Category Archives: Articles

Taking On Other People’s Problems (and how to avoid it)

People automatically and without realising it, become very talented at moving their
problems through time, space and energy. You might know someone, we all do, who is
particularly good at generalising and stating that things always work out this way, or
everybody does this or that.

We all do generalise, it is part of the filtering that our mind generates in order for us to
get rid of information that comes into our mind that it is not relevant to us, or not
important to us.

Despite these generalisations sometimes being inaccurate (because it’s probably not
everybody, it’s probably not always) we continue to use this kind of language for ease in
our communication. But is it causing us problems sometimes?

Do these generalisations trip us up sometimes? Do they trip us up when we are using
them in our own language or perhaps when we believe the generalisations of others? If
this is a problem you experience, it might be worth getting some hypnotherapy or NLP
sessions to help you with this.

Those who generalise are being inaccurate some of the time because they continue to
apply the rules to all occasions, painting their generalisation paint brush over a greater
space than the original image and blurring the edges of the picture of reality. So,
generalisations do distort things for us. Although it does make our communication much
faster.

Perhaps you know someone (and if you don’t then it is probably you!) who moves
problems from the past onto others. They like to share their story. To share their pain,
zap their own energy and quite possibly zap yours at the same time too.

So, a classic example of this could be. I have a terrible headache today. You know what
it is like when your head is just pounding and you start to feel sick and as soon as you
hear the words, well you know what it’s like. Unless you are an absolute ninja in mind
voodoo then you start trying on the pain mentioned to see if you see if you do know how
it feels to have that pounding headache. When you do that you’re probably not getting
yourself into a particularly good state. This is not a useful thing for you to do. So, it
means the person you are communicating with has very effectively moved their own pain
through space, through time, out of them and into you. NLP strategies can protect you
form this.

Now to be fair, of course, you do always have choices about whether you decide to pick
up that pain and ‘try it on’ and to avoid doing so, you will need to become a bit more
self-aware. Some of it comes from you being a better listener, instead of just nodding
your head in the right places and falling into their state with them. You don’t have to
take other people’s pain on. If for example, I have a pen and I give you that pen and say
here I have a pen for you as a gift please take it and I give it to you and you take it. Who
owns the pen? Of course, you do, you own the pen, I just gave it to you.

Now, if that pen was my anger, or my aches and pains, or my sadness and I came to you
and said here, here is my sadness, let me tell you all about it. I want to give you this
information as a gift and you take it and make yourself feel sad then it’s your problem.

So, remember you do have the opportunity and you do have the option to say, ‘no thank
you I do not want your gifts!’ Be aware of the people who do that to you, who you do
that to, and that problems can be moved through energy. They can be moved from one
person to the next, to the next. It’s a bit like laughter, it’s contagious. But that’s a very
good thing, but sometimes so is misery and that is not a good thing at all.

The Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic provides Hypnotherapists and NLP coaches in
Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex and Coventry to help with the
management of stress, anxiety and depression.

For more information about our free consultations and sessions, contact us on 0203
6677294

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Using Matching and Mirroring When Meeting New People

From an NLP perspective, when you meet someone new, think about the matching and mirroring of your body language. If you want to create a good first impression, rapport is absolutely essential. Now rapport is all about us liking people that are like ourselves. We connect with them much more easily and more naturally and because you don’t necessarily know this person’s history, you don’t know about their hobbies and interests, there’s a better way of being able to get rapport with them. On the basis that the majority of our communication, fifty five percent comes through our body language, our body language is the best way to gain that rapport and the way we do this in NLP is using a tool called matching and mirroring.

What this means is that you copy some of the gestures and some of the physical observations that you make about the person you’re communicating with. So, if you notice, for example, that they tap their finger gently on their knee whilst they’re talking and then pause when it’s your turn to talk, you could perhaps be tapping your finger or tapping your foot whilst you’re talking and then pause when it’s their turn to talk. If you notice that they, for example, lean over on one side then you too can move yourself into a posture where you are leaning over to one side.

