Wednesday 29 July 2009

Holidays and contemplation


Now that the summer holidays have arrived the number of clients I see for the next few weeks is likely to drop away considerably.

The pattern is repeated each year; people go away on holiday, they get some time to reflect on how things are going in their life, they decide to make a change when they get home.

Some people will make those changes without any outside assistance, others will get on the phone and start to find out more about hypnotherapy.

If you are about to go away on holiday it's useful to take some of that time for yourself. Create a space where you can have time to reflect on the goals that have some how slipped away from you, the relationships that have become nothing more than an exchange of Christmas cards and the habits that you would like to get rid of.

It's helpful to think about the positive goals you want to achieve, the new skills you want to acquire, that instrument that you always wanted to learn.

Then when you come home; TAKE ACTION!

Thinking about your goals will achieve nothing unless YOU TAKE ACTION.

This is about YOU and what you want, not what other want you to want. There is a huge difference in those two things.

Saturday 25 July 2009

Seduced.....and disappointed


I recently acquired a new Blackberry 9000 for work purposes. Initially I was seduced by all its geekiness. It's got push email, a camera that takes video and still pictures, it can use WiFi, it's GPS enabled so you can see where you are, it's 3G download capable and it hooks up to the Bluetooth hands free in the car, the screen looks fantastic. It has everything that your inner geek could need.

But.....I'm coming to the conclusion that actually it's a bit rubbish. Why?

Well all that techno nerdy stuff sucks the life out of the battery in less than a working day, frankly that's crap.

I have resorted to turning off the WifI and Bluetooth connections in a vain attempt to extend the battery but the effect is marginal at best. Not only that but the GPS seems very sulky indeed and says it cannot see any satellites and asks me to go somewhere with 'open sky' , even if I'm stood in a field!

Maybe I just have a clunker, perhaps I'm being unfair but none of the nerdy stuff means anything if the bloody battery is flat.

Until this techno beast arrived I was on an old data only Blackberry and a mobile phone. Charged up, the that combination would be good to work for at least two days, sometimes three with light use.

It seems we have gone backwards. It's just a bit shit really.

Tuesday 21 July 2009

Car accidents and terminal stupidity

I had a car accident in June. I was stationery, got biffed from behind by a huge Nissan 4x4, who didn't stop.

Not too much damage so I go about my business for the day, report it to the claims handling agent at the insurance broker, stop by the police station and let them know as well.

I had spotted the registration plate for the other vehicle as it drove away; it didn't stop.

Did the police prosecute?No, I don't know why, I thought not stopping after an accident was a criminal offence but it seems not.

The car was repaired (huge variation for prices on this, if you have the same problem get at least three quotes) and is now looking good.

Except............

It turns out that even though I emailed the worlds most comprehensive accident report to the claims broker......they didn't action it. They have no record of it....the chap I spoke to is on a different team and he is away sick at the moment (or some other bollocks).

So instead I have to go through the same shit all over again with a girl whose IQ seems to be in single digits.

"Can I send you the pre-prepared document by email" I say?
"That would be no good I don't have a file to put it in" she replied.

Well bloody well make one is what I thinking but I doubt this girl would last five minutes if she went "off script" and so I'm stuck wasting another 30 minutes of my life telling her what happened, to cover for the stupidity and lack of intelligence of the claims company operative.

Massively annoyed and pissed off by the whole bloody system.

What a fucking shambles.

Thursday 16 July 2009

Ethics Doctors and Depression

When a prospective client gets in touch with a therapist, there is a good chance that they will have already been looking for ways to deal with whatever their issue appears to be.

Often that first port of call is the Family Doctor, the GP.

I have a lot of respect for GPs, they spend their time seeing a huge variety of patients with an almost infinite number of ailments. It's not an easy job, I'm sure.

That said, it is often reported that up to 60% of the problems that patients bring to the GP surgery are psychosomatic, that is to say as much guided by the thought processes and thinking patterns as anything else. Depression arising from redundancy, marriage breakdown or some other cause might get some low intensity CBT, some limited counselling or more likely a dose of anti-depressants.

The way that these issues are dealt with will vary from Doctor to Doctor and from one health authority to another. That Low Intensity CBT might even be delivered by means of PC connected to the internet.

So where is the issue?

If this patient has been through this particular mill and found it lacking, he or she may well call their local Hypnotherapist.

They may talk through the issues at some length before even attempting to construct a therapeutic response. It may be clear from this discussion that the depression is a symptom of other life issues (low self esteem, poor self confidence etc.) that can be dealt with successfully using hypnotherapy. Great!

As part of that discussion the topic of what medications the 'would be' client is taking will be raised. So it will become clear at this point that the GP has diagnosed depression and very likely written a prescription for Prozac or something similar. Unfortunately it seems to be all too easy to reach this conclusion and attach the depression label.

In an ideal world the therapist might write to the GP asking if there was any medical reason why the client/patient should not use hypnotherapy to deal with the root cause of their problems. Hopefully the GP says "it's ok" and we work towards a positive outcome.

Sadly life is rarely that simple. GPs will often refuse to sign anything from outside their office and since as therapists we have a duty of care to client, we probably should not go ahead with any hypnotherapy.

I say probably because the reason most often used by the Doctor for not signing is that they don't understand hypnosis or hypnotherapy. I look at the style of work I have adopted bits of it look like CBT, bits of it involve an element of counselling and of course the use of hypnosis.

If I referred to what I did as Psychotherapy & CBT then I guess life would be easier all round. Perhaps I should forgo the letter to the GP; the Hypnotherapy Society Code Of Ethics does not explicitly call for this but is often considered good practice.

