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Releasing Disappointment

Disappointment is one of those feeling that we all experience but fail to discuss as much as other more (seemingly) significant emotions such as anger, stress and anxiety.
It may be because emotions like humiliation and disappointment tend not to be crippling. Life still goes on in spite of them, but they cast a bit of a cloud over what might be a perfectly happy human.

Disappointment tends to bring with it feelings of sadness and failing. It can have undertones of anger and bitterness and has the potential therefore to be a very complex emotion.

Often, though not always, disappointment brings with it a continual whirring or ‘what if’s’. If only things had been different. Returning to what might have been is what creates the stuck-ness that disappointment has and it cannot really be overcome until someone is ready to put a greater degree of energy and focus into what will happen next than they are currently putting into what might have been.

Living in the past rarely serves us unless it is to learn from the mistake we made and to make contingency plans for how we will be better prepared in a similar situation in the future.

Essentially, once the driving process of what might have/should have been has passed, the only way to really move on is by asking (and answering) the question:

“What are you going to do about it? How can you be ready for what happens next?”

Some of you reading may be old enough to remember the old BT adverts with Maureen Lipman in the late 80’s. In one such advert she calls her grandson to find out about his exam results. They are not as good as his grandmother would have wanted. You see the disappointment flash across her face and you can hear it in his voice too as he recites each subject he took and each one a failed exam.

Finally she says “You didn’t pass anything?”

“Pottery” he replies with a sigh.

It would have been a fleeting “What can he do about it?” thought that causes her to respond with: “Pottery? Very useful! People will always need plates. Anything else?”

“And sociology.” He responds glumly.

“An Ology? He gets an Ology and he thinks he’s failed! You get an Ology and you’re a scientist!”

As she continues to reassure him you see his eyebrows lift as he begins to consider that his grandmother might have a fair point in what she is saying.

Releasing disappointment doesn’t just come from finding ways to make the best of what you have or what you are left with. It also comes from being honest about what you’ve got and creative about what you chose to do with it next. It might also be a case of forgiving and deciding to set the bar in a different place to where your prior expectations had previously thought it could go.

Recover first, then make a plan for moving forward and make that plan have multiple prongs that can safeguard you from having the same sort of disappointment again in the future.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Find Your Happy

Some might say happiness is the absence of fear, stress or anxiety. For me it is more than that. Happiness helps us to access confidence more easily and is responsible for generating your overall feeling of positivity and contentment.

Since happiness is an emotion, it means we have full-time access to it, after all, we are the generators of our emotions. Of course, our circumstances might cause us to feel other emotions too. Ones that interfere with out ability to access happiness in that moment. Although it is estimated that only 10% of our overall happiness comes from your environment.

This means that whilst we could take a universal tragedy, that depending on how someone perceived that situation, there could still be people who would consider themselves happy in spite of it. This can only be caused by how they chose to think about the life rather than what life actually presents them with.

Learning to find happiness (especially if you have grown up with or work in an environment with particularly negative people) can be a real challenge. How can you condition yourself to have more happiness more of the time?

Comparative thinking is just one of the ways that we teach clients at the hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire. Comparative thinking is when, if you’re in a bad place and you notice someone who’s in a worse position than you, it starts to make you feel better as a result of comparing your situation to that of somebody who is, in some way, worse off. Comparative thinking comes from the school of positive psychology and is a way that people can effectively begin to change how they feel about their present circumstances.

Another way to increase your levels of happiness is to stop only rewarding yourself with happiness when you have achieved a goal. You’ve probably heard about the dangers in seeing yourself as successful once you have completed something. The problem this creates is you only have a very short moment of feeling successful before you have to create another goal post somewhere further away. If you do this with happiness too, it’s something you will constantly seek and never find. Avoid telling yourself things like “I’ll be happy when I’m with my perfect partner” or “I’ll be happy when I’ve bought a new car.” Find happiness in the now.

If happiness for what you have right now seems like to big an undertaking, then a smaller step can be to begin to find happiness in the every day things that you have learned to take for granted. For example, seeing a butterfly or a moment of warm sunshine on your face before the clouds blow over. When you have these experiences remark out loud or in your mind how lovely they are, or how grate fun you are. This will start to reprogram your mind to seek out more experiences like this. Plus it increases your positive memory references so that you have good memories you can return to for a top-up or ‘happy’ when you need it.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Bringing Down the Barriers – Dealing With Someone Who is Defensive

“Have you thought about getting a part time job?” I asked
“What are you trying to say?” Was barked back at me. |
“Errrm, literally just that. Have you thought about getting a part time job?” “Oh for God-sake!”

