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Boost Your Creativity

The Encarta dictionary defines creativity as “the ability to use the imagination to develop new and original ideas or things, especially in an artistic context.”

Creativity and imagination are largely linked with right brain functions, whereas analytic and rationalised thinking is more associated with the left brain.

As individuals, we may tend to be more inclined to naturally use one side of the brain more than the other, which would define the ability we have to tap into our creative talents. Of course, there are influences in our lives as we grow up, that are responsible for either nurturing or stifling our creativity. For example, most of our schooling tends to focus much more on learning via the left brain, encouraging logical and objective learning, as opposed to holistic experiential learning which is related to the right brain.

Creating can lead to a deep sense of satisfaction and there are many different ways that people can express creativity. The common factors tend to be that a great feeling of compulsion to do something. Then throughout the process of doing it, a connection with oneself, or even a feeling of motivation or trance-like experience. If the person remains motivated to continue their project until completion, they will feel a great sense of pride once the process is successfully completed. Just imagine if it was a requirement of your job to feel this good every day! In fact, those who set up their own business often do so as an extension of a hobby or creative process that they already enjoy.

If you are not a natural creator, how can you develop this skill to create more wholeness and inspiration?

Here are some tips:

1. Have a few sessions of Life Coaching to help uncover the things you value most in your life and begin shaping your dreams. Motivational techniques can also be applied if a sense of uncertainty prevents you from taking the steps you need to make.

2. Listen to music that makes you feel good and switch off the news! Often the news is depressing and can put you in a bad state.

3. Make lots of notes. You never know when those good ideas will sneak up on you and if you don’t jot them down, they may be forgotten.

4. Get inspired. Look at other people’s creative work, either in the field you are interested in, or just in the natural environment around you.

5. Do some brainstorming around your chosen idea. This will move it from pie in the sky to the specific steps you will need to make.

6. Read books. Books are great for expanding ideas and are “healthier” for your brain than watching the telly all the darn time!

7. Keep your brain fit by doing crosswords, and quizzes and participating in creative and intelligent conversations.

8. Be healthy in your body. Your mind and your body are linked so you need to look after both. Feed them healthy food and exercise them both.

9. Write a list of how you will feel and how your life will be affected by expressing your creativity. What will it mean to you?

10. When you get an idea, do something about it, before someone else beats you to it!

“Thank you all so much, this has made a positive change in my life.”

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Hypnotherapy for Stress Relief in Hertfordshire

I have seen the benefits of hypnotherapy in helping adults to manage their stress and improve their overall well-being.

Stress is a common issue among adults, and it can have a significant impact on their mental and physical health. Adults who are struggling with stress may experience a range of symptoms, including anxiety, depression, insomnia, and physical health issues. While there are many traditional treatments available for stress, hypnotherapy can provide a unique and effective approach to managing stress.

Hypnotherapy involves using hypnosis to help a person enter a state of deep relaxation. During this state, the hypnotherapist can guide the person to explore their thoughts and emotions in a safe and supportive environment. By using hypnotherapy, adults can learn how to manage their stress and improve their overall well-being.

In Hertfordshire, there are many resources available for adults who are struggling with stress, including counselling services, support groups, and educational programs. However, hypnotherapy can provide a complementary approach to traditional treatment methods and can be particularly helpful for adults who have not found relief through traditional methods.

One of the most effective hypnotherapy techniques for relieving stress is progressive relaxation. Progressive relaxation involves tensing and releasing each muscle group in the body, in order to create a deep state of relaxation. By using this technique, adults can learn how to relax their body and mind, reducing the physical and emotional symptoms of stress.

Another hypnotherapy technique that can be helpful for relieving stress is visualization. Visualization involves using the imagination to create a peaceful and calming mental image. By visualizing a peaceful scene, adults can learn how to manage their stress and reduce feelings of anxiety and tension.

It is important to note that hypnotherapy should not be used as a substitute for traditional therapy or medication. However, it can be a valuable tool for adults who are struggling with stress and can provide a complementary approach to traditional treatment methods.

