

The good news is that the converse also seems to be true; imagining positive events can make us feel better. A large part of my role as a hypnotherapist is helping clients imagine their preferred future, how they want things to be rather than how they don't want them to be, which as well as helping them feel happier, also enables them to make the changes necessary to make that future become a reality.

The validity of this approach would seem to be supported by research which demonstrates that the benefit of generating images about positive future outcomes may not be limited to mood but extend to subsequent behaviour.(3)

I use Solution Focused techniques in combination with hypnotherapy to help my clients replace unhelpful, negative thinking patterns with more beneficial thought processes. By thinking more positively, their anxiety levels reduce enabling them to cope better with life’s challenges.

So there you have it! To combat stress; think happy thoughts!

For more information on Hypnotherapy in Bristol

References:
(1) Sebastiani L, D’Alessandro L, Menicucci D, Ghelarducci B & Santarcangelo E L (2007), Role of relaxation and specific suggestions in hypnotic emotional numbing, International journal of psychophysiology, Vol.63 pp.125-132
(2) Kosslyn S M, Ganis G & Thompson W L (2001), Neural foundations of imagery, Nature Reviews: Neuroscience, Vol.2 pp.635-642
(3) Pictet A, Coughtrey A E, Matthews A, Holmes E A (2011), Fishing for happiness: The effects of generating positive imagery on mood and behaviour, Behaviour research and therapy, Vol.49 issue 12 pp.885-891

REM Sleep Helps Process Negative Thoughts and Memories

When we think negatively about events and situations in our lives, these negative thoughts and memories are accumulated and stored by our brain. I like to think of these negative thoughts and memories as being stored in a stress bucket. This stress bucket fills up with our daily negative experiences and thoughts which contribute to stress; these things can be small things like being late for work or not being able to find a parking space, or large things like losing your job or a relationship breakdown. They all add up and our head can get rather crowded by these unwanted thoughts and memories!

If you are a fan of Harry Potter, you might recall the ‘pensieve’ that Dumbledore uses. When he has too many thoughts and memories in his head, he siphons the excess thoughts into the basin using his wand. He says that "it becomes easier to spot patterns and links" in the memories when they're collected in the “pensieve”. In reality, REM sleep, or Rapid Eye Movement, is our equivalent of this “pensieve”.

At night, we enter in to REM sleep; the stage of sleep where we dream. During this stage of sleep, we re-run the events of our day and anything that might be in our stress buckets, either in clear exactly as it happened or metaphorically. These thoughts are then moved from the primitive part of the brain, where they are an emotional memory, to the intellectual part of the brain where they become a narrative memory. What this means is that the emotion has been stripped from the memory and you have a better control over it – you can think about it when you want to rather than it randomly popping up in your head when you don’t want it to. You can still recall that is wasn’t a pleasant experience but it no longer triggers the same emotional response as it once did and you are able to rationalise what happened.

I am sure that you are already familiar with how REM works, even without realising. Let’s say someone says something to you at work that upsets you. You go to bed that night and during your REM sleep your brain enters in to the process of emptying your stress bucket, changing those memories from emotional to narrative. So when you awaken in the morning, you may well have forgotten about what the person said, or you might not but you will definitely have more perspective on the event and be able to see the bigger picture, like with the “pensieve”.

Recently, BBC News Health reported that dreaming ‘eases painful memories’. Using MRI scans, Scientists were able to shed more light on how the brain deals with the memory of traumatic events and other negative, unpleasant experiences. The research carried out at The University of California showed that after a period of REM sleep, there was less activity in the areas of the brain linked to emotion (the amygdala) but instead, the part of the brain linked to rational thought (the prefrontal cortex) was more active.

In addition to emptying our stress bucket, during REM sleep there is a decrease in the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, a chemical transmitted by the brain associated with stress.