This was a recent encounter with a relative who, unbeknownst to me at that time, had, having recently retired, been asked the same question by many of our other relatives.

I hadn’t anticipated that such a simple and innocent question could prompt such a defensive response. If I had, I would have avoided asking it.

But sometimes we need to ask questions or make suggestions that we know are going to be provocative, either because of who we are dealing with or what the subject matter is going to be.

It seems unreasonable that you should have to formulate strategies to avoid upsetting the apple cart and so assisting the other person in changing their behaviour may be a more desirable alternative.

At The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, we subscribe to a set of NLP presuppositions. One of these is “You cannot change others. When you change yourself others change also.” So when I make the suggestion of changing the other persons defensive behaviour, this is a change that will occur as a result of your new way of managing them.

Firstly, you’ve got to start thinking about life from their perspective. What are these unjust that they are protecting themselves from? What are the ways that their perceive their value to be challenges or violated? When you have identified these consider their other motivators too. What do they like, what gets their interest?

If you can begin to communicate with them in a way that has them feel as if their needs are being met, as if you too have their best interests at heart they will not have the need to defend themselves as they felt they did before.

You need to create the sense that you are on their side or, that at the very least you understand there side, if you want to remove from them the feeling that they need to defend themselves from you.

In the example above, my relative was complaining about not getting enough pension. This told me that they were concerned about the finances. The rest of us were concerned about how much money she was spending due to boredom. But having recently gained the freedom of retirement, she was in no hurry to put herself in a position of employment as the above outburst had demonstrated.

I waited a while and had to pick the right moment to casually say “Wow, that’s a decent amount of money.” As I flicked through the newspaper.
“What? What’s that?” She asked.
“Huh? Oh nothing. It’s an advert for part time Christmas work at the post office. I didn’t realise they paid such a good hourly rate.”

The ‘planting of the seed’ proved to be a useful way to covertly work around what would have otherwise been a suggestion that was disregarded due to stubbornness and defensiveness.

When you begin to see the world as they do, you can change how you communicate to fit with them. As the trust between you develops the barriers of defensiveness will soften meaning that when you need to cut-to-the-chase with them, they will already regard what you say as being reasonable.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Learning to Make Connections After Overcoming Social Anxiety

The anxiety is gone (or at the very least is entirely manageable now) and you’re ready to start getting out there in the big wide world, making new friends and forging new relationships. But wait? How do you do that exactly?

I remember being about 7 years old and able to walk up to a child and say “Hi, I’m Gemma. Would you like to play with me?” It was a pretty cool strategy that worked almost all of the time. Except this one time when I was on holiday with my grandparents. We were in Spain and I was playing alone in a swimming pool. I saw a little girl just like me and thought it would be nice to play.

The challenge was that I hadn’t realised she was Spanish. So when I approached her to say hello, she looked at me and freaked out because I was speaking to her in the wrong language. I watched her swim away hurriedly to her father, talk to him in her own language and point at me as if I had threatened to kill her. It was a big wake up call. Making friends wasn’t always going to be as easy in the future as it had been in the past, and clearly there was a little more that I need to know when it came to making relationships. “Hello, do you want to be my friend?” wasn’t the fail safe that I thought it was.

There’s a rule when it comes to communications that ‘People like people who are like themselves’. Meaning that we prefer to connect with others who in some way appear to be like us. That could be something about their posture or how they use their body, the tone of their voice or even the sorts of words and language they use.

Therefore, a good first step in building up relationships with others after overcoming social anxiety, is to observe others first. Notice the communication styles they use. At the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, we teach people all of the different clues you can look out for to identify someone’s communication style; how to replicate it and communicate back to them in that style causing them to feel comfortable and at ease with you.

We’ll also teach you how to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. It goes without saying that we have all experienced an uncomfortable social encounter at some time, but when someone has had social anxiety, they have felt that feeling (or at the very least feared having that feeling) for a significant period of time. Taking that first bold steps to ‘get back out there’ and face up to whatever may come your way takes an honest acknowledgement that just because you feel better, it doesn’t mean that everyone you meet will be lovely, or that they’ll love you. Becoming comfortable with the idea that sometimes your conversations may be stilted or that people might not be as friendly as you would have liked; whilst still maintaining the knowledge that many people will be friendly and many other conversations will be wonderful, takes a kind of acceptance of the idea that that things may not be perfect every time and that this is perfectly natural and okay.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Moving On After a Relationship Break-Up

There are no set rules when it comes to the best way in dealing with a relationship break up because most of the actions you need to take will need to be customised to your own unique situation.

