What’s your speciality?

If you are looking for a hypnotherapist – or, in fact, a therapist of any kind – it’s worth knowing what questions you want to ask in advance. After all, these folks are skilled persuaders and will often know just how to influence you to make the ‘right’ decision!

A question you might want to consider is: “What is your speciality?” After all, do you really want to settle for a Jack of all Trades? It is surely preferable to find a therapist who has the perfect match of skills to help you resolve your issue.

As a way of providing a quick and open answer to this question, Graham Old proudly wears the label “Well-being Coach”.

What is Well-being?

There has been a growing body of research into what contributes to the quality of people’s lives. This has enabled a new understanding of the factors that both influence and constitute well-being.

Well-being is most usefully thought of as the dynamic process that gives people a sense of how their lives are going, through the interaction between their circumstances, activities and mental or psychological resources or ‘mental. It has been briefly defined as ‘Doing Well and Feeling Good’, but might just as easily be defined as ‘Doing Good and Feeling Well.’

Well-being is essentially a subjective evaluation that your life is one of contented health and happiness.

The Public Health White Paper “No Health without Mental Health” (2011) says that mental wellbeing relates to “the ability to cope with life’s problems and make the most of life’s opportunities. It is about feeling good and functioning well, both as individuals and collectively.”

What is a Well-being Coach?

Well, it’s not the same thing as a Personal Trainer, a Management Coach, a Dietician, Nutritionist or Health Trainer. The best way to think of a Well Being Coach is to think about physical well-being and then consider all of the “mental” factors that go into that. Then think about psychological well-being and some of the associated physical issues. So we end up with things like:

Stress

Anxiety

Depression

Smoking

Weight-loss

Motivation

Drinking

and so on.

These aren’t necessarily things that you want to “cure”. You might not, for example, be an alcoholic so you have no desire to quit drinking. However, you might recognise that you would function more effectively at work in the morning if your alcohol intake was under control in the evenings. So, we could help you cut-down.

You might not have a phobia, or suffer panic attacks, but you might feel like you’re surrounded by a general sense of anxiety or un-ease. The trouble is that unless you have some kind of mental “problem”, many therapists or therapies may not apply to you. Even those that use hypnosis might not seem particularly appropriate. Unless you need to train for a Sporting event, or receive physio, you may not find many Physical Therapists who can help you either. You fall in that gap in the middle.

The irony is that most of us fall into that camp. Just as the difference between Healthy and Unhealthy is fluid (we are all healthy in some ways and unhealthy in others), Mental Health is a sliding scale. It may simply be that you want to feel better. You may look at your life and think, “This is not as good as it could be.” There may be a persistent sense of unhappiness, frustration or lack of motivation, or it may simply be that you fed up with your smoking, drinking, shyness or lack of direction.

If that’s you, then what you need is Well Being Coaching!

What does a Well-Being Coach actually do?

Coaching is a dynamic two-way process that helps you get greater satisfaction out of life. Coaching focuses on the here and now as a solution focused, goal oriented approach to self-fulfillment and personal development.

During the coaching process, through questioning, the coach engages in confidential and thought provoking dialogue with the client to help them expand.

The purpose of coaching is to help clients identify their own solutions to achieve their personal and professional goals by developing a comprehensive set of actions to achieve them. The process typically involves one to one sessions and usually includes a results-focused plan that helps the client clarify objectives, set goals, overcome obstacles and act on agreed milestones.

Wellbeing Coaching is designed to help people identify the wide range of options available to help them manage their own health and wellbeing more effectively. Wellbeing Coaching can also be particularly useful for people struggling to manage change, suffering from stress, feeling lonely or miserable or wanting to resolve a specific problem or situation.

What Qualifies Graham Old to work as a Well-being Coach?

You can read Graham’s profile, including information on his style and qualifications, at the Hypnotherapy Directory.

Briefly, he is a highly trained hypnotherapist, having been trained in both direct and indirect styles of hypnosis. He is certified in Solution-Focused therapy, Motivational Interviewing and Coaching. He is a Rapid Results Pain Control Consultant, a Licensed Hypnoband Practitioner (one of only 2 in Northampton!) and a Certified Stress Management Consultant.

Perhaps more importantly, he has successfully battled with stress and depression in his life and has seen hypnosis empower him to lose weight, where diet after diet failed.