Remember you need to be subtle about this. You don’t want to come across as weird and just outright copying them but it is a great way to be able to get rapport. The more subtle you can be the better, so if you can match and mirror things like breathing and blinking rates, that’s much more effective than some of the bigger gestures.

However most of us perhaps cross our legs when we sit down so if you notice that their legs crossed then you do the same. If they uncross legs, you can leave a few seconds and then you can uncross legs too. So, the difference between matching and mirroring isn’t all that great. Mirroring simply means that you are copying as if you were looking in the mirror so if they are right hand raised then if you are facing them you would be left hand raised, because that would be like a mirror image.

Matching means if they were sitting opposite you and they had their right hand raised, you would have your right hand raised, so you would be opposites to each other as you were looking at each other. However, they both appear to be just as effective as each other.

These skills are taught at our Hertfordshire and North London Clinic by our trained therapists.

I remember when I was working as a Nursery Manager for a large private day nursery corporation and I interviewed a nursery nurse. It makes me laugh thinking about it now – I interviewed a nursery nurse who wanted to work in our baby room. One of the things that we did in the baby room was something called ‘floor play’ which is when you have lots of different activities, but they’re all set out on the floor because they are for babies.

And this nursery nurse that came to see me was very keen on making a good first impression. She was neat and tidy. She had revised her C.V. really well she knew all about the technical stuff in terms of looking after babies and she was coming across as very confident. In fact, if I remember correctly she was coming for a supervisor’s job so I think she was trying extra hard.

Now this was one of those situations where I really had to kind of bite my lip for the rest of the interview because I was very close to laughing my head off. The question I asked her was “which particular activity do you most like to do with the babies in the baby room” and her answer was “I really like to do foreplay”. Instead of floor play.

So, she went bright red and I just bit my lip and pretended that I hadn’t noticed. Here’s the thing if you get your words in a muddle, apologise and carry on. If it’s something like that then I think as long as the person that you are trying to make a good impression with has got a sense of humour, it would be okay to have a giggle about it, but watch out for their reaction before you decide how to address it.

The Hypnotherapy and NLP clinic in Hertfordshire and North London can help you to learn the skills of effective rapport building just a few sessions. Just give us a call to find out more.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Getting a Good Night Sleep – Part 3

One of Milton Erickson’s remedies for sleep was that if they laid in bed for more than fifteen minutes and they hadn’t gone to sleep within that fifteen-minute time period, they were to get up out of bed and go and polish the kitchen floor for the whole night.

They would spend the entire night polishing the kitchen floor and go to work the next day and then come home and if they, by any chance they happened to go to bed that night and still be awake fifteen minutes after getting into their bed, they would have to get up and clean the kitchen floor for the whole night again. After that first night of having absolutely no sleep whatsoever they was so exhausted that of course they got into bed and very quickly went off to sleep.

It started a new pattern and once it happened to that particular client maybe three maybe four times that he’d had to get up and polish the kitchen floor all night his brain very quickly caught on to the fact that when it got to bed, it had to go straight to sleep because otherwise there was a punishment for him.

If you are somebody who’s got into the habit of waking up in the middle of the night, instead of laying there tossing and turning get up and get out of bed. If you find that you’re laying there awake for more than fifteen minutes, get up and go into another room. Remove yourself from the bed-place which should be linked to sleeping and go and do something that is not at all relaxing – go and do some work or reading. I would suggest to you, keep doing that thing until it’s time for you to get up and do your normal morning routine.

You of course have to remember from a safety element that you do require a certain number of hours sleep in order for you to drive and function the next day so only do that extreme Erikson measure if it’s going to be safe for you to do so and to be able to get through the next day effectively and safely. So, if you can’t do the Erickson technique and go all the way through till the next morning, then keep going at least for ninety minutes.

I’m not too sure how true this is, but I did hear that a sleep cycle lasts for ninety minutes so if you’ve woken up and you don’t get back to sleep straight away you might have to wait ninety minutes until the next kind of sleep cycle starts again. So, if you find that you’re awake and you’ve had to get up and go and do something else, do that something else for about ninety minutes. Let’s say eighty to be on the safe side, then get yourself back to bed and hopefully you’ll be into that next cycle of sleep and will be able to get back off to sleep again.