That’s why at The hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, we always perform a consultation (fact finding) session first to find out more about how you are thinking and feeling presently and where you’d like to get to in your thinking and feelings to be able to cope better with what has happened.

Some people will feel hurt, anger or simply lost when when a relationship fails. Part of moving on can be to look at why things didn’t work out so that you can be better prepared in the future to avoid the mistakes or clues that might have shown you that things were not as you would have hoped.

If you feel you have been wronged in some way, these are particularly important emotions to resolve so that you are able to be more robust in the future and avoid having what could otherwise remain as a vulnerability from being exploited.

Of course, we all know that time is a healer and that pain can fade with time. However, I also fully appreciate that when you are in emotional pain, waiting for it to pass with time can be an unrealistic expectation. When the heart break is interfering with your interactions in the rest of your life or preventing you from functioning as you need to, then it’s time to take some action to speed up the process of recovery.

When a relationship has gone bad and there were clear signs, perhaps for some time, that the partnership was toxic in some way, you’d think that this would accelerate the healing process. In my experience I have found the reverse to be true. Often when a relationship is already showing signs of unpleasantness, we have a tendency to want to fix it before jumping ship. All of that effort and energy that goes into tolerating abuses, helping the other person, making excuses for the way things are is suddenly redundant. It’s proven to be a waste of time and this can make us feel that not only have we lost someone who is part of our lives, but we have lost a battle to save them/the relationship/ourselves too. It’s an extra blow. Logically your mind may say “Look at all the trouble you had. Remember how unhappy you were, all of those bad things they said!” and then it seems almost crazy that logically knowing that to be true, you’d still feel so sad.

A baby step that you can take to start moving in the right direction is to begin to slowly build yourself back up. What do you deserve in a relationship? What kind of standards do you want to set for yourself that your next partner should (within reason) adhere to? What will you not tolerate?

You can begin to remove the emotional charge from this situation by reminding yourself in a way that an empowering coach would say “You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be treated well. Remember that and move forward with your focus there.”

Make moving forward about becoming the best you can be and really knowing what you want from a relationship. That doesn’t mean you are seeking another relationship necessarily, it simply means that you are making a point of knowing yourself, knowing what you want and refusing to take anything less than that.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Relief From Defensiveness

Defensiveness occurs when we assume we are in some way being attacked or threatened. The importance of what we feel the need to protect will have have a direct correlation with the degree to which we defend.

Whilst being able to defend what is important to you and having the ability to stand up for yourself are admirable skills that can prevent other people taking you for granted, sometimes our levels of defensiveness are overly elevated such that they begin to cause a problem.

For example, if someone rudely criticises your appearance because they dislike your choice of fashion, it is entirely reasonable that you should respond and defend yourself. After all, those little unjust that you let creep by will eventually eat away at your self-esteem, if you do not either develop some resilience or stand up for yourself.

However, if you are criticised for your appearance because you work in a job with a strict dress code or uniform and you showed up that day dressed as if you were having a lazy Sunday at home, then reacting defensively instead of taking on board the criticism (or in this instance we might refer to it as being feedback instead) could cause a problem.

As linguistics is my favourite element of NLP, one of the things I like to do with clients that I meet at the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire is to help them devise good quality questions that they can ask themselves when they feel that their defensive barriers are coming up.

Some useful things to ask yourself when you notice that sensation of needing to defend yourself are:

Will my reaction really make a difference to this person or me? Is it therefore really worth my time and energy?

Is this really an attack or threat or could it be a misunderstanding?
Could I relax and explain my position instead of defending it?

Is it OK for someone to have a different idea or opinion to me on this? If so do I still need to defend myself?

Will I still be bothered by this tomorrow/next week/next month/next year/in 10 years time?

Could there be an entirely different message intended to the one I am receiving? Would that change how I am about to respond?

Would I still feel defensive if I found something humorous in all this?