So as you can see, REM sleep is pivotal at helping to keep our stress levels down and emptying out those thoughts and memories which are no longer useful for us anymore. It is also of great advantage to those suffering with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

When our stress buckets are full to capacity or even overflowing, it makes sense that our brain would want to partake in more REM sleep to empty it. Unfortunately, this is not possible as the REM stage of sleep is restricted to approximately 20% of our sleeping patterns. So if our stress bucket is full, we never completely empty our buckets during our sleep and wake up still feeling stressed and affected by those unprocessed memories.

But there is good news! Hypnotherapy mimics REM sleep, helping to trigger a reduction in stress hormones and allowing your brain to process those painful memories and empty that stress bucket. Another great advantage of the hypnosis-induced REM state is that it doesn’t eat in to the 20% REM allowance of your sleep pattern – so you can go for a hypnotherapy session, listen to a hypnosis CD before you go to bed then still have your full 20% allowance of REM sleep, helping to process all those negative memories and thoughts and empty your stress bucket quickly and effectively.

Read the BBC News Health article Dreaming ‘eases painful memories’
Read The University of California Berkeley article Dream sleep takes sting out of painful memories

Read more about what Hypnotherapy is and what to expect from a hypnotherapy session

Read more on how hypnotherapy can help Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

BBC Radio Bristol Interview

Click on the video below to hear me talking with Dr Phil Hammond on BBC Radio Bristol Saturday Surgery about Seasonal Affective Disorder and Hypnotherapy.

How Hypnotherapy Can Help Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

Earlier today I appeared as a guest speaker on BBC Radio Bristol’s Saturday Surgery programme hosted by Dr Phil Hammond. The Saturday morning show discusses topical medical issues and this week one of the issues they were looking at was Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), what with the clocks going back this evening and winter looming. As a Clinical Hypnotherapist, I was asked to speak about this disorder and how it can be helped with Hypnotherapy.

According to the NHS, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that has a seasonal pattern. The cause of this disorder is not fully understood although it is thought that it may be linked to reduced exposure to sunlight during the shorter days of the year.

A lack of light affects the levels of two very important chemicals that are produced by our brains; Melatonin and Serotonin.

Melatonin is produced when it gets dark and makes us sleepy – it is how our body knows it is night time and that we should go to sleep. When the nights get in, we produce more Melatonin which makes us feel drowsy and encourages us to sleep more. People who suffer with Seasonal Affective Disorder produce much higher than normal levels of this hormone.

Sunlight affects the production of Serotonin so as the days get shorter, we start producing less Serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter responsible for maintaining a healthy state of mind. Serotonin is what helps us feel motivated, enthusiastic, happy and in control of our life and has a big effect on our mood and behaviour. It also has an effect on our appetite, sleeping pattern, memory and learning ability. People with Depression, including Seasonal Affective Disorder, produce much lower than average serotonin levels. Hypnotherapy helps stimulate the production of serotonin.

There are a wide range of symptoms associated with depression including:
• Depressed mood, feeling sad or empty, tearful
• Diminished interest or pleasure in daily activities
• Significant weight changes, change in appetite and cravings
• Sleeping too much, sleep disturbances
• Hand wringing, twitching, pacing, tapping foot, hair twiddling etc.
• Fatigue, loss of energy
• Feelings of worthlessness, helplessness, guilt
• Diminished ability to think, lack of concentration, indecisiveness
• Loss of libido

SAD affects an estimated 7% of the UK population every winter. If it was just down to the fact that we get less sunlight during the winter, then perhaps we would see a higher percentage of people suffering from the disorder, so there are clearly other factors involved.

The way we think plays a key role in whether we experience depression or not and this can also be said about SAD.

People often say “We are what we eat”, but also “we are what we think”. If we are constantly thinking in a negative way we are more likely to have negative experiences, feel anxious and depressed compared to when we have a more positive outlook. It’s all about perception! So if we are a “glass half full” kind of person we will be focusing on the positive aspects of the season, perhaps looking forward to taking the kids trick or treating, going shopping for some new jumpers or thinking about spending time with family and friends this Christmas and just getting on with life in a positive way. While the “glass half empty” person will be dreading having to get up in the dark and going to work, coming home in the dark, perhaps thinking about how they always feel fed up at this time of year and how its only going to get worse as the days get shorter.

