Weight Loss

Hypnotherapy is extremely effective for changing habits including emotional eating, binge eating, night eating, eating out of boredom, addiction to junk food, chocolate, or other sweets, or just overeating at mealtimes. it can also disrupt the habits of taking disproportionate servings or getting seconds, excessive snacking, or just an “I deserve a treat” mindset.

Hypnotherapy is also great for regaining your basic confidence, motivation, self-esteem and in reaching the realisation that it really is possible to succeed.

The wonderful thing about hypnosis is that it takes away the desire to overeat. It doesn’t stop normal hunger, just the part that wants to grab more. Without that desire, the inner fight is over. That endless loop of try/give up, diet/binge, good person/bad person can come to an end. 

When you’re no longer obsessing about food and weight, you free up space to enjoy life and live more fully. You have more energy, feel happier and lighter, sleep better and feel more optimistic. Once this shift occurs, it’s easier to stay on track.

In dealing with weight loss, I usually see people five times over five weeks and ask that people practice with a recording of the session in between meetings, for best effect. After that I suggest an occasional tune up until the goal is reached, then a check in at one year.

For more information, you can read my blogs on what I’ve learned about weight loss over many years working with people.

Weight Loss for Life
Pt 1 – Childhood factors
Pt 2 – It’s all in the mind
Pt 3 – It’s not just you, it’s the food industry

and

Treating the Cause – my article in Canberra Doctor, the AMA magazine, about the new weight loss drugs.

Back…

Weight Loss Drugs

We keep hearing about the new weight loss drugs.

They’re very effective for many people and they work to decrease appetite by slowing the emptying of the stomach and binding to receptors in the brain.

As a GP and hypnotherapist specialising in emotional eating and weight loss, I’m starting to see people after they’ve tried one or two of them.

They come to me because they either:

• Felt too sick on it to continue, with nausea, indigestion, stomach pain, headache, constipation, diarrhoea, or no appetite.
• Continued their unhealthy eating habits while on it, having the same junk food but in smaller quantities.
• They’d been on it for a year or two, lost the weight, stopped the drug, then went straight back to the bad habits and the weight came straight back: in fact, a recent study showed that most people regain 2/3 of the weight within a year of stopping.
• Or they’ve realised they don’t want to be on any drug for life, especially one for which we don’t have clear information yet about the long-term effects.

Still, there are also plenty of people who are taking these drugs, losing weight and improving their cardiovascular risk factors without the big side effects. I’ve seen thousands of people for weight loss and what I’ve found is that most are eating to deal with emotions.

Recently I combed through 100 of my patient files to see what the main underlying drivers of unhealthy eating were. The clear picture that emerged from my patients’ experiences was that emotions were at the core of unhealthy eating, and that releasing those emotions was essential to provoke deeper happiness and to remove the drivers of the habits that made them unhappy. To see if you can relate to any of these experiences and emotions, you can read the full article here.

Before I hypnotise people, I take them through a simple process to uncover and neutralise the subconscious drivers that sabotage their conscious efforts to lose weight – the trauma, the family patterns, the beliefs, the self-anger, and what people said.

With hypnosis, I give people simple tools so they can just eat when they’re hungry, enjoy real food, eat slowly, chew properly, know when they’ve had enough, then stop eating automatically feeling satisfied. A lot of people have lost that healthy body rhythm of hunger and satiety but it usually comes back.

It’s not a diet. There’s no drugs. There’s no being good and being bad. There’s just natural, easy and healthy eating habits.

One of the most common things people say after a few sessions is what a relief it is to not be thinking about food all the time. Food is just food again.

The new drugs, called GLP-1 agonists, have revolutionised our treatment options for overweight and obese people. They do work well for some people. However, these medications alter the physiology but don’t address the mind that wants to eat to placate emotions, that wants a treat or a reward, that needs to binge to subdue anxious feelings or that needs to punish itself. For this, medical hypnosis can be an effective and safe technique in good hands.

GLP-1 agonists can be useful to kickstart a positive spiral, but I believe it is essential to transform the emotional patterns that underlie a difficult relationship with food.

Treating the Cause – my article in Canberra Doctor, the AMA magazine, about the new weight loss drugs.

Back…

Screen Time and Phone Addiction

None of us decided that we want to waste our lives hunched over, eyes fixed, absorbing other people’s realities and creations of their minds. Of course.