Many therapists or Hypnotists are solely focused on helping you deal with your problems. At Hypnosis Northampton, we would much rather focus on your as a person. We are interested in not just getting rid of problems, but in enhancing lives. As a part of the multi-disciplinary team at The Abington Clinic, Graham is uniquely positioned to assist and advise you, working with you to create the solutions that will bring more happiness and satisfaction into your life.

How do I book-in for Well-being Coaching?

You don’t! We prefer not to offer well-being coaching as a standalone option. Instead, it permeates every aspect of what we do. Why not simply book a session to come in and deal with whatever issue is bothering you? Let us take care of the label given to the tools we will use to help you - whether that’s hypnosis, NLP, Mindfulness, Acceptance and Committment Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy or Coaching.

However, you can rest assured that whatever techniques or tools we use, it will come under the banner of Well-being Coaching – working with you, to lead you into a more satisfying future.

So I can’t come just for Coaching?

Sure. Some people still have hang-ups about Hypnosis or ‘therapy’ (even though our hypnosis is completely non-threatening and we do not do any “delve into the past” type of counselling). So, if you have particular feelings about a therapy that you would rather avoid, or especially want to experience, just say so.

On the whole, we do not separate the work that we do into hypnosis or coaching, as it is all used seamlessly. So, even if you choose to come just for Coaching, you may find the experience hypnotic!

Can you help me with this issue…?

The list of issues we can help with is on our Treatments page. So, if you want to come in to deal with nail-biting, or blushing, fear of flying, or sexual performance issues, Hypnosis can help. There’s no doubt about that. However, if you’re asking about our speciality, the area we focus on and are highly skilled-in is Well-being and all related physical, mental and social issues.

If you are trying to figure out whether your issue comes under this heading, ask yourself a simple question: Does this affect my satisfaction and happiness in life, or have a detrimental effect on my functioning? If the answers yes, contact Hypnosis Northampton without delay. Basically, breast enlargement, past-life regression and entertainment are out. Weight-loss, pain control and stress management are in!

Nail biting is a surprisingly common habit. For some people, it starts in early childhood and continues right through to adulthood, when it can be an irritating and humiliating nuisance.

Some people have struggled with this habit for so long, that they cannot imagine ever being free. They may have struggled for years, biting their nails to such an extent that they bleed and become a painful embarrassment.

This can then become a vicious cycle as, for many adults, the habit persists and is made worse by stress or anxiety.

Almost without exception, nail-biting is an unconscious habit.  Nail biters do not usually realise that they are doing it, often biting their nails in completely inappropriate situations! The good news is that it is unconscious actions and beliefs that hypnosis is particularly useful at addressing.

Hypnotherapy can help you to form positive new alternatives to nail biting, to help you cope with anxious situations and stress triggers in a constructive way. A hypnotherapist can also work with your unconscious mind to stop this unconscious habit.

The reason why most people bite their nails, whether in times of stress, or simply through habit, is essentially the same mechanism as used by overeaters and smokers – it’s called ‘oral satisfaction’.

Put simply, ‘oral satisfaction’ involves putting something in your mouth, be it a nail, a cigarette, cream cake, etc, and this will often be done in times of stress. Of course, where nail biting is concerned, it can be both unhygienic and unsightly.

Hypnotherapy and hypnosis can be an effective treatment in helping people to overcome their tendency of biting their nails.

Treatment using hypnotherapy for nail biting, can give very rewarding and satisfying results.

If you are looking for help to stop biting your nails, and especially if it’s causing problems in your life, then don’t suffer in silence. You CAN Stop Biting Your Nails!

Stress has been linked to most health problems, including heart attacks and strokes. Being over-stressed can also lead to low work performance, sleep issues, absent-mindedness, decreased interest in life, addictions, and many other undesirable results.

Yet, it’s also known people who respond well to stress and know how to prevent unnecessary anxiety are typically “peak performers.”

Through the use of hypnotherapy, you will be enabled to manage stress and anxiety effectively. Benefits will include:

* Increased energy and focus
* Allowing you to deal effectively with authority, roles and limits
* Increase your tolerance to frustration during difficult circumstances
* Let you adapt to change and prosper from it
* Help you to develop a sense of belonging
* Let you show friendliness, care, and love
* Allow you to enjoy recreation
* Permit you to relax and sleep better
* Free your sense of humor and ability to laugh at yourself
* Let you demonstrate a reasonable sense of independence and self-reliance

Hypnosis for Stress teaches you how to relax and stay calm even under the most stressful conditions. You will learn to recognize the things that trigger your stress and this is powerful in helping you to manage the level of stress you feel may be necessary.