At the moment the outcome is a Doctor's patient who is dealing the symptoms by medication instead of getting to the root cause of the issue.

There has to be a better, more effective way to work than this and perhaps part of that better way forward could be improving the education of GPs as to the usefulness of hypnotherapy.

Anyone out there got some useful ideas to contribute?

Saturday 11 July 2009

Samuel Smiles Self Help

I am still reading the book 'Self Help' (first published in 1859) by Samuel Smiles. I am three chapters in and am reading the brief biographies of the potters cited as models of behaviour by Smiles.

In this age of the internet it is so easy to forget even going to a public library to find things out was for these men (who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries) an impossibility. If you wanted to know something you trained with a master or learnt by trial and error.

Now we have Wikipedia and look how lazy that has made us, often we don't even bother lifting up a book (me included!) to find something out.

Truly the world has changed a great deal in 200 years. Knowledge is pervasive but I'm not sure about the desire to make use of it.

Friday 10 July 2009

Champix / Chantix again

I recently had a client come to me to help them stop smoking. This is rarer than it used to be, it seems most people who want to stop are taking the NHS (National Health Service) approach.

One of the methods being pushed by GPs is the use of Champix (Chantix in the USA) to stop any cravings. I know that for some people this approach seems to work, sadly for others, including this recent client, it acts as a huge deppressant.

It can push mood to catastrophically low levels, in fact The Food and Drug Administration (USA) will require two smoking-cessation drugs, Chantix and Zyban, to carry the agency’s strongest safety warning about the side effects that can include depression and suicidal thoughts.

If you do feel tempted to stop smoking with these aids please do all the research you can before starting and if your mood is badly affected, stop immediately. There are others ways to become a non-smoker including Hypnotherapy.

Working on new web site

I have been working on a revamped version of my Somerset Hypnotherapy web site recently. It is taking me much longer than I thought it would.

Video clips will feature on many of the site's web pages along with updated information and the articles that I have published over the last couple of years.

If you'd like a sneak preview then go to www.somersethypnotherapy.com/v3.html.

The links are not yet working but it'll give you an idea of how the site will look.

Saturday 4 July 2009

Thoughts from 150 years ago that seem apt today

Samuel Smiles wrote the original self help book back in 1859 and you can read a copy for free from the Gutenberg Project.

I just started reading it and this paragraph caught my attention;

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice. What we are accustomed to decry as great social evils, will, for the most part, be found to be but the outgrowth of man's own perverted life; and though we may endeavour to cut them down and extirpate them by means of Law, they will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some other form, unless the conditions of personal life and character are radically improved. If this view be correct, then it follows that the highest patriotism and philanthropy consist, not so much in altering laws and modifying institutions, as in helping and stimulating men to elevate and improve themselves by their own free
and independent individual action.


There is a lot in that paragraph that applies just as strongly today as it did 150 years ago.

Interested in self help & affirmations?

If self help and affirmations are interesting for you, take a look at this forum posting that I contributed to today. A couple of interesting ideas here.

Friday 3 July 2009

Hot weather = grumpiness outbreak?

In the UK we seem to spend most of the year yearning for the warm weather; when it arrives all we do is moan!

Too hot, too sticky, too humid were all phrases I heard yesterday and the fact is that particularly in hot humid conditions tempers do seem to get frayed more easily.

This doesn't just apply to adults, children can get the grumps too, as my almost two year daughter demonstrated last night.

Cold drinks and a fan will help, but just as we get used to the idea of high temperatures, the weather forecasters tell us that it is about to end. Light showers are expected and we'll probably moan about that whilst being just slightly pleased by the return of cooler temperatures.

If you are feeling very frazzled you could always try my Ultimate Relaxation download here.

Wednesday 1 July 2009

Some considered thoughts on the 'No News' experiment

In June I started an experiment where I actively avoided the news. I stayed away from the news on TV, I changed channels on the radio to avoid it and did not buy a newspaper.

I wanted to see what would my response would be to not having that negative deluge of information flooding my thoughts.

First off; it's hard to avoid the news media! This stuff is pervasive, in a modern western culture like the UK it's difficult to avoid seeing or hearing some part of the news media.

Some examples:
I went to the pub.......Channel 5 News was on the pub TV.
I went to visit a company......Sky News was on a TV in the reception area
Go to the supermarket to buy some groceries.........the first thing you walk past is the newspaper stand
I logged into my Yahoo email account..........there are the news headlines on the home page

So the 24Hour news media is hard to avoid; you can, as I did choose to disengage from the endless negativity but it harder than it seems.

So practical consideration aside, what happened?

I gained at least 30 minutes extra time in the morning. I used to watch the news every morning from 6-6.30am (I'm an early riser). Now I use that time more constructively to plan my day or finish domestic chores. I don't miss the highly repetitive nature of the morning TV news show.

With my new found extra time I went back to freshening up some skills that had become a bit rusty. A positive result.

Not watching the late night news meant that instead of having the news agenda on my mind as I went to bed I started thinking much more about the things that are of importance to me and my family.

I thought that I might feel somehow cut off from events without watching the news or listening to it on the radio but the media is so pervasive that it is still possible to know roughly what is going on even when avoiding the nightly bulletins.

At the end of the experiment I feel I have changed, for the better. I make more effective use of my time (surely our most valuable resource) and I'm learning (or relearning) new skills.

I recommend you give it a try. I found it a liberating experience, it's just possible that you may feel the same way too.