Hypnosis helps the SAD sufferer to reframe their views on this time of the year creating a more positive and relaxed state of mind. Hypnotherapy helps to lift your mood enabling you to break the cycle of depression and get you focused on the positive aspects of your life, leading to an improvement in the symptoms associated with SAD.

Another thing worth mentioning is that our brain will always refer to previous patterns of behaviour in any given situation. So for example, if you reacted to a spider in an anxious way last time you saw one, then your brain will encourage you to do the same again. Let’s say that for the past 5 winters, you’ve felt depressed, slept a lot, put on weight, and not socialised much because it’s cold and dark. Now over the last few weeks the nights have started to get in and it’s going to get even darker in the evenings after the clocks go back tonight. Subconsciously, your brain is thinking what happened last time it was cold and dark? Well, you were depressed, you ate more and slept more and that worked last time so lets do it again! Hypnotherapy helps to change these templates enabling you to feel more positive and in control of the situation.

If you are suffering with Seasonal Affective Disorder in Bristol and would like to find out more about how Hypnotherapy can help you through the winter, call me on 07851 307 062 or email to book your FREE initial consultation.

Listen to me talking to Dr Phil Hammond about Seasonal Affective Disorder and Hypnotherapy

More information:
How Hypnotherapy can help with Depression, including Seasonal Affective Disorder
Information from the NHS on Seasonal Affective Disorder
Light Boxes and Seasonal Affective Disorder

How Hypnosis Allowed Me to Give Blood

Being able to give blood is such an amazing gift that I can now do thanks to overcoming my fear of needles with hypnotherapy.

Giving blood is such a quick and easy process and saves lives. Despite this fact, in the past I have been unable to even contemplate doing it. Not because I had an illness or travel regularly that prevented me from doing so but because I had a phobia of needles, also known as Trypanophobia. Just the thought of having an injection or giving blood made me break out in a sweat and feel anxious.

As far back as I can remember, I have been scared of needles. I remember standing in line at secondary school waiting to have an injection and the closer I got to the front of the queue the more wound up I became about the whole experience until eventually I had a panic attack. As I got older I thought this would improve but in fact it just got worse. Instead of acting in an adult way when faced with an injection or blood test, I would be reduced to a child-like gibbering wreck. Needle phobias are quite common but that wasn’t really a comfort to me. I resigned myself to the fact that this was how it would be for me, never thinking that my experience with needles could change in some way.

Then at the beginning of 2010, I decided to embark on a career change and started training to be a Clinical Hypnotherapist at The Clifton Practice in Bristol. About three months in to the course, I learnt about the fear response and phobias. It was kind of an enlightenment moment for me as it was at this time I realised why I reacted the way I did and that this could be changed allowing me to act in a more rational, calm, and adult-like way when I’m having an injection or blood test. It was a great relief for me. On one of the training days, I was grouped with two fellow students to practice the very effective fast phobia cure or rewind technique. We worked on each others fears which included a fear of heights, a fear of being sick and my fear of needles and we all went away feeling much calmer about our respective fears.

Six months later I got to test it out! I was due to go in to hospital for an operation on my foot and as with all operations, I was required to go for a pre-op assessment to check my health and during this appointment I had to have a blood sample taken. Instead of resisting, crying, panicking and having to lie down in case I fainted, I just sat there calmly and even watched the nurse draw blood from my arm with no anxiety at all. I was so proud of myself and very impressed with the result. My needle phobia was cured!

Getting rid of this phobia opened up the opportunity for me to give blood, something I could never have done before. So I went online and registered my interest to donate blood.