In Hertfordshire, there are many resources available for adults who are struggling with stress and their families. These include counselling services, support groups, and educational programs. By seeking help and support, adults with stress can learn how to manage their symptoms and improve their overall well-being.

In conclusion, hypnotherapy can be a powerful tool for helping adults to relieve stress in Hertfordshire. By using techniques such as progressive relaxation and visualization, adults can learn how to manage their stress and improve their overall well-being. While hypnotherapy should not be used as a substitute for traditional therapy or medication, it can provide a valuable and complementary approach to managing stress in adults. If you or someone you know is struggling with stress, don’t hesitate to seek help and support.

Headaches and Migraines

I started having migraines when I was about 7 years old and found them a very scary experience. There is something quite frightening about experiencing that degree of pain in the part of the body where the brain is stored!

Luckily, my migraines would disappear after I had vomited, and gone to sleep – painkillers wouldn’t touch them at all. I was also fortunate to not experience distorted vision (sometimes called a warning aura) or prolonged nausea or the kind of migraines that last for several days.

I recently experienced a headache after visiting a friend who lives around 45 miles from my home. On the way back, the oncoming headlights of the cars began to irritate me, and I sensed that my headache was going to develop into a migraine. I knew that if I allowed that to happen I would certainly be stuck a long way from home, so I made the decision to stop at a service station, park my car and lay in a hypnotic trance in the back seat for about 20 minutes. Hey presto, 20 minutes later I was fit to continue my journey.

The reason why migraines occur is largely to do with chemicals within the body. Your body is like a laboratory, and the chemical within it have an impact on your physical body. When a person has a migraine, there is a change in the serotonin levels in the body (it drops) and this causes the blood vessels to swell. It is the swelling that causes the pain.

People experience migraines for different reasons, emotional stress or tiredness are often factors, some foods may also be a trigger, or in my example above bright lights were a factor and loud noises can be too. Going without food can cause a migraine. to start, menstruation or even changes in the weather!

Hypnosis is a wonderful way to escape from the pain of migraine for several reasons. Firstly the trance can be laced with suggestions for controlling and lowering the level of pain experienced. The simple relaxation is also hugely beneficial- if the migraine. was not caused by stress, you can expect that after the onset of the pain there is definitely going to be some stress and relief that can only be a good thing. For reoccurring migraines, suggestions can be given to help the patient become more aware of the subtle warning signs that a headache or migraine. is on the way. Then self-hypnosis or relaxation can be used to prevent the symptoms from increasing.

“I feel so much better. Thank you so much, Gemma!”

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Break Your Bad Habits

Having just looked at a list of bad habits posted on the internet, I can honestly say that whilst they are habitual repetitive behaviours, many of them are also disgusting. One site listed nail biting, throat clearing, lying, interrupting, chewing the end of a pen, smoking and swearing in its top 20 list of bad habits. And that’s not to mention knuckle-cracking and thumb-sucking.

Habits are formed when behaviour is consistently repeated. Eventually, it becomes an unconscious behaviour, that is, you can do it without thinking about it. In just the way your unconscious controls your blinking, breathing and walking without you having to remember to make it happen, it also takes over responsibility for activating the habit.

In a sense, the levels of competency go some way to explaining how this unconscious activity is created:

Unconscious Incompetence- Not knowing about it and not doing it. (Ignorant)
Conscious Incompetence- Knowing what needs to be done but unable to do it, lack of skill required.
Conscious Competence- Knowing what needs to be done and having to think about how to do it, in order to do it.
Unconscious Competence- Knowing what you need to do, and being able to do it without consciously thinking about how it is done.

We can see by looking at the levels of competency process, how a positive behaviour such as learning to drive, for example, is taken through the above stages so that it shifts from conscious activity, into an unconscious one. The problem with this process is that the unconscious mind will not distinguish between a good habit and a bad one. When learning to drive, this is generally a beneficial habit to master, and biting your nails for example is not.

However, the unconscious simply responds to the programming it is given. It does make a distinction about whether it is right for you or not. The more times you repeat the behaviour, the more hard-wired the behaviour becomes, good or bad.