But the habit creeps up. We might think it’s not so bad, or that we have control, or that we need to keep up with everything and everyone.

If you’re on your device for, say, 3 hours a day, that’s 21 hours a week or over 1000 hours a year. 44 full days of your life. Would you consciously sacrifice 6 weeks of your year on mindless scrolling and reacting to whatever the algorithm sends you, or whatever shows up next on the screen?

We don’t necessarily want to get rid of our smart phones, it’s almost impossible to conduct a life without them now.

But we must take our power back. Screen time addiction has become so, so common.

All social media, the news, games and shopping deliberately grab our attention. They know that fear, anger, territoriality and sex pull us in. They use bright colours, novelty, unpredictability, and the anticipation of the next dopamine hit to do it. It’s just like the pokies. At least at the poker machine we can see our money disappearing, but with the devices we can’t see our real life disappearing and being replaced by a fake one.

We are now their product. Our attention and data are sold off. It finds all of us – I’ve found myself on my screens for far longer than I’d like to be!

The way I work with screen addiction is to first take people through a process to uncover and neutralise their particular emotional drivers to the device. These can include anxiety, loneliness, disconnection, boredom, needing attention, anger, or even looking for a fight – it’s incredible what can be uncovered.

Then, we do 4 sessions of hypnosis to change the habits – the where and when and what of how we find ourselves sucked into scrolling. This allows us to create some boundaries and eliminate the automatic checking.

When I did the initial process for myself, I had a huge shift of energy, like waking up clear-headed. I immediately wanted to clear up important things that I hadn’t done, as well as my environment. I felt “I’m back!”. It feels so powerful to be back in charge of my own time again!

When people get off the devices they sleep better, are more focussed, more present, calm and connected – as well as less reactive mentally and emotionally.

In dealing with phone and device addiction, I usually see people five times over five weeks and ask that people practice with a recording of the session in between meetings, for best effect.

Back…

Sleep

If you’re looking for a hypnotist to help you with sleep, you’ve probably already tried basic “sleep hygiene.” There’s a lot of information available but sometimes information alone is not enough. We know we shouldn’t keep adding more coffee during the day, consuming alcohol in the evening, or engaging with electronic devices and thrilling TV at bedtime, but we often do it anyway.

We can be addicted to the agitation, the feeling of being “on.” Maybe it’s too “boring” to eat early, skip the alcohol, and wind down during the evening instead of up, or you can’t/don’t make time to unplug from “doing” mode.

The good news is we don’t have insomnia like a disease, insomnia is something we do. We keep ourselves awake with our habits, agitation, random thoughts, endless reruns, anger, frustration, planning, worry, or dwelling on sad things, or even exciting things, in the future. So if we’re doing it, we can undo it.

The agitated mind tends to try to take control and force itself to go to sleep, then gets irritated if it’s unsuccessful. But we can’t make ourselves go to sleep; we fall asleep. It’s a letting go, a basic trust.

Hypnosis can help greatly with addressing these habits. It can also guide you back down under the superficial chatty mind and that tired, wired feeling into deep rest and deep stillness. People often say after hypnosis that they’ve had their best sleep in years.

I usually see people 5 times over 5 weeks for resolution of sleep problems and ask that people practice with the recording of the session in between, for best effect.

Back…

Stress

What is it? Stress is our reaction to perceived threats. It’s not a vague thing; we all know when we feel stressed. Cartoonists know how to draw it and we recognise it in ourselves and others. We’re constantly trying to adapt to an accelerating world. Faster and faster we are confronted by not getting what we want or expect or not getting it on time, and instead getting what we don’t want. Our fight or flight reaction is triggered as we perceive possible threats in our everyday. We try to make things happen with force and control but our attempts can be frustrated by others, time, the world, technology, reality. As a result, we  become restless, driven, feel powerless to change things. We might self-medicate with food, alcohol, coffee, cigarettes. Then we hit survival mode living on adrenaline –irritable, inefficient, complaining, foggy, sleepless, tired, and wired.

If you had a choice, would you keep doing this?

The good news is that you can rewire yourself to feel grounded, relaxed, empowered. You can strengthen your resilience, feel confident in your own resources, and live from a feeling of being bigger than your problems.