Not too long ago, I had a dispute with a relative about something which was so minimal, I now cannot remember what it was. What I do remember is that it was by text (which is never a good way to understand the other persons point or have them understand yours). At the time, it seemed to be significant enough that I had pinged over a few messages defending my position.

Simultaneously, I was looking for a way to wrap up the dispute because it was time consuming at a point when I had better things to do and I could feel the tension increasing as I began to feel more defensive. This was something that I wanted to avoid.

The other person then responded with a message saying “You always have to have the last word.”

Rather than defending myself again and sending something else back that would no doubt fan the flames further, I instead decided to make the situation humorous (for myself) by deliberately not replying to the message that stated I always had to have the last word. I had a little chuckle to myself about it and by re-framing the importance of defending myself in that situation was able to let go of the stress that being defensive had created.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Overcoming Parental Abuse

Our parents are the people we should be able to depend on the most. They are the people who have the greatest responsibility in not just raising us in healthy and safe ways, but also in a way that will develop our self esteem to enable us to have robust mental well-being.

Sadly for some, this basic requirement was not met. There are multiple reasons why a parent would fail in this way and each case were this failure has happened has its own intricate web of history. Some parents simply lack skills, others had themselves experienced poor parenting and some were just not fit to parent or to deal with the many challenges that a child can bring. Some Parental abuse may be physical, verbal or worse still. Some abuse may be deliberate and other abuses come from ignorance. For that reason, we will not dwell too much on the reasons for abuse or the type of abuse that can occur because each case should be regarded as unique.

What is important to consider is how you as an adult, now move on with your life in a way that enables you to feel free of the past.

For some, knowing why something occurred is important to them. Knowing why doesn’t always provide a sense of peace and knowing the real reasons why someone did what they did may be impossible at times to explore, let alone understand.

However, at The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic, we use a framework called the six human needs. These are different to Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs. The six human needs are based around emotional drivers.

The human needs are as follows:

Certainty
Uncertainty
Significance
Love
Growth
Contribution

Most of the behaviours we do will meet one or more of the needs above. This includes our negative behaviours as well as the positive ones.

For example, being physically aggressive towards another person could meet the needs of:

Certainty – That the aggressor will be feared and therefore feel more in control.
Uncertainty – That the other person may react in an unexpected way. It’s easy to think we may dislike uncertainty, but actually excitement and thrill comes from our need for uncertainty.
Significance – The aggressor will be noticed, acknowledged, recognised etc. Love – Clearly I do not imply that this is in a loving, appropriate or meaningful way, but that a certain amount of connection and attention may come from being aggressive. The aggressor may also have reasoned with themselves that this behaviour is a way to teach/create boundaries/communicate the importance of their message which they believe is a loving one.

There is a presupposition within NLP that “All behaviour has a positive intention.”

For someone who has been abused by a parent, the idea that their parents behaviour was in any way positive can be a bitter pill to swallow. However, it is important to point out that the behaviour isn’t necessarily intended to have a positive effect on the person at the receiving end of it. It simply means that for the perpetrator of the behaviour, there is a positive intention. That positive intention doesn’t necessarily mean that they are doing the behaviour from a positive frame of mind or with positive emotion. It simply means that the intention behind their behaviour is to meet one of those six human needs.

In meeting their needs, this allows them to avoid having to deal with other unwanted emotions that perhaps they would not have the resources to deal with.

With a combination of NLP and Hypnotherapy at our clinic in Hertfordshire, you can find that you are able to forgive parental abuse. That is not to say that you will forget the abuse or suddenly develop loving feelings towards your abuser. In fact forgiveness is as much for yourself as it may be for your abuser. Hanging onto parental abuse only serves to continue to harm yourself and this is where forgiveness can be very valuable. Many people feel frustration at how they have allowed the past to continue to hurt them long after the abusive situations have ended. When you learn to forgive yourself for abusing yourself in this way, then the real healing from parental abuse can begin.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

Speed reading

There are many claims by hypnotherapy providers that reading speeds can be increased using hypnosis- some even stating that reading speeds can be as much as trebled. Is speed reading simply a case of a skill that must be practised or is there really a way of learning this skill quickly and easily?

Speed reading works by taking in whole groups or sentences of words instead of reading each word individually. It is also common for a normal reader to “say” each word in their head as they read (inwardly vocalising), however speed readers tend not to do this, instead confidently absorbing the information ready for later recall, a bit like those with a photographic memory are able to do. They see and process the sentences but do not have to say the words to themselves as they read them. This means that with an increase of up to 800 additional words per minute when reading, the speed reader will also have a greater comprehension of what they have read- in some instances comprehending up to 25% more than the average reader.

