CBT & Hypnotherapy
CBT
CBT is an evidence-based approach that focuses on how you think (cognitions), feel (emotions) and what you do (behaviours). It helps to identify problematic thinking patterns and offers tools and techniques to help manage and change these. Learning to be curious and experimenting with new ways of thinking and doing can bring forth surprising revelations; things that you had feared can actually turn out to be not so scary.
CBT concentrates on the present moment and can help you to adapt your thinking habits so you spend more time in the here and now, as opposed to being lost in past ruminations or future worries. Past events are not ignored, but instead viewed from the perspective of understanding how you may have developed certain thoughts, assumptions and beliefs, so the why's start to make some sense.
A Simple CBT analogy
Imagine you are on a journey of exploration with your therapist. You may like to visualise this as this journey up a mountain, through a forest or across moorland, the choice is yours.
Your therapist is stepping on your life path with you for a short while to help guide you along some slightly different, and perhaps bumpy routes. You are both aware that only you are the expert of you, and that at this current time you have misplaced your guide map, so are experiencing some navigational difficulties.
Once you are comfortable with the new route, you have recovered your sense of direction and feel you are now heading on the right path, then at this point, your therapist can leave you to continue on your way. Before she goes she gives you your new updated guide map, thus leaving you equipped to navigate the current and future paths of your life.
Hypnotherapy
Hypnosis is a way of using your imagination to evoke and enforce positive emotions and we can do this by mentally rehearsing how we want to be in certain activities and situations. It is proven to help with a variety of issues, with research suggesting that it can be beneficial for anxiety, stress, sleep issues, breaking habits and many more.
You are always in control and unlike 'stage style' hypnosis you may have seen on the TV, it is not possible to make people do things they do not want to do! Hypnosis is a relaxed state with focused attention, whereby you think positively and picture your goals.
Hypnosis and CBT combine really well together for certain conditions.
Stopping the cycle
CBT looks at what it is maintaining the problems in the here and now and then exploring possible changes that might help to break the cycle. If you ever felt anxious about a new situation or event, worried for days or even weeks and found yourself doing your best to avoid it, maybe only to find that it wasn't quite so bad after all, then you have experienced an anxiety cycle. Some people experience cycles like this regularly and some are only triggered in specific circumstances; fear of certain objects or places, in social situations or when they are reminded of a traumatic event.
CBT therapists work a bit like firefighters: they are not so interested in what caused the fire, but are more focused on what is keeping it going, and what can be done to extinguish it. When they work out what is keeping the problem going, they can then treat the problem by 'removing the fuel', thus interrupting the maintenance cycle.