I usually see people five times over five weeks for stress or anxiety and ask that people practice with the recording of the session in between, for best effect.

Back…

Alcohol

Hypnotherapy works very well for alcohol dependence. Many of the people I see have increased their intake over time to the point of drinking a bottle or two of wine or a 6 pack (or more) of beer, daily. A nice lifestyle has become an unhealthy addiction.

The way hypnosis works is to take away the desire to drink and it helps people come out of the fog of alcohol – feeling good in themselves, happy, healthy, confident, optimistic, clear-minded, better slept, in charge of their own actions and looking forward to the future.

After we’ve begun our sessions, I usually suggest that people go off completely, at least for a while, maybe a year. That gives them time to find another way to live life without the constant need to numb or have a treat. Later they might be able to come back to having a social drink with some strict parameters embedded.

I usually see people 5 times over 5 weeks for alcohol and ask that they practice with the recording of the session in between, for best effect. I’ve seen some amazing responses. It really can be that simple.

Back…

Pain

Chronic pain is not what you think it is. This is good news! Researchers have found that chronic pain (lasting for more than 3 months) isn’t necessarily a sign of ongoing tissue damage or inflammation.
But neither is it ‘all in your head’.

Pain is definitely real but where is the signal actually coming from if it’s not tissue damage? We can keep getting messages that we’re in pain long after the injury has healed. But that’s just the brain overdoing its threat warning to protect us. The brain’s job is to hold the data from our past bad experiences so that we can avoid future similar threats. If a red car runs over our foot, we’ll quite likely flinch whenever we see a red car in future. If a movement hurts, we’ll avoid doing that.

If we keep getting these pain messages, then we keep believing that the damage is still there, and we keep avoiding any movement that might increase the pain. And ongoing pain often sensitises the nervous system so that even a light touch on the affected area or slight movement can be felt as pain.

Say you have a major car accident and injure your neck. There’s the shock of the accident held in the mind and body. Then a long period of pain with any movement and the natural bracing to avoid that. This can become the way you hold your body habitually. Caution and anxiety can easily develop “I can’t do that” “that will hurt”. All of this can be even more intense if this happens at a particularly stressful time in your life and your confidence has already taken a knock. And if you can’t work because of the pain then financial fear can add to the intensity of the experience of powerlessness. Maybe you see the Xray report, the damage is there in black and white, and your doctor frowns. Your brain logs all that. Your mind then might spin “it’s damaged, it’s permanent” “what if I can’t work” etc and you might spiral into fear and hopelessness.

We know, from functional MRI brain studies of people with chronic pain, that the brain lights up, not just in the areas that represent physical sensation, but also in the hippocampus (memory), amygdala (fear-fight/flight), vision and hearing areas. The brain has logged all this evidence that you’re under threat. The confluence of trauma, pain, emotions, negative beliefs, fear about moving can really put people in a bind, a holding pattern, a contraction of mind and body.

Fortunately, there are well-researched ways to get back out of the pattern as long as pathology has been ruled out.

With graduated exercise the brain can accumulate experience that moving is safe again.

And there is good evidence that, with pain reprocessing, beliefs about the pain and damage can be changed, thus reducing the intensity of the pain. Changing that belief can help change the pain.

There are many ways to change negative thoughts and unhelpful beliefs, to process or release held emotions, defuse the hypervigilance, and alter the holding pattern in the circuits of the brain.

All of this can be expedited with hypnosis. Going into trance is the best way to open the door to changing the brain’s circuits and train it to be less reactive, to send fewer pain messages. It’s the easiest way to change the perception of pain, the meaning of pain, the beliefs about it, and the expectations of the future. And best of all, it implants the possibility of a good future to look forward to where you’re happy, healthy, confident, and living your pain-free life.

One of my patients, a man in his fifties, had been in constant neck pain for 5 years after a series of car accidents. He’d had several major surgeries for it as well as having had injections into the pain area and a nerve stimulator, which worked temporarily. After the first session he had no pain for 5 days and when it did come, he felt it as just uncomfortable. He was much happier, more active and hadn’t needed his twice daily opiate tablets. In fact, he’d only needed to take one in the whole week. (Please note that while most people have good results, I cannot guarantee individual outcomes)

If you would like to gauge your own overlay of fear and unhelpful beliefs, you could fill out the Tampa pain scale (Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia). It is 17 quick questions to see where you are on the scale, a score of 17 being the least fear and 68 being the most. Scores above 37 indicate some degree of kinesiophobia (fear of moving causing pain or damage).

https://www.mdapp.co/tampa-scale-for-kinesiophobia-tsk-calculator-465/

 The good thing is that no matter what the score is, the mind and the perception of pain can be changed so that it’s possible that the pain can be vanished or perceived as just uncomfortable and harmless.

Back…

Smoking

Personal motivation is recognised as the most important factor in succeeding at quitting cigarettes. Why do you want to stop? Hypnosis can help supercharge that motivation.

Often, it’s not enough to know that smoking ruins your health; we might know it but can’t deal with it. Nevertheless, the thought of a dark future hangs around in the background. Instead, we need to imagine, and truly feel, that there’s a good future for you where you’re happy and healthy with plenty of extra money, that there’s something to look forward to as a non-smoker. That’s what hypnosis can do.

At $40 for a pack of 20 cigarettes, a pack a day habit is $280 a week and $14,560 a year. It’s good to plan what you’d do with that money!

Some people will just decide to quit and that’s that, no matter how strong the addiction. They have a sense of being the authority in their own lives. But for most of us, we actually need to find confidence, power and self-trust that we’ll follow through in order to make the decision to stop, rather than “try.” 

Hypnosis is great for giving you this confidence in order to take a stand for yourself, for your life. It takes away the desire for the cigarette, so you don’t have to fight with yourself. Without the desire, you’re free.

I usually see smokers 5 times: twice in the first and second weeks and once in the third. The first day is quit day.

Nicotine is an addictive drug, it’s true. But hypnosis can give you the tools to give it up. I’ve seen many, many smokers in my 18 years doing clinical hypnosis as a doctor, and I’ve helped many of them to quit for good. You can too.

Back…

Depression

Most agree that medication is needed to combat major depression, but in mild to moderate depression, psychological treatments alone, or in tandem with medication are often very effective. Of course, there are lots of ways people deal with it themselves, such as exercise, meditation, acupuncture, and talking it through with close friends and confidantes. There also are now several excellent and effective interactive apps to guide people through reframing how they think week by week.

When depressed, we tend to focus on the bad things and spiral down. Some people experience “learned helplessness” and if they also have a pessimistic thinking style they can quickly collapse under pressure. Add in toxic negative beliefs – “everything I do is wrong,” “no one likes me,” etc – and we can get stuck.

The good news is that thoughts and beliefs are not set in concrete; they can be changed and so can the feeling.

What is required for this change to take place? A decision, a willingness to change, knowledge of your intentions, and a pathway to where you want to go.

Hypnotherapy can be very effective at stopping the replays of past negative things and future nightmares, and can change one’s thoughts, beliefs and mood. It also settles the anxiety that most people with depression have. Hypnotherapy improves self-esteem, confidence, sleep, energy, relaxation and optimism. Once these attributes begin to balance, happiness returns.

I usually see people 5 times over 5 weeks and ask that they practice with the recording of the session in between, for best effect.

Back…

Cancer Support

Fear and sadness are natural responses to the sudden possibility of death. Even though we superficially accept that one day we’ll die, a cancer diagnosis is very confronting. The very idea of it can be scary and then the process may include sickness, pain, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, upheavals in career, family, finances. Furthermore, the shift of identity from being an autonomous person to being a patient is unwelcome to say the least. People often feel powerless to the disease; the conveyor belt, the tests, treatments, the prognosis. As someone who had three monthly brain scans to see if “it” had come back, I know the feeling. It can seem overwhelming but I want you to know that it’s all workable; it may or may not be fixable, but it is workable: the fear, the sadness, the negative beliefs, the hopelessness. You don’t have to die before you die.

Using hypnotherapy and other mind tools can get you back a sense of personal agency (being able to choose your mind’s response to the situation), strengthen your inner confidence, and find a sense that you have all the inner resources you need to deal with whatever comes. Perhaps most importantly, hypnotherapy can give you a strong sense of a possible positive future to sustain you throughout the process. You don’t have to strain to “be positive” over the top of the awful. It’s actually possible to have some genuine happiness of heart.

I usually see people 5 times over 5 weeks to begin with for relaxation, empowerment and happiness.

Back…