Through hypnosis, you will be guided through exercises that help you learn how to adapt to stressful situations, resolve existing anxieties, and create new ways of looking at the world. You are able to re-access positive states from times when you have felt calm, relaxed, confident and in control. These positive states can then be associated with the stressful event, which allows you to react more positively to it in future.

When necessary, Hypnosis and Coaching can also be used to help you to effectively explore the reasons behind why you react in certain ways in certain situations. Once you know how the stress is caused we can develop ways to change your reactions to it, help you build coping strategies and ways of either controlling, minimising or even avoiding your stressors.

You will find that hypnosis can trigger your natural relaxation response, causing wonderful waves of good hormones and feelings of tranquility to wash through your mind and body.

Imagine having relief on tap – something you could experience whenever you need it that would remove all the stress from your body and return the sparkle your mind!

You will find that the simple act of learning how to relax, through tool such as breathing techniques, positive thinking and assertiveness, can have a life-changing impact on you and your relationships.

You can read more about the benefits of using Hypnosis for Relaxation in this article from the Independent Newspaper: Relax your way to perfect health.

• 

  Nail Biting

  Nail biting is a surprisingly common habit. Almost without exception, nail-biting is an unconscious habit. The good news is that it is unconscious actions and beliefs that hypnosis is particularly useful at addressing. Hypnotherapy can help you to form positive new alternatives to nail biting, as well as helping you cope with anxious situations and stress triggers in a constructive way.

• 

  Stressed-Out?

  Did you know that 75% to 90% of all doctor’s office visits are for illnesses related to stress? Yet, people who respond well to stress and know how to prevent unnecessary anxiety are typically peak performers. Hypnosis can be used to help you to more effectively find and explore the reasons behind why you react in certain ways in certain situations.

• 

  Pain Control

  It is a little known fact that hypnosis is very effective in relieving and controlling pain. In fact, it is so effective that the use of hypnosis to manage pain must be approached with extreme caution. Pain should never be treated for its own sake, but if the underlying cause is known and your doctor gives permission, hypnosis can be very effective in relieving pain

• 

  Stop Smoking!

  When smokers try to stop with other methods than hypnosis they suffer misery and depression caused by the feeling that they are being deprived of a pleasure or a crutch. The beauty of hypnosis, and the way we use hypnosis in particular, is that it removes this feeling of deprivation. All that you have to do is sit back in a nice comfortable chair, and relax. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

• 

  Relationships

  Hypnotherapy has proved wonderfully helpful in dealing with psychosomatic sexual problems-impotence, frigidity, etc.-and in enhancing self-esteem and confidence where necessary. The development of a positive self-image is always an important factor in adjusting to the needs and desires of partners and achieving the ultimate in relationship security

• 

  Lose Weight

  A number of studies indicate that hypnosis combined with a behavioral weight management program contributes significantly to weight loss. Want to stop going round in circles trying to break old habits? The reason hypnosis – including HYPNOBAND – is such a powerful tool for weight loss is it’s potential to help you build new healthy habits. This is ideal for easy, natural weight loss

• 

  Conquer Fears

  We all know that phobias can develop in a matter of seconds. All it takes is a dog to surprise you by running at you whilst barking and before you know it you’ve developed a fear of dogs, or anything else that your subconscious mind develops to protect you. Since hypnosis is the most direct way into the subconscious, it stands to reason that if we can access the subconscious mind we can remove the phobia as quickly as it arose

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It is usually unadvisable to treat pain unless the cause of that pain is already known and has been diagnosed by a medical practitioner. Pain is sometimes a symptom of a more serious underlying condition, for example, a persistent headache could be a symptom of a brain tumour. If the hypnotherapist were to treat the headache in this example, before the root cause of the pain was known, then this could well lead to the brain tumour not being diagnosed for longer. However, if the patient had already been to their doctor and more serious causes of the headaches had been eliminated, then it would be fine for the hypnotherapist to proceed.

Pain should never be treated for its own sake, but if the underlying cause is known and your doctor gives permission, hypnosis can be very effective in relieving pain.

In fact, according to the Guardian Newspaper, Doctors are being encouraged to use hypnosis alongside, or even instead of, general anaesthetics during some operations.

Professor David Spiegel, of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at Stanford University in the US, has called upon the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to add hypnotherapy to its list of approved therapeutic techniques for the treatment of conditions ranging from allergies and high blood pressure to the pain associated with bone marrow transplantation, cancer treatment and anaesthesia for liver biopsy. (The NICE has already approved the technique for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome.)