Upon arriving at the local donation centre, I was greeted by one of the nurses and taken through a quick medical questionnaire, had a quick pin prick test to check if I was anaemic and then hopped on the couch for the donation. I felt that the needle was just a minor inconvenience when compared to saving a life. The actual blood donation part only lasted 5-10 minutes and then I was escorted to the refreshment area where I was given a cup of coffee and some biscuits. I felt extremely chuffed with myself afterwards, knowing that my blood is going to someone in great need of it. I’m looking forward to my next visit in January!

I completed my Hypnotherapy training at the beginning of 2011 and I now help other people combat their fears, among other things, using Hypnosis. There are so many people out there with phobias of spiders, heights, and confined spaces, to name a few, and they no longer have to be limited by them any more. Hypnotherapy helped me overcome my phobia and it can do the same for you.

Find out more on how hypnotherapy can help you overcome your fears and phobias.

Hypnotherapy Provides Support for Irritable Bowel Syndrome Sufferers

Sarah Mortimer Hypnotherapy is marking Gut Week 2011 (22-28 August) by highlighting how the therapy can help clients cope with the symptoms of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome).

According to the organisers of Gut Week, about a third of the population experience IBS at some time in their lives. The condition affects the large bowel and symptoms might include abdominal pain and spasms, diarrhoea, constipation, bloating and excess wind. It can also involve an urgent need to visit the toilet and even incontinence if you don’t get there in time.

In 2008, NICE published guidelines for GPs for the diagnosis and management of IBS. Once diagnosed, the guidelines recommend 12 months of traditional treatments ranging from dietary advice through to anti-diarrhoea or anti-constipation medications as appropriate, or even low dose antidepressants to reduce pain and spasms. If the IBS has not responded to this treatment, it is classed as 'intractable'.(1)

In such cases, NICE recommends Hypnotherapy as an option to help the condition. In fact there are a small number of Hypnotherapists specialising in IBS working within NHS hospitals. According to the NHS on-line portal, NHS Choices, which offers information about how to make choices about your health:

“Hypnotherapy has been shown to help some people with IBS to reduce their symptoms of pain and discomfort... You can have Hypnotherapy as an outpatient in some NHS hospital pain clinics, or you can learn self-hypnosis techniques to do at home.”

Dr Roland Valori, editor of Frontline Gastroenterology, said of the first 100 of his patients treated with hypnotherapy, symptoms improved significantly for nine in 10. He said that although previous research has shown Hypnotherapy is effective for IBS sufferers, it is not widely used. Back in June, the Royal Society of Medicine announced that they were seeking to make hypnosis more widely used within the NHS.

IBS is more common in women than men and may be aggravated by stress and life changes. Hypnotherapy can help to alleviate symptoms often by addressing the underlying anxiety. It also gives you the tools to be able to cope better so that stress no longer triggers IBS symptoms. Hypnotherapy also helps to manage any pain that might be experienced as a result of the condition.

Sarah Mortimer would always recommend that a client seeks advice from their GP if they are experiencing any bowel symptoms to ensure there is nothing more sinister going on. In the event that traditional treatments for IBS prove ineffectual, Hypnotherapy has been shown to be beneficial. Many hypnotherapists who are members of the AfSFH like Sarah, receive referrals from local Gastroenterologists and GPs as they understand that Hypnosis can help alleviate the symptoms of IBS, especially where anxiety is involved.

If you would like to find out more about how Hypnotherapy can help you with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, then please contact Sarah on 07851 307 062 or email to book a free initial consultation. Find out more about Sarah Mortimer Hypnotherapy.