So, the other useful thing in terms of getting yourself to sleep and having a good sleep routine is anchoring. Usually in NLP when we’re creating anchors we traditionally, for the most part we’re using kinesthetics anchors so an anchor which is activated by some form of touch and it could be you touching the client in a particular location or it could be the client is touching their own handle, their own fingers or something like that. Some kind of kinesthetics anchor for them.

The anchor I’m going to suggest to you, in order for you to use this in helping you get to sleep better at night, is actually an olfactory anchor and those of you in the know, will know that olfactory is to do with smells.

Lavender very good for relaxing you. There’s all sorts of aromatherapy that is used for relaxation and for calming people down. There’s a whole market of sleep sprays that you can buy. Spray it around your pillow or around your bed and where you sleep, every night when you go to bed and eventually your brain will start to associate that smell with the winding down, relaxing and going to sleep and there you have your anchor.

External stimulus, being the smell creates an internal state of relaxing into a deep sleep.

If you are suffering from insomnia, book a free consultation with the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic to work with a qualified hypnotherapist in Hertfordshire or North London.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Getting a good night sleep – Part 2

Remember that when you are eating you are giving your body the fuel it needs to survive and that fuel could be really good quality and exactly what your body needs or it might be filled up with crappy chemicals. And if you’re filling your body with crappy chemicals, you are going to create some kind of chemical reaction within your body. That chemical reaction could be adrenaline. That’s the one thing that’s really going to interfere with you trying to get to sleep at night.

Using your bed as the place that you sleep and make love and nothing else. Ideally not reading in bed, not laying in bed playing on your iPad, not sitting in bed with your laptop on your lap. All those things can interfere with your perception of what ‘bed’ means. Bed should mean sleep and so if you’re doing other stuff in bed, it kind of loses its bed value. It loses its relaxation value. Make sure that you really like your bed and that you like your bedroom because if you don’t want to be in there, it’s going to be difficult for you to relax in there.

Like your bed sheets the colours in your room, the furniture. When I think about my bed I think: ‘I love my bed I love it’. If your bed doesn’t do that for you, you perhaps need to think about switching some things around in your bedroom. Changing the decoration, be it the colours, be it the fabrics, be it you know the main thing the actual bed itself. You need to like bed in order to want to go there and have a good night’s sleep.

Making sure that your day is finished properly so get the lists ticked, get jobs done. If you’ve got stuff that you know it’s hanging over your head that you’re going to have to deal with the next day that could prevent your brain from switching off. Where possible get things done during the day and use some positive visualisations about the day ahead – what you’re going to be doing the next day. Make sure that visualisation is not too stimulating, not too exciting. If you’re going to be doing a bungee jump the next day, probably not a good idea to lay there visualising doing that because it’s just going to get the adrenaline kicking in and getting you a bit too excited.

Don’t try to go to sleep because if you try then you’re forcing it and then it’s just not going to happen. It will feel unnatural and whilst you’re laying there, remember the feeling of letting go. When you have gone to sleep in the past and just on the cusp of that sleep, there’s been times when you’ve thought to yourself ‘Here I go!’ and you know that that sleep is about to occur and it is a really lovely sinking feeling. That’s the feeling that for me summarises what hypnosis is. Usually when you’ve had that thought, it’s maybe brought you around a little bit and then you have to get back into it in order to go properly off to sleep. But if you can remember that sensation and lay there having the memory of how that feels that will help to induce it and help to get you off to sleep.

If you are experiencing difficulties with sleep a hypnotherapist from the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire and North London can help. Consultations are free and non obligatory. You will also learn more in the 3rd and final part of this article series which will be available to you next month.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Getting A Good Night Sleep – Part 1 

People Building produce Hypnosis MP3s which you can purchase from their website or from iTunes. There are Hypnotherapy audios available for those who want to get better at getting to sleep at night.

