Anxiety and Covid/Lotus Hypnotherapy

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Feelings of anxiety around covid

The pandemic has touched all of us in many different ways, opening up a range of emotions and feelings of anxiety.  Consequently, As we come out of lockdown we will all be wondering how we can get back to normal.

Just living through the pandemic can leave us feeling exhausted and deflated.  There is the feeling of loneliness for those that are on their own and the fear of getting ill.  People already facing mental health issues have been facing extra challenges through these difficult months.

Furthermore, many are grieving for friends and family who they have lost, wondering how and when they will get the chance to grieve properly.  Having to face the fears of living without our loved ones.

Children and teenagers are feeling anxious about the future and their school work. Young people can also feel lonely and isolated from the lack of social contact.

Everyone’s response to the pandemic is different, there is no normal.  So what steps can we take on our journey back to normal?

Talk to people you trust, sharing experiences often makes you feel better.  Focus on the things you can control not those that you cannot.  List the things that you could change and those that you can’t.  Take action and make choices on what you can control.

Make sure you look after your physical health. Take small steps, go for a short walk, and when you feel more confident lengthen it.  You may then want to try jogging rather than walking.  Small steps can lead to big changes. 

Sleep!  Sleep is fundamental to our physical and mental well-being. Make sure that you are getting at least 8 hours of rest, start winding down an hour before bed, switch off phones, TVs, etc also dim the lights, have a hot bath,  read a book or meditate to enable a good night’s sleep.

Find support. You may be experiencing anxiety for the first time or your anxiety may be getting worse.  As well as having tense or nervous feelings when leaving the house or coming into contact with people.

Many people will suffer panic attacks for the first time or have them more often leading to a sense of feeling disconnected from your body and mind. 

Finding the support that is right for you will help you cope with and control your emotions giving you back a sense of hope and peace of mind.  

 
 

Sleep/Lotus Hypnotherapy

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sleep disorders

Why is sleep so Important

Our parents, teachers, and scientists tell us that sleep is important from an early age. That we should all be getting an 8hour window of sleep a night.  In today’s busy technology-saturated world, however, it can seem near impossible to fit those 8 hours into our working day.   And experiencing a deep and restful sleep for 7-8 hours is a distant memory.  Throughout the developed world 2/3 of adults are not getting enough sleep

If you think about it on an evolutionary scale, pretty much all animal species sleep. Even though sleeping makes us vulnerable to predators and takes time away from feeding ourselves and our family.  This point alone gives an indication of how important and essential sleep is to health and well-being.

“If sleep does not serve an absolutely vital function, then it is the biggest mistake the evolutionary process has ever made”  Dr. Allan Rechtschaffen.

Sleep is the time when the body is able to cleanse the mind. This enables it to stay in prime condition, allowing us to recuperate and consolidate our memory and learning.

Lack of sleep can lead to a whole host of negative health issues. Too little sleep significantly impairs the immune system, leading to a higher risk of cancer.  Short sleep habits can lead to cardiovascular disease and strokes. Sleeping helps regulate hormones that control whether we feel hungry or sufficiently full.  Stoping the snack cravings that lead to an increase in weight.  Which in turn can lead to obesity and diabetes.

Too little sleep has also been linked to and is a key factor in whether you will develop Alzheimer’s disease later in life.  Lack of sleep also contributes to conditions such as anxiety and depression.

What can we do?

So what can we do to help combat the epidemic of sleep deprivation?  We can all improve our sleep by having a good bedtime routine. Switch off your electronics and don’t have them in your bedroom for a couple of hours before slumber.  Don’t eat and drink, especially products containing caffeine and alcohol near to your bedtime.  Find a restful and calming activity before your head hits the pillow, such as reading, listening to music. You could take up journal writing or meditation.

For some, sleep can still feel distant and unobtainable.  In these circumstances, you could be suffering from a form of anxiety or a build-up of stress leading to insomnia.  Sometimes we need to address the anxiety to help improve our sleep.  Solution Focused Hypnotherapy is a mixture of psychotherapy and relaxation techniques. Proven to help decrease the anxiety and stress that we are feeling leading to a better night’s sleep. Helping to reduce the stress in our lives further and improve health and wellbeing.

Weight Management/Lotus Hypnotherapy

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you have the resources to achieve your weight

Achieving and maintaining weight Loss

Achieving and maintaining our ideal body weight can be a struggle for the majority of people.  Whether you are wanting to lose or gain some weight. It can often leave us feeling deflated and anxious with our self-confidence. 

When we are suffering from an eating disorder, Bulimia, Anorexia, or binge eating our needs can be much more complex.  For many it is a constant cycle of different diets which work short term but not for the long term. 

To achieve our ideal weight, we need to re-think our behavior and our thinking around food.  Which is where Hypnotherapy can help. 

Hypnotherapy allows our conscious and unconscious minds to link.  This allows us to change our thought patterns and behaviors around food.  Building new and healthier habits. 

There are a number of studies that suggest that Hypnotherapy can be very effective. Helping us make the changes needed to reach our goals.

Solution Focused Hypnotherapy helps us see the steps we need to take in making these changes. Hence not a quick fix but a much more long-lasting one. 