This means that in order to break a bad habit, its automatic function of it needs to be bought back into the awareness of the conscious mind, in order to give the conscious a choice about whether to continue with the action. This could be enough for some to break their pattern, yet for others, even though when they are conscious of the habit, may continue to pursue it. For example, many people who smoke and know that they should give up, are aware of the cigarettes they light up and inhale. Worse than that, they are even conscious of what they are doing to their depleting immune system as they do it- and still they continue- why?!

The answer is that they get some sort of a payoff. An opportunity to be destructive and release some tension by biting your nails, or a moment to drift off and take a break from the busyness of work when having a fag. In the great scheme of things, it’s important to note that these payoffs are of course only temporary. They only alleviate pressures for a short amount of time and usually come with a downside, such as ultimately damaging your health, the way you look, the way you feel, or the way people respond to you.

NLP techniques are great for helping to get “leverage” for applying pain to the unwanted problem and pleasure to the solution. Anchoring techniques can provide an instant desired state to relieve tension for example so that it is no longer achieved by performing the habit. Hypnosis can be used to reprogram the unconscious part of the mind, linking unsavoury feelings to unwanted behaviour (for example feeling sick if you go to put your fingers in your mouth to bite your nails) and forming new habits to deal with stressful/ boredom situations in a new empowering way.

To book a free initial consultation with a licensed Practitioner in NLP, Hypnotherapy and Hypnosis, Please contact us at 0203 6677294.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Stop Evening Drinking Habits

For some people, the ultimate downtime after a long day’s work is a glass of wine. It helps unravel those tightened muscles, softens the thoughts in the mind and eases any prickly emotions from the day. It’s an accessible and legal way to unwind. More than that, it creates finality between the day you had just had and the fact that it is over. That you are in a different space, mentally emotionally and physically.

However, sometimes, the need to drink alcohol after a long day’s work becomes a habitual process that can quickly spiral out of control, or into some form of dependency.

Drinking Habits and Alcohol.

Of course, many people manage to have just a glass or two of wine or a small beer and they may choose to have alcohol one day and not the next. Some people find the same sense of release in meditation, yoga or hypnotherapy.

If it is manageable and within a healthy level then there appears to be little risk or concern. The point, at which someone might consider getting help, is the point at which they begin to feel that they no longer have a choice in the matter.

Of course, there is always a choice, because you are always in command of your own thoughts and your own actions. But when someone has a craving, the sensation and emotions related to that come from deep within the unconscious mind. Your unconscious is the domain of your emotions and unless you have amazing willpower, it can be a tricky business to do battle with your unconscious. It’s incredibly powerful and it’s also where the changes to habits, cravings and emotions need to take place.

Hypnotherapy and NLP in Hertfordshire.

Access to the unconscious to make these changes (such as to drinking habits) isn’t something that many can do instantly just by deciding to. The reason is that your conscious mind is often “in the way” of your unconscious mind. It is there to stand guard to make sure that you do not process any old suggestion and take it on board. This is why having a trustworthy hypnotherapist, such as a practitioner from the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, who is trained to access those guarded areas of your mind is so important and beneficial.

If you had a conversation with someone and they said “Well just stop doing it” that conscious logical part of your mind that has already decided that drinking every night is a bad idea, responds by thinking “Well if it were that easy I’d have sorted it out myself already!”

Deciding it, knowing what is right and wanting to do something better for your health and your life are all well and good, but it might not be enough to actually make you stop.

The first step is remembering you have a choice. No one makes you go to the fridge, pull back the ring pull, unleash the cork or any of those things. Only you decide that, and you can decide something else. Distraction can work incredibly well sometimes. When you really engage your brain in other things you lose time and you lose awareness of all the other things that you could have been doing instead (such as drinking). You only need to repeat this process a few times to break the habit completely.

It’s worth remembering that if you do stop completely at doing some habitual thing, that thing, no matter what it is – even if it appears to be totally destructive, was meeting a need. Here’s an idea of some of the needs we have (these are emotional needs, not physical ones like food and water).