Here are some other useful things for you to think about: You must have some sort of bedtime routine. This is important because it gets your body into a habit of knowing what to expect next, so if you have a bath before you go to bed that’s a great way to relax and that lets your body know it’s wind-down time and of course in order for your brain to switch off and allow you to go to sleep, first of all your body has to relax. It’s kind of the same in hypnosis – in that your body relaxes first and then the mind can follow.

And let’s face it, the two things are not that dissimilar. We know for example that the word hypnosis comes from the Greek word Hypnos which means sleep. It’s a great misconception to think that hypnosis is sleep, they’re not the same. There’s different levels of brain activity that occurs between sleep and being in hypnosis.

Hypnosis would be a lighter version of sleep, even though they’re on the same kind of sliding scale. When we do professional hypnotherapy training for those who wish to become a hypnotherapist, we have what we call a sleep curve to demonstrate this. The top of that sleep curve is ‘Beta’, which is your usual awakened bright and lovely state. Then there’s ‘Alpha’ state. Now a lot of us spend most of our time there as well because we’re floating in and out of daydreaming and imagining and watching TV and being in a light trance when doing things like that.

And then we move into ‘Theta’ and this is where we start to move into the sleep side of things. This is when we drift into a light to medium level of sleep. At the very lower level is ‘Delta’ and Delta is your deep, dreamless relaxing sleep.

Delta is the kind of sleep that you have when you get into bed and go to sleep then wake up and it feels like only three minutes has passed by, even though you might have been there for hours. Your body is in exactly the same position and you had not moved at all. In theta state it would tend to be are more of a rapid eye movement kind of a sleep – so a dream sleep. A sleep where you’re asleep but your mind is still busy filing things and sorting information out and if anyone were to watch you they might see you moving around a little bit in that sleep. Your eyes moving under your lids and your body being perhaps a little bit twitchy.

It’s no good coming home from a busy day and trying to jump straight into bed. You need to have that little bit of wind down time first.

There are obvious considerations such as not eating too late, not drinking too late, avoiding caffeine and avoiding alcohol. All those things will affect your sleep quality. So, if you’re having issues with sleep at the moment whether it’s ‘I can’t get to sleep at night’ or whether it’s ‘I get to sleep at night but I wake up a couple of hours later and can’t get back to sleep’, really have to think about those things and what it is you know the quality of the stuff that you’re eating during the day.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Overcoming Personality Disorders from Childhood Events

It is always recommend to work with a qualified NLP practitioner or hypnotherapist. All therapists from the Hypnotherapy and NLP clinic based in Hertfordshire and North London are trained to undertake the processes mentioned below.

An NLP change personal history technique can be useful when someone with a personality disorder has experienced a traumatic incidents in their past or during childhood. It’s a technique for eliminating traumas so that those events are no longer viewed as traumatic or perceived as being traumatic in the moment of now.

The client remembers a time in the past when they experienced some kind of traumatic event and then we use ‘leverage’ which is calling to mind the pain and pleasure related to this. For example, that the pain would continue if they held on to this problem and the pleasure that would be experienced if they got rid of it. Then you break their state – so change their thinking or subject to ‘reset’ their mind.

Ask them for a list of positive resource states which they could to utilise now and if they’d had those at the time when the old event happened then the event wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place. Now using that list of resources they’ve given you, you create a stacked resource anchor.

With the build-up of all of those positive resources you test it and make sure that the anchor is way more intense, much stronger than any of the negative feelings that are associated with the old events. Then you have the client remember and relive the event in their mind but they do it fully associated so they kind of relive it through their own eyes whilst you (the practitioner) fire off the resource anchor so that you get all the good feelings coming back as they relive the old event. And what that does is it means that they re-experience the old event but with all of those good resources there now.

In doing so, they have a different experience of the old event.

Another thing we can do, is a parts integration. We chunking up on both elements of their personality where we have the incongruence.

For example, if the issue is ‘I want to connect with people and I also want to be alone’. There’s an incongruence there, we know that that person is trying to seek two completely opposite things both at the same time and it’s causing them some distress because they’re always unable to do it. When we say ‘chunk up’ we would ask questions on each of the statements that are incongruent with each other such as “For what purpose? What does that do for you? What’s your highest intention in doing that?”

