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Knowing Your Limit!

One of the biggest challenges that can occur with those who take cocaine whilst drinking alcohol is having the willpower to stop, instead of ending up on a “bender” which ultimately results in a horrible hangover the next day.

The challenge with deciding to call it a night before things get out of hand, is that one is probably not in a state to make a sensible, rational decision about what happens next due to the substances already consumed.

Further challenges around knowing when to stop include:

Being with others who are in the party spirit adds pressure to continue
Knowing that you still have money in the bank and have the funds to continue
Not pausing to think for a moment about the implications of continuing
A caring host who keeps topping up your glass/offering you other party options.

If you’re aware that you incline to start drinking and continue onto cocaine, you must learn how to plan your evening out in advance of going. You will likely be unsuccessful at relying upon your judgement later.

The planning required will involve hypnotherapy, NLP and some practical steps to ensure that you can continue to involve yourself socially with alcohol, but to a limit, you decide upon whilst sober.

How the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire can help:

Hypnotherapy accesses the unconscious part of your mind where your habits and behaviours are installed. Your hypnotherapist will give suggestions to you whilst in a relaxed trance-like state to help build your resilience and confidence to stop drinking when you instinctively know you have had enough.

Remember, these substances are poisons. Your body and unconscious serve to protect you from harm and you, therefore, have a built-in system which knows when you’ve had enough. However, for many, that system is overridden or ignored because of the effects of the substances. Your hypnotherapist will be able to “reset the system” to allow you to become more finely tuned to the “that’s enough, time to go home” signal so that you begin to adhere to your natural tolerance levels.

NLP can help build motivation and commitment to your new decision and enable you to set realistic parameters for your behaviour. For example, if you know that peer pressure is an issue for you, NLP can help you to build a strong sense of reliance and the ability to “stick to your guns” about your decision.

You can also work with your therapist to establish any practical steps you can take. Perhaps you can change your drink of choice or alternate between a soft drink and an alcoholic one, or use a Revolut card (Join me and over 18 million users who love Revolut. Sign up with my link below: https://revolut.com/referral/gemma3qa2!JUL2-22-AR) instead of your bank card so that you stop when the money on the account runs out. (If the issue occurs when you’re drinking at home, it might help to have a glass of water with an alcoholic beverage.)

Even simple exercises such as remembering how bad a hangover felt before you allow yourself to become fully indulged in the party spirit can be helpful.

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

Finding Motivation in 2021: Part Three

At the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, a useful thing I do to help clients find their motivation is to recall times in the past when they have felt that feeling of achieving a goal, that happy and proud feeling or where they completed tasks that had had sitting in the back of their mind for months. It’s just that those memories may not be particularly fresh or they might not even be associated with positive things. Sometimes we get the feeling of being super motivated not because we want to do something but because we wanted to get away from something.

If you can remember a time when you felt like you just needed to get up and move even if it was just because you’ve got fed up and boldly frustrated with yourself that still is a sense of motivation. Remember that the word motivation has the word ‘move’ in it. It says ‘move’ so to touch back in with what motivation feels like you need to tune back into a time when you felt like you wanted to move, you felt like you wanted to get up and get something done and that’s not necessarily going to have been a positive time it could be associated with something like frustration. Hypnotherapy and NLP can help you achieve this.

The word ‘frustration’ sounds negative but the good thing about it is there is movement in it. No one is frustrated and kind of lethargic. If you’re frustrated, there’s some energy in there and we may be able to use it for a positive benefit. If you cannot immediately get yourself into a sense of motivation think of what other emotions there are that might lead you there and they’re going to be emotions that have ‘move’ within them.

The feeling of irritation, it’s itchy, it’s got movement in it. Therefore, it could lead you into the sense of being motivated all over again but if you can remember a time of pure motivation, a time from the past use that memory to sort of get yourself locked back into those feelings because if you can remember them you’ll start to get the feeling back and then you can utilize that and sort of applying it to the idea of doing the things that you want to go ahead and do. Therefore, get into the feeling and then think of the thing you want to do so you start to mesh the two together and start to create that association between them. At the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, we can teach you how.

Another thing that’s important to do is to prepare. For example, a Sunday night is when I am NOT feeling particularly motivated to come back to work on Monday. I know that Monday morning might be a bit of a struggle. One of the things that I might do if I’m feeling particularly demotivated about coming back to work on a Monday morning is to make sure that I’ve got things as prepared as possible for when Monday morning comes around and that might even be like a child laying out my clothes for the next day making sure that I’ve got the washing up done the night before and I don’t leave it for myself on Monday morning. I want to make that Monday morning as smooth and seamless as possible.

Some other practical things could eat well, sleep well and exercise. Do some of those fundamental basic things that we need as human beings to help us maintain our energy levels. We know that motivation is coming from energy so think about the things that you do. They either build you up or zap your energy. Get that back with Hypnotherapy and NLP in Hertfordshire.

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 insomnia, 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