Significance
Certainty
Uncertainty
Love
Contribution
Growth

So although drinking alcohol has many negative effects, we can evaluate the emotional needs it may be meeting and recognise the reliability with which alcohol relaxes gives a sense of certainty. That the vulnerability and volatility that alcohol can provide might also simultaneously provide a sense of uncertainty. Some people can only connect with others after drinking and it may be their route to feeling significance and love.

Any drinking habit that fulfils 3 or more of the above-mentioned needs is addictive. It’s easy for people to become addicted to alcohol; not just because the substance in itself is addictive but so are the emotional needs that it meets.

If you are someone who needs to break their evening drinking habits, contact the hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire about how we can help.

By Gemma Bailey

www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

I’m Not an Alcoholic

Defining addiction can be a tricky business. After all, we all have addictions that we allow to go unnoticed. Plenty of people are addicted to coffee, falling in love, and sugar and other random things have just been accepted as part of life.

We seem to have accepted too, that a glass of wine after a day’s work is perfectly alright too. Maybe for some that is two or three glasses, for others, it’s a bottle.

So at what point is that habit a problem?
At what stage of regular drinking do you have a drinking problem?
When does the label “alcoholic” apply?

For some, being an alcoholic means being drunk, almost daily, at unreasonable times of the day. But drinking a bottle of wine or two on a weekday evening is just the done thing. It has no bearing on alcoholism. Could they stop if they wanted to? Possibly, but perhaps only if there was a shake-up of their circumstance that changed their drinking routine.

So what are you if you are not a drunk-all-day-every-day alcoholic but you are a habitual drinker and it’s got a little out of hand?

You are an addict. At our hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, we help people with all kinds of addiction to regain control.

Unless you can make a conscious decision to not drink any alcohol that day and stick to it, then you are addicted. If it would cause you problems, distress or discomfort to go without it, you are addicted and it’s important to break that cycle. Hypnotherapy works with the unconscious part of your mind which is much more powerful than the conscious and to achieve success in breaking a habit or addiction, you need to have an agreement in both parts of your mind.

Not only is alcohol damaging to your body when you have large quantities over long periods, but after a time the effects start to wear off, and you need more to get the same level of relaxation or whatever other escapism it allowed you to have.

In preparing to stop drinking, it’s important from a dependency perspective that you wean yourself off gradually rather than stopping altogether one day. People who participate in “Dry January” after a spell of drinking through the festive season often have some uncomfortable side effects because they are experiencing a come down too rapidly. It’s better to formulate a plan of phasing the alcohol out of your life gradually and in a realistic way than to knock it on the head overnight.

Think about what would happen when you give it up. It’s likely that you will sleep better, be sharper and brighter throughout the day and save your liver and kidneys in the future.

Then consider what would happen if you didn’t give it up. What the day-to-day implications would be and the long-term effects on your health.

Go back to the positive results of having achieved it and notice how much better that feels.

If you feel that you are influenced, either by your own tendency to sabotage your efforts or by others who will continue drinking, you may benefit from some help in stopping drinking alcohol. Hypnotherapy is both safe and effective for those who wish to stop drinking, whether you are an alcoholic or just have an unhealthy relationship with it.

By Gemma Bailey www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Addictions

There once were many myths and misconceptions surrounding the reasons why addictions occur. Some believed that substances in themselves were not addictive, that it was the body’s chemical reaction to the substance to which the individual is addicted. This claim could certainly seem plausible when considering gambling or shopping addictions. There are no foreign chemicals entering the body, rather than the body is creating its own chemical reaction (dopamine/adrenalin) in response to the external stimulus of gambling or shopping, and it is the feeling that the individual is addicted to, not the actual act itself.

It is also understandable that when one introduces chemicals to the body, chemical reactions occur. Some of these reactions stimulate reward centres within the brain which are triggered when a person exercises, falls in love or is praised or acknowledged.

Sometimes an addiction occurs when a person uses drugs, cigarettes, alcohol or even food, to alleviate stress and worry. In order to successfully treat these types of addictions, the person must focus on increasing their levels of self-esteem so that they are able to create good feelings about themselves without any need to have the feelings triggered by an external stimulus.