When we are under hypnosis our attention is highly focused.  Therefore helping us think clearly about the steps we need to take in changing our habits. As well as taking away some of the anxiety that we feel when we don’t think we are at our best. 

How Anxiety makes weight Loss more difficult.

This anxiety only contributes to the difficult task of meeting our ideal weight and is why sometimes it feels that we are getting nowhere.  Consequently, when we reduce our stress/anxiety levels we are less likely to think emotionally.

It’s the emotional thinking that leads us to eat the wrong food at the wrong time. Therefore lowering our anxiety allows us to think more logically and make the right decisions.

Hypnotherapy aims to make you more comfortable and confident with your own body. A positive frame of mind helps us achieve our goals more readily. Without diets or pills some of which can be harmful to our health.  A positive mood also reduces cortisol levels in the body.  

Cortisol is a stress hormone, and when we are constantly under stress it remains high.  Leading to problems in sleeping, digestion, weight gain, and other health problems. 

Lowering our cortisol levels by reducing stress helps maintain our weight. We have all the necessary solutions for weight management inside of us.  Sometimes however we need help getting ourselves on the right track.

 
 

Young Lotus Hypnotherapy

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children and teenagers

Young Lotus Hypnotherapy for Children and Teenagers

Solution-focused hypnotherapy not only works for adults but for children and teenagers as well who respond amazingly well to the treatment with an open innovative mind that embraces change.  As parents, it can be a worrying time when your child needs help, and you are faced with various options of therapy and extended waiting times for treatment.

The professional standards authority and the NHS recognise hypnotherapy as a treatment option and year on year more and more parents are turning to hypnotherapy to help children overcome anxiety and stress-related issues, behavioral problems, phobias, confidence building, and sleep disturbance, to name but a few.

Children have to navigate themselves through a whole range of changes in their early lives, including change in home life or friends, bullying, loss, low self-esteem, and the changes in their own bodies.  These changes can sometimes be overwhelming when handling the everyday life of school and friendships,  leading to feelings of inadequacy stress, and anxiety, or even a rise of depression.

Like adults, Children and teenagers show their reaction to stress in a variety of ways,  we may see a change in personality, they can become distracted and forgetful, they might have headaches and upset stomachs, bite their nails, begin bad wetting (enuresis), be prone to accidents or even become irritable or violent.  This then has a knock-on effect on their everyday life, they start to dislike and avoid school, become worried about talking in class, find subjects difficult and confusing, and become withdrawn.  Fears and phobias can start to appear and even though as parent’s we try to support them we often seem to not be able to change the situation.

Solution-focused hypnotherapy is a viable therapy option that can produce a positive change in a matter of weeks.  As a professional teacher who has worked with children and teenagers for the past 17 years, I am mindful of the stresses that teenagers are subjected to in modern life.  I have found that solution-focused hypnotherapy can get young people back on track, focusing on their goals and happiness and finding a balance in their life.

Phobias

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Phobias:

Fear can hold all of us back at certain times, and is a natural reaction to something that may be life threatening.  Sometimes however our fears become irrational and start to interfere with our everyday life and stop us doing the things that we want to do.  Phobias can start with an even, real or imagined, an activity or even an item, and the more often we experience a phobic reaction, the stronger that phobia can get.  Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help with all phobias from fear of spiders or flying to more complex issues such as agoraphobia and claustrophobia.

Specific phobias are when people have one specific trigger in their lives that causes a fear response, for example; needles, flying or spiders and can be dealt with in 4 sessions.

Non-specific phobias are more complex and tend to affect us more deeply, for example; agoraphobia, claustrophobia and emetophobia.  These issues being more complex may require 8-12 sessions.

If you want to discuss how Katrina can help you with any fear that you are experiencing, give Katrina a call today and we can discuss the process and arrange an initial consultation.  For flying, the 4 sessions are best booked just before you take your flight.

Anxiety Disorders

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sleep disorders

Anxiety Disorders:

Anxiety is a natural emotion that we feel in our everyday lives when we are faced with a stressful situation, for example a business meeting, a job interview or sitting an exam.  Normally we can handle these brief stressful moments but sometimes they can stay with us, making us feel worried and anxious for a lot of the time, leading us to feel out of control and overwhelmed with our everyday life.

Our anxiety can then lead onto conditions such as PTSD, generalised anxiety, panic attacks, social anxiety, and phobias.

We experience anxiety when we find ourselves in a threatening situation and the brain stimulates a fight, flight or freeze response.  When man was primitive and found himself in a life threatening situation this response was life preserving.  We don’t often find ourselves in today’s world in a life threatening situation, but the brain is still programmed to produce this response if we feel threatened in any way, even if it’s as simple as being late for work when we are stuck in traffic.  Anything that is out of our control or normal comfort zone the brain will see as a threat and will respond with our primitive fight, flight or freeze programmes.  Solution Focused Hypnotherapy enables us to consciously notice when we may be feeling this response so that we can logically think of situations in a less threatening manner and therefore find positive solutions to reduce our anxiety.

We discuss how the brain works and how it can make us suffer with all this anxiety in our initial consultation and what we can do to start reducing the amount of anxiety/stress that we feel.