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Need a Therapist?

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Need a Therapist? It’s a position I am often asked about by clients at the beginning of therapy. Specifically about the difference between hypnotherapy, psychotherapy and counselling, or a Psychotherapist and a Counsellor.

 

It isn’t an easy distinction to make, and certainly not for the untrained person looking for a therapist for the first time. So what do you need to know when you need a therapist?

Here is what you need to make an informed decision:

 

First, make sure that your therapist is adequately qualified. This is especially important with hypnotherapists who as an unregulated body can include anyone who has taken a distance learning or online course for half a day, or perhaps not even that.

Would you put your car in the hands of a mechanic with no formal training?… Well what about your mind?

 

The minimum a hypnotherapist should have is CNHC, and here’s why:

“CNHC was set up with government support to protect the public by providing a UK voluntary register of complementary therapists. CNHC’s register has been approved as an Accredited Register by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care.”

 

Here’s the CNHC link

And here’s the logo to look out for:

Complementart and Natural Healthcare Council

 

A hypnotherapist may offer treatment for a range of simpler issues (such as quit smoking) but for any emotional, behavioural or psychological issue, better to seek out a Psychotherapist or a Counsellor.

 

The names psychotherapist and counsellor are often interchangeable but there are differences in training and practice, with UKCP’s accreditation as the most difficult and time-consuming.

 

For example, a Counsellor can belong simply to BACP which is the Counsellor’s governing body. They require 450 hours of tutor contact hours and training of 1 year full time or 2 years part time BUT a Counsellor can also go on to be a member of UKCP.

 

Becoming a full clinical member of UKCP (a Psychotherapist) takes a minimum of four years at post-graduate level, they say:

 “UKCP believes the difference lies in the length and depth of training involved and in the quality of the relationship between the client and their therapist. UKCP registered psychotherapists are trained to Master’s level.” 

 

As a UKCP therapist, training requirements are a minimum of 1800 hours over four years at Master’s level and include  personal therapy with a UKCP registered psychotherapist, clinical supervised practice, a mental health placement, continuing professional development and ongoing supervision.

 

Here’s the UKCP link

And here’s the logo to look out for:

Look for the UKCP official banner

 

So there you have it, my quick guide to therapists. If you’re in the position to need a therapist, or just curious about therapy at this stage, please contact someone who has the expertise to help you.

 

Therapy is often a demanding process, and not every therapist will suit every client, there needs to be a good therapeutic relationship.

You can get off to a good start though by choosing wisely from the beginning. My aim is to give you the information that you need to begin that search.

 

Oh, and please remember, it may be a little daunting to make that first contact with a therapist but we are ‘people people’ –  our training is aimed at putting you at ease from the first moment.

 

Best of luck…

 

Stuart

 

 

 

 

 

 

How anxious brains work

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How anxious brains work is an important part of the understanding of anxiety and panic. So let’s begin to understand it.

Let’s start with the anxiety response. If we can understand what’s going on, we have a useful starting point. This is another in the series of learning how anxiety works.

Triggers begin the process; we’ve all had those feelings of being in a dangerous place, even when physically we aren’t. Clients often describe this as a feeling of ‘dread’. So what happens when anxiety is triggered in this way?

The parts of your brain responsible for anxiety are the amygdala and the thalamus, the limbic system. The aim of the thalamus is to keep us safe. The thalamus scans for potential dangers around us all the time, monitoring all our senses, a little like anxiety radar.

If it detects a potential threat, rightly or wrongly, even if something that isn’t a threat is recognised as a threat, it sends a message to the amygdala.

The amygdala then does all those things that we recognise as unwelcome and unpleasant. It may raise heart rate, cause sweating, shallow breathing, and tense our muscles. We are from that point hyper-vigilant.

This is the ‘fight or flight’ response that I am sure you are familiar with; it’s a natural and useful response to dangers around us.

The problem here is that in anxious people, this process can begin at any time, sometimes even for no apparent reason. It can happen on an otherwise good day – it makes us anxious, panic and want to escape.

This trigger can be tied to danger or it could be a trigger from the past, wrongly recognised in the present, it could come from a sight, sound, smell, touch or any of our senses.

Once the thalamus has signaled the amygdala, the amygdala takes over and shuts down our rational thinking. We are left with instinctive simple reactions such as fight or flight; we are out of reason and into instinct.

Importantly, we are responding to the stimulus without choice, the amygdala is preparing the body to deal with the threat.