Hypnosis can be beneficial to developing speed reading skills as suggestions can be given to increase confidence and trust that the information read is being absorbed and can be accessed easily later. Suggestion can also be made to help the reader ignore unnecessary distractions so that the mind is able to remain focused on the text and easily grasp each sentence.

Like any skill speed reading needs to be continuously practised in order to master it and the best way to do this is by reading as much and as many different types of texts as possible. In the early days however, it is important to feel that you are achieving to maintain your interest in developing the skill. This can be done by initially reading text that are meaningful to you.

There are also several practical steps you can take to help you develop your speed reading skills. For example, learning peripheral vision (expanded vision) will make it easier to take in whole sentences as you read rather than individual words. The kind of music you listen to as you’re reading can also have an impact on your reading speed.(Obviously lively tracks will likely increase your reading speed. It’s also important to read in the right environment- ensure that your material is at a good distance from your face and at a comfortable angle. Avoid reading in bed. Your bed is strongly linked to relaxation and sleeping so is unlikely to induce the right state for reading at speed.

“We worked with various techniques as well as hypnosis which were all very useful.”

By Gemma Bailey
www.GemmaBailey.com

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Behavioural Problems in Children

When ADHD, ADD and the such like come into existence, I begin to consider why they wasn’t around when I was at school- or were they? There were disruptive children yes, but perhaps they just didn’t have a label. A label to live up to.

We are all well aware of how society changes over the years, so is bad behaviour in children connected with an increase in single parents families, family breakdowns, classroom sizes and E-Numbers or have we experienced an increase in these behavioural disorders simply because we are more acute with diagnosis and more aware of our children’s feelings?

Perhaps the answer comes with a combination of these suggestions. And perhaps there are times, when medicating a child’s behaviour really is the answer. But the reason you’re here reading this, I suspect, is because you’re interested in finding another way forward that doesn’t involve pumping stimulant chemicals (such as Ritalin) into your already over stimulated child and unnecessarily making changes to their brain chemistry if you can help it. Disruption and bad behaviour can be anything including bad temper, and argumentative attitude, being deliberately annoying, anger and spitefulness. This inevitably has an impact on the child’s relationship with others and their ability to learn successfully in a regular classroom setting.

Surely if we are aware that behavioural problems are caused by chemical brain imbalances, then we should be looking towards altering the child’s biochemistry in the simplest way. Studies have already favoured more Omega 3 in a child’s diet to help improve concentration and attention span. By changing a child’s diet we are changing their chemistry.

Have you ever put a couple of teaspoons of sugar in a can of coke? If you haven’t try it and see what happens! Sometimes things don’t mix well and cause explosions. And it’s the same with children. One time when I was working as a Nursery Nurse a parent came to collect her child. She took the 3 year old into the hall to put on her shoes and I left them to it. A few moments later I could hear screaming and shouting coming from the hall. I went out there to find my little friend making it very difficult for her mummy to put her shoes on her. I simply cleared my throat and the little girl looked up. Then I gave her “the look” and she stopped in her tracks and very, very calmly let her mother put on her shoes. Needless to say her mother was stunned! There was simply a different kind of relationship between the child and her mother to what there was between the child and me. She knew exactly how to “push her mummy’s buttons” but knew it wasn’t even worth trying it on with me. If parents are inpatient, inconsistent or demanding, their child is much more likely to display disruptive behaviour. In addition, a teachers’ use of praise can have a very positive effect on a child and even lessen the likelihood of bad behaviour occurring.

What can be concluded is that a variety of interventions can be helpful for children who have behavioural problems. Coaching and redesigning of strategies can be useful for parents who require more effective means of dealing with their child’s behaviour.

Calming techniques and an understanding of other people’s point of view can help a child feel more in control and open minded. NLP can empower de-motivated minds and techniques can be learnt to resolve conflicts with others.

“He has more faith in his abilities and stands up for himself in an argument. He also does more (i.e. homework) independently- it’s great!”

By Gemma Bailey
www.GemmaBailey.com

For further treatment suggestions, click here.

To view Qualifications and Registered Body details, click here.

For inspiration by email, please click here

For Hypnotherapy and NLP Scripts, Ebooks and MP3’s, click here

For inspiration by email, please click here