Unity Wellbeing Therapy

Stress and anxiety share many of the same physical symptoms, making it difficult to spot the differences between them.

Stress can be defined as our mental, physical, emotional and behavioural responses to external pressure. This includes any perceived demands or threats, such as uncertainty about the future, a lack of control, not having enough resources to cope and big life changes. Identifying what is causing stress is key in stepping towards long-term resilience and better ways of coping. Pressure can arise from external factors including life events, illness (ourselves or someone close to us), living conditions, work, home, family relationships, study, lack of some necessity, or the demands we place on ourselves. Even those events which we see as enjoyable can be stressful, such as holidays, moving home, starting a better job, pregnancy, parenthood, Christmas etc.

Thoughts which are common when feeling stressed:

• This is too much - I can't cope!
• It's not fair.
• Someone should be helping me.
• There is too much to do, and too little time
• I'll never finish I have to get this done

Anxiety on the other hand, is defined by persistent, excessive worries that don’t go away even in the absence of a stressor. Anxiety can be experienced in lots of different ways. Anxiety is what we feel when we are worried, tense or afraid, particularly about things that are about to happen, or which we think could happen in the future. It can be experienced through our thoughts, feelings and physical sensations. Anxiety includes a wide range of issues such as social anxiety (public speaking, meeting new people, job interviews), exam anxiety, performance anxiety (sports, sex), fears and phobias (e.g. fear of heights, flying, animals) to generalised anxiety disorder (GAD - worry, and worry about worry), eco-anxiety (worry about the state of the planet) and panic attacks/panic disorder (often a fear of something more serious like a heart attack).

As recommended by The British Medical Journal, Applied Relaxation and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy are the two most effective therapies for anxiety and stress related issues. Integrating these therapies and techniques such as mindfulness, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (CT), relaxation skills training and desensitisation using imaginal exposure combined with hypnosis makes for a highly effective treatment approach.

CBT and Hypnosis enable you to discover why specific situations create a stress response in you and learn how particular patterns of thinking and behaviour you hold may be holding you back and preventing you from feeling better. As demands and threats are subjectively perceived, we can minimise impacts if we can reframe how we think about things so they’re no longer as threatening.

I can help you develop a new understanding and increase confidence in your ability to deal with stressful situations in the future by giving you the tools to help remove stress and anxiety and develop lasting resilience to future stressful situations.

Fears and Phobias

A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder. It is an extreme form of fear or anxiety triggered by a particular situation (such as going outside) or object (such as spiders), even when there is no danger. Examples include:

• Fear of flying
• Fear of dogs
• Fear of spiders
• Fear of surgery
• Fear of general anaesthetic
• Claustrophobia - fear of confined spaces (e.g. elevators)
• Fear of public transportation
• Fear of driving (usually after a traffic incident)
• Fear of the tube/underground
• Fear of exams
• Fear of the dentist / dental surgery
• Fear of heights
• Fear of bridges
• Fear of driving test
• Fear of injections
• Fear of the dark
• Fear of blushing
• Fear of sweating
• Fear of confrontation
• Fear of business meetings
• Fear of social situations
• Fear of public speaking

Many people seek hypnotherapy to help them with irrational fears and phobias which can be severely debilitating. Hypnotherapy has an excellent and proven record at successfully treating phobias. The hypnotherapy treatment I can provide for phobias is systematic and effective: You will learn and practice an effective relaxation or anti-anxiety technique.

We'll train you in hypnosis and self-hypnosis and begin to build calm self-confidence and a greater sense of control. We'll create a clear hierarchy or list of the things you fear. Finally, and most importantly, we'll systematically 'desensitise' you to those fears by having you imagine being in those situations while under hypnosis and practicing deep relaxation as you rehearse those situations in your imagination. By repeatedly imagining yourself in those situations, while I coach you to relax, we build a new automatic response of natural calmness (i.e. a normal rather than over-sensitive response). The method of "systematic desensitisation" has a long history of effectiveness in clinical studies - and combining this with hypnosis we achieve positive, permanent results more rapidly.

Confidence issues

If we have high self-esteem, we feel good about ourselves. If we feel confident, we feel like there are things we are good at. But sometimes, our confidence gets knocked, or we don’t like ourselves very much. Our sense of "I can" can be damaged and prevent us from engaging in activities as we wish. Our subjective interpretation, or opinions, of events can directly impact our behaviour and emotion. Bandura (1986) conceptualised this idea in terms of self-efficacy, an individuals' belief about the extent to which they can successfully execute the appropriate behaviours to control and influence their own behaviour as well as important life events. According to Bandura, self-efficacy is substantially important for positively influencing our overall wellbeing. Therefore, training clients in confidence building is key to my CBH approach.

CBH is one of the most effective treatments for overcoming confidence issues and low self-esteem. The treatment provided for low confidence or low self-esteem is called "ego strengthening" in hypnotherapy and this is usually the first treatment that any client undergoes. As our belief in our abilities affects how we think, feel, behave and self motivate, almost every issue benefits from initial work on building confidence. Starting with ego-strengthening not only allows you to build confidence in the process, but this begins the journey of building long-term skills in self-efficacy and developing adaptive ways of coping. My role is to enable changes in your beliefs, introducing a more realistic outlook on the world.

The technique works by teaching clients to reach a state of deep hypnotic relaxation where I then give powerful suggestions for feeling more confident, more in control and more effective in their lives. I teach clients how to remember and focus on previous experiences of success and confidence while learning how to view experiences of failure or low confidence as opportunities to grow and develop. My approach with hypnosis is to coach clients to rehearse being more confident in specific situations, using hypnosis as a "virtual reality simulation", if you like. This enables clients to develop a sense of self-mastery that positively impacts their performance in real-life situations. CBH offers an effective and efficient approach for quickly restoring confidence and building positive self-esteem.

Sleep issues and Insomnia

As we spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping, sleep issues can have a significant impact on our quality of life. They can also affect the way we feel while we are awake. Insomnia is a common sleep disorder that can make it hard to fall asleep, hard to stay asleep, or cause you to wake up too early and not be able to get back to sleep. Good news - insomnia usually gets better by changing your sleeping habits. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, sometimes called CBT-I, and similarly CBH, is

an effective treatment for chronic sleep problems and is usually recommended as the first line of treatment. There is a strong evidence base in the effectiveness of using CBH for insomnia, which shows a 70 - 80% improvement rate.

CBH for insomnia is a structured program that helps you identify and replace thoughts and behaviours that cause or worsen sleep problems with habits that promote sound sleep. Unlike sleeping pills, CBT-I and CBH help you overcome the underlying causes of your sleep problems. CBH offers a wide range of behavioural, cognitive and hypnotherapy techniques to treat sleep issues and insomnia. This approach can give you practical solutions to address the problem and consequences of your sleep issue, including relaxation techniques, behavioural strategies, mindfulness, sleep hygiene, self-hypnosis, stimulus control and challenging and restructuring negative thoughts and beliefs. To best identify how to treat your insomnia, I will ask you to keep a detailed sleep diary for one to two weeks.

CBH requires steady practice, and some approaches may cause you to lose sleep at first. But stick with it, and you'll likely see lasting results. Typical treatment for insomnia is likely to take between 2 and 6 sessions, depending on its nature. There are lots of things you can do to resolve insomnia, once you understand what is going on.