Those questions take us up to a greater overall need that they’re trying to meet – for example connection. Then we also look at the flip side opposing portion of what they stated and ask the same questions. Once you found that there is some similarity between actually what those two needs are trying to meet, then you can give the unconscious mind and the nervous system the opportunity to process that actually these two polar opposites are alternately trying to seek the same aim and the same goal and then we can reintegrate, which is where we use our parts integration.

So, one of the final things we can do to assist someone with a personality disorder is to teach them what in NLP we call, second position.

So, when we use the perceptual positions technique we basically have a client in first position being themselves and in second position they’re seeing their situation and their behaviour from another person’s perspective, so they get an outside perspective on what’s going on. And this can be really useful for these people with personality disorders who are trapped and caught up in their own unhelpful thinking in their heads.

In the same way that when they perhaps had a traumatic event as a child, quite often the reason why that event is recorded as a trauma is because children haven’t developed the ability necessarily to dissociate from what’s going on, so to take a kind of objective view of it and to have that experience of stepping outside of themselves and to view it from an outside perspective. As we get older, we develop more of an ability to dissociate from bad things that happen but sometimes adults have not developed that skill either so it’s a very useful thing to teach.

There will always be challenges in the future and if instead of getting caught up in those challenges, you’re able to step back from them and view your own behaviour and reactions and notice how your thinking and feeling, then that can be an incredibly insightful thing.

It can definitely offer some room for reacting differently and getting some better results. To find a hypnotherapy specialist or NLP coach in Hertfordshire or North London, contact the Hypnotherapy and NLP clinic.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Overcoming a relationship break up

Have a think about the experiences that you’ve had with that person. You’re probably doing a lot of this already, but remember that every time you replay an experience that you had with someone you delete, distort and generalise on the experience that you had which could mean that if you’re replaying all the good times that will no longer have together and that you’re deleting what maybe wasn’t quite so good about those times, distorting what was good about them to make them seem even better than they really are perhaps even generalizing that this was the best relationship you’ve ever had. When you think about stuff too much it really becomes quite different to the truth of what the situation was.

There are certain people that I can recall and when I think about them, I make it seem as if it was a really great relationship and that we had a really great time. Actually, if I look at the bigger picture I can see that the reasons why things ended were good reasons because there were definitely issues there at the same time. Remember that being dumped, being left or having to end a relationship does lead to some negative feelings but those temporary feelings are better than being treated very badly in the future. At the very least you wouldn’t want to be with someone who didn’t really want to be with you because you like yourself more than that, don’t you?

Get busy. Have fun with life, have more fun do more fun stuff. Remember that we only ever really learn through experience and later on there will come a time when you look back and go ‘ah that’s why I needed to have that happen.’

It might not make sense right now but just know it’s okay to feel bad when a relationship ends for a period of time and that over time you will automatically and quite naturally start to feel better. They’ll be in your thoughts less and you’ll start to pick yourself up and move on. And the when you do you’ll look back on the experience and it will all make perfect sense as to why things had to end the way that they did.

Ask yourself this question: How much more pain would you have had to have had before you knew it was time to move on?

I don’t think you would really want to have to do that to yourself, would you? So, be pleased that you have much more control over yourself than being run like a big bag of chemicals. Know that those chemicals do play a vital and important role in your life in determining how you feel in any given situation.

But then once you’ve recognised those chemical feelings exist it is wholly and completely possible for you to take greater responsibility and greater control over the way that you are feeling. You don’t have to be run by your emotions and that you can choose to be feeling exactly how you want to feel in any given moment.

You don’t have to depend on other people to be feeling a certain way. All of those feelings exist within you. They are your feelings and that you can have them whenever you choose to do so.