What is needed to combat this response are methods that reassure the amygdala so that we can regulate the body, regulate the breathing and by doing that, tell the brain that everything is alright.

By doing that we turn back on the rational part of our brain and we no longer have an anxious brain.

Stay tuned for more resources on understanding and treating the anxious brain.

 

Hypno gastric band – the truth

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The hypno gastric band truth

 

If you want a hypno gastric band in Bolton, then please read this

 

The ethical problem with the hypno gastric band is simple. The therapist is lying to the client. You are not getting a gastric-band, you are getting an illusory shortcut,  you are buying a lie.

 

Where else would you pay for a professional to tell you a lie?

 

Would your Doctor be able to lie to you? Of course not, they are governed by an ethical code to cause you no harm, as a registered hypnotherapist and registered psychotherapist so am I, so why put your mind in the hands of a liar and pay for the privilege?

 

Unfortunately in the UK anyone can take a course (or not) and advertise themselves as a ‘hypnotherapist’ and make a living from telling weight-control lies to clients, the hypno gastric band method.

 

I believe that you deserve more honesty and value for money.

 

What you deserve is a lasting weight loss system that is based in expert knowledge and skills, UKCP and CNHC accredited.  After all, how you got into difficulty with weight control is unique to you, and so is the solution.

 

As a registered healthy weight coach as well as a registered hypnotherapy and psychotherapy provider. I am able to offer you a safe and supportive environment and method to make an honest and lasting difference.

 

All a hypno gastric band is designed to do is to make you think you are full sooner, why not just have professional therapy? Why not have access not to some one-size-fits-all solution, but to therapy designed around your needs and tailored personally to them?

 

The benefits are many, not only will you be taking control of this issue, but you will be empowering yourself to take control of other aspects of your life. 

I know you can do it, and you do too, even if you don’t know that you know it yet.

 

As you can probably tell, I feel strongly about this issue and I make no apologies for that. The hypno gastric band is an insult to your integrity as a client and to mine as a therapist.

So don’t buy a lie, but instead make an investment in yourself and your future.

 

Learn about anxiety

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No learn about anxiety resources would be complete without looking at emotional resilience. The word comes from ‘resili’ – the Latin word for ‘spring back’ – it’s the process of adapting in the face of adversity.

Think of anxiety a bit like a see-saw with ‘perceived’ ability to cope on one end and demands on the other. When demands are lower that ability to cope, we are OK, when the demands are bigger than our perceived ability to cope, we have a problem, we can learn to be less anxious.

Ego strengthening and emotional resilience are about improving ability to cope. We all use scales of 1 to 10, if our ability is say a grade 4 and a grade 6 problem comes up, we can struggle, if the ability is a 9, then the grade 6 problem is easily handled.

This resilience can be cultivated. The more we learn about anxiety, the more tools we have to cope.

The first step is Realism, being realistic about a situation, for example one of the difficulties with depression is that people often attach inappropriate meaning to events. If a depressed person telephones a friend and they don’t ring back, they might think ’my friend doesn’t like me’ when the actual reason may be that they didn’t even get the message.

Next we look at establishing a goal that we can work towards, a favourable outcome. Now here hypnosis can really help with what we call ‘future pacing’. We all know that hypnosis can help us look back at past problems by regressing. The other side of that coin is looking forward which is equally (if not more) powerful.

Self-discipline is important, abandoning those ‘crutch activities’ that feel safe and familiar. It might be drink or drugs or avoidance. Ego strengthening techniques can really help with this process.

Cultivating wider interests helps because it gives us different versions of ourselves. Think of all the energy an anxious person uses just being anxious, once they are less anxious they have a surplus or energy and time to spend, space to ‘grow into’.

Re-framing is seeing something through a different frame and really important if you want to learn about anxiety. Say you suffer an ankle injury; you may well be focusing on how it stops you doing what you want to do. If you’re a soldier on the front line of a war zone, a simple ankle injury might mean rest and relaxation away from stress and danger.

Here’s a great re-frame that goes directly to the next in our list – Identity. It’s easy to concentrate on all our difficulties and things that have gone wrong. Look though at the old saying ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. That’s re-framing from victim to survivor, think of all the strengths you’ve built up in those hard times!

Flexibility is also key, changing change, making change into opportunity rather than threat.  Flexibility is vital for surviving life’s storms, if you bend with the storm winds, you don’t break.