It is difficult to predict if one person is more likely to suffer from addiction than the next. Again, claims have been made that some suffer from an addictive personality. It is also wise to consider the social circumstances of addicts. For example, if your parents smoked, you are more likely to be a smoker – this may be because you see the behaviour as socially acceptable or because you have a genetic predisposition or both. If your friend takes drugs, you are likely to be influenced by them. There are of course other factors. If a person is lacking in a structured life or has experienced an over-structured life, drugs can be a form of escape and detachment from a life which is perhaps, not entirely fulfilling.

Often, an addiction will increase in severity over time. This is because the body becomes regulated and used to the addictive chemical being in the body. To achieve the same level of stimulation, more of the addictive chemical is needed in the body. Many addictions can cause serious health, social, physical and mental problems and when addictive substances are increased in a non-regulated environment, the consequences can be devastating.

Fortunately, changes can be made. Addicts do not necessarily need to be addicts for the rest of their lives. If the addict is willing and motivated to change, there are ways of easing and in some cases removing completely, the side effects when withdrawing from an addictive substance.

NLP can be used to help the client understand new perspectives about how the addiction has impacted on their lives. Techniques can be used to desensitise any negative associations from the past, and positive triggers can be installed for use when the cravings would normally occur.

Hypnosis can be used to remove habits and create changes in the subconscious, the part of the mind responsible for creating and maintaining habits. Post hypnotic suggestions can be used to associate powerful negative feelings to the addictive act or substance so that these powerful negative feelings are experienced in the future if ever the patient considers interacting with the addictive substance or acting again.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

The Power of A Great Motivational Video!

If you’re like everyone else, then you’re probably suffering in silence.

Everyone gets them bad days where nothing goes right from the moment you jump out of bed and sometimes bad days continue from one day to the next then eventually a week passes, then a month.

When nothing is going right or your way and you’re feeling a bit down in the mouth about it – Go to Youtube on your phone, tablet or computer and type in ‘Motivational videos’. I have included an incredible Motivational video for you below but there are loads more online and you might find one or two which really reach out to you and relates to you!

If you’re not happy with your life, do something about it!

Learn a new skill
Share a joke or a new fact with the person next to you
Seek out someone who inspires you
Set some goals for yourself
Change your career or take up an evening course
Start a journal to note down your thoughts and find the right path

Remember: Never Give Up After A Bad Day!

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is all about confidence, self-esteem and how to deal with emotional issues. The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic offers a free consultation, we can share with you some NLP techniques that you can use to motivate yourself, and give yourself confidence and we can give you access to these positive thoughts on a daily basis.

The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic is a team of therapists who specialise in hypnotherapy, NLP, CBT and coaching in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and North London. We provide therapy sessions for adults and children wishing to overcome anxiety, stress and depression and for those who wish to overcome phobias or stop bad habits such as smoking. We specialise in working with NHS Staff and the Police. Call 0203 6677294 or email clinic@HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Find out more about Hypnotherapy, NLP & CBT in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire or North London here: www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Resilience

I think a lot of people think resilience is your ability to stay strong in the face of uncertainty or in difficult circumstances. For me, resilience is how quickly and easily you get back up once you’ve been pushed down. When I think about resilience in the context of my own experiences in life, resilience had come about from having some quite negative things happening in my life previously. I have learnt how to survive and come out the other end and I have learnt how to cope with certain situations through developing methods and coping strategies. When things get tough I now know how to deal with it better through previous hardships and how I proceed in a more positive direction.

Therefore, speaking of things that may contribute towards becoming a resilient person here’s what I think you need: I think you need confidence because if you lack confidence then you’re going to find it very difficult to put into action and employ any sorts of strategies. You might feel like hiding under the duvet and that is not going to be the ideal solution. You need to have enough confidence to get out there and face the world. You’ve got to have the confidence there in the first place to be able to push through difficulty. You also need hope! Hope is super important. You need to believe that you have something worth fighting for so that you don’t get completely overwhelmed by the negative experiences that happen in life. You’ve got to hope that you’ll be okay and you’ve got to have hope that things will turn out all right in the end.