“It is time for hypnosis to work its way into the mainstream of British medicine… There is solid science behind what sounds like mysticism and we need to get that message across to the bodies that influence this area. Hypnosis has no negative side-effects. It makes operations quicker, as the patient is able to talk to the surgeon as the operation proceeds, and it is cheaper than conventional pain relief. Since it does not interfere with the workings of the body, the patient recovers faster, too.

“It is also extremely powerful as a means of pain relief.”

The following account of someone who had some bone in the base of the thumb removed and some joints fused together, without any anaesthetic, should silence even the most sceptical readers:

A hypnotherapist had an 83-minute operation on his arm with no anaesthetic.

At one point, Alex Lenkei even heard the surgeon say: “Can I have the saw, please?”

Because he had put himself into a hypnotic trance, however, he said he felt no pain as the doctors chiselled out a walnut-sized chunk of bone from his wrist.

Mr Lenkei, 61, had the operation to treat his painful osteoarthritis. He said: “The results have been amazing. I feel ace.”

…The hypnotherapist amazed doctors by asking how things were going halfway through the surgery, at Worthing Hospital in West Sussex on Wednesday.

…Surgeon David Llewellyn-Clark said the operation went well and Mr Lenkei showed no reaction during the surgery. He added: “If he had been grinning and bearing it we would have known – but his heart rate and breathing remained constant throughout.

…Mr Lenkei, who is a registered hypnotherapist, has been practising the technique since he was 16. In 1996 he was hypnotised by a colleague before a 30-minute hernia operation.

Anaesthetist Richard Venn said the surgery would usually be carried out under general anaesthetic.

Dr Leon Gevertz, of the British Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis, said that heart operations had been carried out under hypnosis.

Studies found that the practice relaxes the patient and can alter the perception of pain or increase the pain threshold.

Quitting Smoking can be much easier than you’ve ever imagined!

Using Hypnotherapy to quit smoking is a powerful way to kick the smoking habit. In fact, the statistics show that it is twice as powerful as other methods methods – like nicotine gum or patches – because it tackles both the reasons for smoking and the desire for cigarettes.

At Northants Hypnosis, the method we employ to help you stop once and for all works in two simple ways provides two main benefits:

1. Dealing with the stress and/or other “triggers” that caused you to reach for a cigarette

2. Transforming your attitudes and beliefs about smoking and yourself, reinforcing your desired for a fresh future

Hypnosis has proven again and again to be highly effective for smoking cessation. In fact, studies show that when done correctly the success rate is slightly above 66%. That’s more than double the success rate of patches and gum and 10 times more effective than trying to quit on your own!

You’ve got nothing to lose… and a whole world of smoke-free fresh air to gain!

Are you in a long-term relationship that could use a lift? Whether it’s parent-child tension, marriage difficulties of work-place conflict, hypnotherapy can help you improve your relationships. It can even help you find success in new relationships!

Occasionally in our lives we can find that our relationships don’t always run true to course. There are many ways in which relationship problems can arise, some examples are;

* relationship issues within marriage
* overcoming problems in a long distance relationship
* friends or colleagues who have had a difference of opinion find they are unable to approach one another to make amends
* disharmony can arise in families with teenagers putting a strain on families
* people may have difficulty in forming new relationships, particularly when they are finding it hard to ‘move on’ from a previous break up
* Fears and problems associated with dating

Often it can be difficult to ask for relationship advice. Whether you are looking to deal with relationship problems or are interested in building successful new relationships, hypnotherapy can help in many ways.

Hypnosis can also help couples facing sexual difficulties. Studies in the late 1990s showed a 75% to 80% improvement rate using hypnosis as a treatment for erectile dsyfunction patients whose impotence was not linked to physical causes.If you or a loved one suffer from premature ejaculation, hypnosis, relaxation and counselling can help.

Through the use of hypnosis, perceptions can be reframed to enable healing of damaged relationships or stabilisation of basically positive and healthy relationships. Hypnosis can allow you to re-appraise key events, to look at situations from a completely different perspective and to gain an appreciation for another’s position. You can recapture lost feelings of love, friendship, romance and commitment, allowing healing to occur in the here and now.

Most importantly of all, hypnosis can help you relate to yourself in healthier and more fulfilling ways. And as you know, how you relate to yourself is the key to how successfully you relate to others.