(1)Adapted from an article “Hypnotherapy for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is Evidence-Based and Highly Effective”, January 12th, 2011 by Helen Bremner

Curious About Curiosity

“I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

I would never have said I was a curious person, just someone with lots of questions and ideas. I have never been afraid of asking questions and many of mine have been quite strange at times such as do chickens have periods? Do butterflies know they used to be caterpillars? (I actually asked an evolutionary biologist this question) and many other similar questions. It would seem I’m not the only person who asks questions like this and they made a book out of it! The New Scientists books such as Does Anything Eat Wasps?: And 101 Other Questions is a great read for the naturally curious person! I have to say that I am delighted that Google and Wikipedia are so easily available to help answer my many questions.

The concept of curiosity seems to have curiously entered my life quite recently. According to Dictionary.com (another great site for the curious), curiosity is a strong desire to know or learn something.

As a Hypnotherapist, I am required to attend regular group supervision sessions to discuss various aspects of hypnotherapy, my practice, learn new techniques, keep abreast of current developments and to talk about case studies etc. My supervisor talks about being curious and curiosity quite a lot – it seems to be his buzz word and although I understand what curiosity is, you could say I was curious about the use of curiosity in hypnotherapy. I then went on an NLP workshop at the Folkhouse in Bristol and the workshop facilitator also talked about curiosity and guided us through a short visualisation, known as anchoring, which took us back to a time when we felt curious, helping us to re-develop our curiosity.

The time I recalled where I felt curiosity was an evening walking around the rock pools along the beach on Koh Phangan in Thailand a few years ago. The tide had gone out leaving tiny rock pools teeming with life – sea cucumbers, little crabs, and brightly coloured fish. They were all new to me and I’d never seen anything like them before so every time I saw something, I’d say to my partner “Wow! Look at that!” and “Wow! What’s that?” - It was like being a child again; I was so excited to be seeing these new curious little sea creatures. While visualising this scene and seeing in detail what I saw, hearing what I heard, and feeling what I felt it really transported me back there and I could really feel the feelings of curiosity within me and it made me feel excited and even more curious.

“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why." ~Bernard Baruch

Many things we use today, such as mobile phones, computers, cars, washing machines etc. would not exist if their inventors didn’t have curiosity! Hypnotherapy and NLP wouldn’t exist if the pioneers in those fields weren’t curious people. I wouldn’t have learnt Hypnotherapy or anything else I chose to study, if I wasn’t curious. Now there is a very well known saying that “Curiosity killed the cat”, but I would have to add that the cat wouldn’t have been fed either if he hadn’t been curious (check out the photo above, taken by foxypar4)!

Curiosity is important in our life; it is what makes life interesting and as Dorothy Parker once said “The cure for boredom is curiosity”. It also makes our mind active instead of passive, asking questions and wondering about possibilities and ideas. It is often said that the mind is like a muscle and the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes and curiosity is a vigorous session at the gym for your mind!

The Pegasus NLP Blog says this about curiosity:

“When we are curious we are not self-absorbed. Our attention, instead of being on ourselves and how we feel and what people think of us, is on the world outside us – on other people and on what is happening around us.

In the state of curiosity we take a break from that little dark room in our minds with all the chatter and analysis and doubts and hopes and irritabilities and guilts and resentments.

In the state of curiosity we take a holiday from self-absorbed thinking! We replace self-consciousness with other-consciousness.”

With this in mind, curiosity can be used to help our thought processes and internal dialogue become more positive and solution focused. So for example, if we do, say or think something which we are upset or annoyed about, instead of beating ourselves up about it and being self-judgmental like our inner voice might ordinarily do, we should be curious about it and say to ourselves “Isn’t that interesting! I wonder why that happened! Isn’t that curious!” Being curious helps us to have a different perspective on things and can also foster a more positive way of thinking in addition to helping us come up with solutions to our problems. Thinking “I shouldn’t have done that I’m so stupid” doesn’t get us anywhere but curiously asking “Why did I do that and what could I do differently next time?” can help us to move forward. Many of the questions I use in my hypnotherapy sessions foster curiosity and help clients to move forward with their lives.

“I keep six honest serving-men,
They taught me all I knew;
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.”
~Rudyard Kipling

Now go be curious!