Hypnosis, mindfulness and meditation can all help to moderate outbursts and reinforce neural pathways. Think of your mind like a cornfield for this one. The old outdated negative patterns of thought are like well-trodden paths in the corn, easy to tread again and again. By treading down new paths of positive neural pathways in the corn, like the old ones, they get flatter and flatter, and easier to tread.

A strong social network is good for emotional resilience; reach out in times of difficulty. Today, we live more and more isolated lives, often secure in the belief that Facebook friends mean we’re well supported. Look for support in times of difficulty; seek out therapy if you need to.

For control, look to Victor Frankl, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Moving your locus of control internally rather than externally can make a big difference.

Finally, test the changes, keep a journal and monitor your progress, learn about anxiety with free resources posted on this blog,  after all this isn’t work, it’s your life’s work!

 

Anxiety resources

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Anxiety resources are one of the keys to feeling better. So what’s the first to understand?

It has to be relaxation.

Think of your anxiety a little like a light switch, on is anxious and off is relaxed. It’s simple but profound.

It’s physically impossible to be relaxed and anxious at the same time.  Relaxation is the first practical tool I teach my clients to use in the fight against their anxiety. Why?

Because it puts the power back in the anxious clients’ hands, and an empowered client has made a first step towards recovery. That is one of the benefits of relaxation, we CAN all do it, sometimes we forget how, but it is an ability we all share.

A little like Carl Jung’s idea of the common subconscious, relaxation is a natural healing resource that we can all access to fight anxiety, with the right help.

I’m not talking about the bottle of wine and a film type of relaxation with Facebook pinging all the way through; I’m talking about deep relaxation of the autonomic nervous system. It’s kryptonite for anxiety.

And that is something most of us very rarely do.

And it’s the ultimate ‘me time’. If you don’t know that, do yourself a huge favour and try it out even if you aren’t struggling.

Hypnosis is a fantastic tool to kick start the relaxation process if it’s been long neglected, so is mindfulness or meditation. Whichever way it happens, once it happens, clients have a tool they can access anywhere to turn the intensity right down, like you would a radio.

Think of that from the anxious person’s perspective. They are often confused, frightened, lonely, and sometimes desperate but mostly they want tools. They want to help themselves.

In the toolbox, relaxation is the soft, soothing, comforting, velvety hammer of anxiety. You can use it and enjoy using it too. It’s not the medicine that made us screw our faces up as kids. It feels good and it helps, what’s not to love about relaxation?

You can feel it working too, slower heart rate, lower blood pressure, steady, easy breathing, benefit after benefit after benefit.

Every time you flick on or off a light switch, think of it… anxiety on, relaxed off.

 

Anxiety on.

Relaxed off.

Anxiety and you

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ANXIETY AND YOU

So why did I decide to specialise in anxiety?

Well, anxiety chose me, not the other way around. As a busy Lawyer, I didn’t see the warning signs on the road to anxiety until all of a sudden… BAM!

Huge panic attack on the first day of a holiday, fear, confusion, feeling isolated and vulnerable, I felt like I was the only person in the world that this was happening to. I had no tools to help me help myself.

Fast forward ten years and I moved from anxiety’s latest victim to hopefully its worst enemy. How did I do this?

I condensed expert personal therapy, countless hours of study, became a therapist, researched and researched into my desire to understand anxiety and how to help others. It led to UKCP accreditation, thousands of hours of dedicated work towards helping people like you, but most importantly it gave me a skill set that really makes a difference.

So what does that mean to you?

It means you’re not alone in this struggle; people have been there before, while your route into anxiety is personal to you, the symptoms of anxiety, generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety and that spiral of panic are very common to us all.

There are many useful ways to combat anxiety and find your peace, relaxation, CBT, hypnotherapy, reframing, behavioural methods and various forms of psychotherapy can all look at the causes and help move you forward.

You are not alone, I have been there and I have moved on.

You can move on with the right answers and methods. Therapy isn’t a magic wand, it’s sometimes hard work but the therapist collaborating with you as the client is the key to making that progress.

Whether anxiety strikes out of the blue or is a familiar part of your life when that feeling of dread, the fear of fear comes over you, you can use some of the resources posted on my last blog to help in the short term.

I find that with clients in my treatment room, learning about anxiety is a major part of the process and so I decided to put some of that knowledge out here to help you.

In the next blog, I will talk in more detail about therapy methods and how they work, but more importantly about how they can help you. Whether face to face or by online therapy, the more you understand, the more tools you have to combat anxiety.

I hope you’ll join me

Stuart