Overall, I would say you’ve got to just have a quite positive state of mind because the more positive you are the easier it is for you to be creative and resourceful and to think about alternative ways of reframing your circumstances. The more easier it is for you to problem-solve your way through a situation.

What’s important in developing resilience is not being shy about putting yourself in situations where you might get knocked down and not holding back from situations where you might get knocked back because those knockbacks are you developing a thick skin which will help you to become more resilient and emotionally more tougher.

While I worked as a manager in a large private day nursery, there was a staff member called Charlotte. Charlotte’s social status was different from mine, I grew up on a council estate, I worked hard to get my diploma to be able to work with children. Charlotte came from a wealthy family and had been given some of the finer things in life which I had to work hard towards i.e first car was a new car and a deposit was put down on her house. I was her manager and I was grafting away to be able to afford my monthly car payments just to get myself to work. I felt resentful not just because of her social status but also because she had a good relationship with her parents.

One day I noticed that she had developed a skin condition called dermatitis. It was on both of our hands and it looked like her skin was falling off and it looked look pretty uncomfortable, to be honest and it was stress related. It took me a while to reframe the beliefs that I was carrying around “she’s got it easier than I have and it’s not fair and I wish I had it that easy”. What I realised was something that for me might be by comparison to all the other stuff quite a low-level problem, for her, it was really significant because it seemed like she’d missed out on the benefits of having tough stuff happen in life. From having tough things happen in your life, you can learn so much and build up your resilience through time and experiences.

When going through tough times, you might feel that the best thing in the world is if you had no problems but if you are a person who can see a silver lining then you can really start to enjoy life a lot more and get a lot more benefits from living it even when it’s really difficult.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Doing the Right Thing for Others!

My sister has special needs and doesn’t have any form of communication. Doing the right thing for her relies on me thinking of my sister’s needs, wants and preferences and making a decision. Like my sister’s situation, we can all be put in a situation where we are winging it a little bit by making decisions for others and then finding we need to justify it. It can get a little bit daunting when you are thinking about what is the right thing to do for someone else.

In my work at NLP4Kids, we quite often work with safeguarding issues. In a safeguarding situation, we have to take the best interests of the child into account primarily. It’s challenging at times to not get tangled up in the story of what’s happening with the parents or the story of their history or where they are now or where they might be going too. It makes it really difficult at times to know what doing the right thing looks like in a safeguarding case. One of the things that are used as a benchmark for considering how someone might behave in the future is to look at their past behaviours. The best indicator of how someone might behave and react in the future is to think about how they behaved and reacted in the past.

For example, in criminal psychology, the best indicators for how someone might behave once they leave prison is going to be based on what they did before they went to prison or how they were behaving whilst they were in prison. This will give us an idea of what’s going to happen when they get back out there in society. This helps to put the safeguards in place to hopefully help them to avoid doing the thing that got them into prison in the first place. When it comes to doing the right thing and knowing what’s right for somebody else, we’re trying to predict the future and think about the effect that it will have on them and the people around them.

If a hundred years from now there is another global pandemic, you’re going to be looking back at the C-19 pandemic to see how might people react and how we need to manage the situation. In addition, we might find that years from now, society has changed so significantly that actually what’s happening now isn’t the best indicator of what to do at that time. There might be other more recent events that would give a better indication as to how the population will react to being quarantined and locked down and all of those different experiences that we went through recently.

If I want to know how someone’s going to react towards restrictions or solutions I make for them in order to know, how they’re going to react to that I need to look at their past behaviour. This doesn’t just apply to an individual it applies to entire populations – if you want to know how a group or a community is going to respond to certain sanctions that are put in place or even rewards that are put in place look back on their reactions and responses to previous sanctions and rewards that were put in place in the past and then you can decide ‘am I really doing the right thing for them or might this actually have quite a detrimental effect on them?’ Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t just about ecology it’s also about economics and what offers a wider or greater number of positive outcomes.

If you are making choices and decisions that affect other people they’re always going to do what they’re going to do and that’s not me saying that they can’t change, that’s me saying that you have limited control over the outcomes that exist for other people and that at times in doing the right thing, the only thing we can really do is to prepare for the worst while simultaneously hoping for the best possible outcome.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk