Find out how hypnosis can free you from the burden of negative feelings and thoughts

One thing my clients enjoy most is experiencing deep relaxation. I use relaxation quite a lot in therapy for two main reasons. Firstly, hypnosis is an excellent natural method of inducing deep relaxation. Secondly, relaxation itself can help with a range of psychological and physiological issues. Hypnotherapy uses a range of techniques to induce physiological relaxation through several methods, for example, specific breathing techniques and muscle relaxation

There are lots of treatments out there for a range of issues, so why choose hypnotherapy?In my blog this week I present three good reasons. Your reasons for choosing hypnotherapy might be the same as mine: hypnotherapy is fast, effective and safe. In fact, there is plenty of evidence to support this suggestion, not just from my own experience as a therapist and researcher, but from a wide body of other research published in peer-reviewed journals.

Research evidence emphasises how important relationships are to wellbeing (e.g. Barry & Daubney, 2017). The good news is that hypnotherapy can help to fix relationship issues. You are not defined forever by your past, but it can be really helpful to realise when problems with relationships as an adult can stem from problems with relationships in the past. Once the root of the problem is identified, you can use hypnotherapy to fix the root of the problem. It's much less trouble to put right than you might think.

Helping people to stop smoking with hypnotherapy is one of the most common requests in my years as a hypnotherapist. So many people today want the benefits of stop smoking hypnosis. London is full of people who are desperate to quit but don’t know how. What is the best way to stop smoking? During my hypnotherapy training in the late 1990s, I was very impressed by a review article which compared various methods of smoking cessation and found that “hypnosis was the most successful single therapy” (Viswesvaran & Schmidt, 1992).

The NHS estimates that 1 in 6 people have experienced anxiety &/or depression in the past week (McManus et al, 2016). Many of these people have been prescribed anxiety medication. In the UK, men have started to value their mental health more than their physical health (Barry & Daubney, 2017), and the stress of maintaining a healthy ‘work-life balance’ is almost impossible for everyone.

It has often been said that the local pub is an invaluable social hub, especially in rural communities. To those of you who weren’t convinced of this already, perhaps now that the pub is becoming an endangered species due to covid-19 lockdowns, you might be changing your minds. So what exactly are we losing? Within the rather nebulous idea of the social hub you could unpack many useful activities that are important on a human level, and here are three related to men’s mental health. 

At last, the twelfth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. The American Psychological Association (APA) produced guidelines in late 2018 on how to conduct therapy with boys and men. Some parts of the guidelines are, in my opinion, welcome (Guideline 9 has lots of good advice), but other parts of the guidelines were perplexingly ideological and caused a wave of critical reaction, including my own blog.

This is the eleventh blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. People go to therapy usually because they feel distressed and are seeking professional advice from someone who is skilled in therapy and will care about their feelings. 

This is the ninth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology (PJP) special issue on male psychology. Given generations of trauma in South Africa, the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) set up a psychology degree which equipped graduates with practical counselling skills based on contemporary Western ideas. Sounds like a fantastic idea, so what could possibly go wrong?

This is the fifth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas based on the Psychreg Journal of Psychology special issue on male psychology. Yesterday’s blog demonstrated that one of the greatest sources of pain for men was not being allowed to see their children.

This is the fourth blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas. Yesterday’s blog showed the impact of domestic abuse risk on separated fathers. Todays blog highlights a deeply personal hurt that many separated dads experience – restrictions on seeing their children. 

This is the second blog in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas. “On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me, two turtle doves”. It is easy to see that some of the greatest novels – like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – are said to have been some of the greatest acts of catharsis for their authors.

This is the first blog (after the intro) in the series The 12 blogs of Christmas. “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree”.  The first paper in the special issue of the Psychreg Journal of Psychology is a peach rather than a pear (if that doesn’t sound too much like Alan Partridge!)

Last week saw the publication of 12 new papers on male psychology. Each article is free to download at the Psychreg Journal of Psychology website. In the first week there has already been over 600 downloads. So why all of the interest in these papers? Well, over the next two weeks you can find out because I will be posting the abstract and short commentary on each paper, and the link to the full article.