A good hypnotherapist will have the skills to help you overcome the pain of a relationship breakup and hypnotherapy can be incredibly helpful in this area. Contact the Hypnotherapy and NLP clinic to arrange a free consultation.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

No More Resentment or Eating Burnt Chop

Not eating burnt chop is a metaphor about getting rid of resentment. It’s a type of martyrdom where we put what others want ahead of what we want. Often not even voicing what it is that we want so the other person doesn’t even know that they’re putting us out. It’s a combination of a conflict avoidance technique, self-talk that tells us we don’t deserve to get what we want and a belief that asking for what you want is rude.

One of the by-products of ‘eating the burnt chop’ is that we resent the person who we are constantly giving in to. Mostly this is a partner or close friend or family. This can make us snappy for no apparent reason (as far as they’re concerned) and unhappy. In addition it doesn’t have a good impact on our health. Although I am learning to eat less burnt chop going forward, I still have built up resentment towards people from past burnt chops!

There are times when you do stuff for other people, that you don’t necessarily want to do and for some strange reason you forget to say ‘no’ and then you do it and then you’re miffed, because you’ve ended up putting your time and effort doing something for somebody else, that you didn’t actually want to do in the first place. A good hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner can help you to understand and move beyond resentment. Find a practitioner in Hertfordshire or North London to help you move forward.

I figure that you’ve got two options. When somebody says to you “Can you do X for me and in your head?” and you think ‘I really don’t want to’.

Option number one is to help them anyway and love yourself for the fact that you are doing it.

Option two is that you say ‘no’. What stops you from saying no when somebody asks you to do something for them or somebody leans on you in in a particular way? Is it avoiding conflict? That could be part of it but I think if we pick this apart even more, maybe it’s more to do with a fear of being unloved. If we were to chunk this up to a higher level, we would go above and beyond avoiding conflict and if we were to think of it in a more positive sense, I think it has more to do with wanting to be loved or a fear that you’ll be unloved if you don’t do the things that other people want you to do.

So, the question you have to ask yourself is: is that really true? Is it really true that by doing this thing for somebody else you are going to avoid conflict? You’re creating a conflict within yourself and in the long term if it makes you feel grotty around them, then you’re probably going to end up with conflict with them too. Is it really true that if you don’t do this thing for this person that you will be unloved? Ultimately not doing something for someone might leave them a bit miffed for a while but in the long run they’re going to respect you much more for having the self-respect to be able to set yourself some boundaries.

They might even start to consider your thoughts and feelings more too. Maybe you need to stop being so selfish by always helping other people and give them a chance to learn to be capable for themselves or to even help you. What if saying ‘no’ to them means that they’ll love you more? If that’s the case then you can say no, without having to experience the guilt whilst you say it.

But if you say yes and you’re miserable about it, you only have the right to be miserable with yourself, not really with the other people, because you decided it, you decided to do it so you have to own it. You have to take responsibility for it. Who said yes? You did. Who took the action? You did. Who’s miserable? You are. Whose fault is it? It’s yours.

Consider more about what you are giving and not so much about what you’re not getting as a result of doing this thing for these other people.

When you work with a professional NLP practitioner and Hypnotherapist in North London, Hertfordshire you’ll begin to develop the skills to challenge your thinking in new and empowering ways.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Making a Good First Impression 

Make sure you’re on time. For many people, lateness is a real annoyance. If somebody shows up late for particularly something like an interview, then it causes a question about how badly they want to be there. It plants a seed of doubt about whether they’re going to be motivated enough to bother showing up to work on time.

You must be at ease with yourself. You need to come across as confident within yourself but not a smart arse with it. You don’t want to come across as being arrogant in any way but you do want to come across as somebody who is comfortable within your own skin.

If you are somebody who comes across as being not happy within your own skin, then that could be seen as a negative quality and that perhaps you might have some underlying issues that could get in the way of the relationship that you’re trying to create.

Remember to smile and show off your skillset. The reason why you’ve been asked there is because they think that your qualified to do something that they want you to do or that they need someone to do. You have to really present yourself as somebody who can fill that gap that they have. You have to be completely at ease with showing off a little bit.

Be presentable. It relates to your self-worth. Make sure you iron your shirt. Somebody once told me to make sure that your shoes are always clean and shiny. You can’t make a good first impression with muddy manky old shoes.

So be confident and chatty and have some kind of uniqueness about you. It could be something that you wear that is slightly unusual that will help to stick in their mind. It could be something to do with a special hobby that you have that’s a bit unusual that you managed to bring up into the conversation. Something that will help you stand out in making that first impression.

There are lots of people that make good first impressions but are still forgettable and you don’t want to be forgettable. You want to be memorable. So, remember to be positive and have a good attitude. Now when you do that you have to know if you’re going to be funny that a). it’s in the right context for you to be funny and that b). it really is funny.

If you say something that doesn’t quite fit in with the other person’s humour then you could end up just really miffing them off a bit. So, if you’re going to make an effort to be jovial in some way, make sure that it’s the right context for you to do that and be very certain that the other person is going to find humour in it.

You can work with an NLP coach to get yourself interview and dating ready. We have practitioners based in Hertfordshire and North London who are highly specialised in this area of work and will help you to always make a good first impression.

By Gemma Bailey
www.peoplebuilding.co.uk

Anxiety and Panic, Panic, Panic

Excessive anxiety is often associated with other mental problems such as depression and anxiety is only considered to be a mental health problem when it’s long lasting, severe and is interfering with everyday activities.

Anxiety attacks usually last for only five or ten minutes. Now if you’re someone who has ever had anxiety (and I think we all have at some stage) you’ll remember then the feeling passed but anyone who’s had any kind of prolonged issues with anxiety, whose had a period of anxiety attacks or anything like that, would probably say that it starts to envelop all of their world. It forms the basis for their day and I think what that tells us is that the feeling is so strong and so intense that even though it’s just a tiny, tiny fraction a tiny fragment of what might be going on in any twenty-four-hour period that the intensity of the feeling is so strong, even those five or ten minutes seem like an absolute lifetime.

If you ever have or you know anyone who has experienced the feeling of being anxious and it’s causing them a problem, ask them to make it worse. Now that sounds a little bit evil and twisted but if you can make the feeling worse, then you can also make the feeling better. If you can intensify that feeling and make yourself feel worse is that you are controlling that feeling. You are doing it. You have control over it if you can make it worse and we can also then presuppose that if you can make it worse that you can make it better, just by doing the opposite to what you’re doing already.

So, if with that anxious feeling that’s inside, you can make it worse by spinning it faster and making it seem bigger and more intense or tightening your muscles up further collapsing your lungs down and shrinking down your breathing so you’re getting less oxygen into your body, if you can do those things to make it worse, then you just have to do the opposite to start getting the feeling under control and making yourself feel better.

So instead of spinning the feeling fast you see what happens if you slow it down and spin it back the other way. Instead of shrinking down into your body and collapsing those lungs down so they don’t get much oxygen in, instead you sit yourself up and have them open and lots of air going in. If you notice that you can imagine in your mind making the feeling bigger and it makes it worse, then imagine in your mind making it smaller to make it better.

You brain doesn’t forget memories and experiences. Unlike a computer where you can delete files that you don’t want, you can’t do that in your brain. They’re always stored in there somewhere so in order for us to be able to go through life without continuously referring back to negative memories and negative experiences we need to know how to program our mind in such a way that it always refers back to positive memories and experiences.

If we’re having an experience where every day there is a negative thought that’s being replayed then actually what we want to start training our brain to do is to refer back to positive experiences and memories instead. If you have a negative memory that you consistently referring back to, be it any kind of negative thing or be it related directly to anxiety. If you’ve got something like that all you have to do is create for yourself a new memory to put on top of the one that you don’t want to keep referring back to.

An NLP therapist and hypnotherapy are both useful ways for you to be able to get rid of anxiety and stop having anxiety attacks. Speak to one of our qualified therapists in Hertfordshire or North London.

And here’s something else. How much fun are you having? Do an evaluation of how much fun you consciously make an effort to go out and have and the chances are it’s not nearly where it needs to be. If you don’t do what you like in your life you can expect that you’re going to end up feeling bad about it.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk