COGNITIVE
BEHAVIOURAL
HYPNOTHERAPY
​​​For Positive Lasting Change
COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL HYPNOTHERAPY
COGNITIVE
BEHAVIOURAL
HYPNOTHERAPY
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As a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist, I use Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) combined with evidence-based hypnotherapy to help people make desired improvements in their lives. In particular, I specialise in helping people in four key areas:
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Cognitive and behavioural sciences have come a long way in recent years. Advancements in brain imaging technology continue to further our understanding of 'neuroplasticity', which is the brain’s ability to undergo significant changes in adulthood. We have also become more aware of the critical role our Autonomic Nervous System (responsible for our fight/flight/freeze response) plays in our feelings and behaviours.
These developments have moved things on fairly rapidly when it comes to our approach to making changes.
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Within this more evidence-based paradigm, we are able to approach change in a more strategic and systematic way. Using the very same processes that formed our habits of thinking, feeling and responding, we can take control of our experience. And decide how we would like to think, feel and act now.
Stress Reduction
Stress Less, Live More.
'Relaxation' sounds like a luxury. Like the type of thing you might experience when you’re blissed out on a beach somewhere or on the verge of sleep. In fact, we often think of being more ‘relaxed’ as meaning more sleepy, drowsy and maybe even lethargic.
But being ‘relaxed’ physiologically, means that your nervous system is in a state of homeostasis. So you’re calm, focussed and have access to all of the crucial creative centres in the brain - the ones which govern problem solving, reasoning, motivation and emotional regulation.
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Our alternative mode of operation is what’s called a ‘survival’ response. It’s your body and mind perceiving something that could be in any way threatening, and revving you up in order to protect yourself or to flee from the situation.
Being in a survival response will feel familiar to you because it’s all the standard symptoms of stress - things like a raised heart rate, shortened breath, muscular tension, and erratic thinking.
Lowering your baseline physiological stress levels not only allows your brain to function on all cylinders, but can also have a profound effect on your health, happiness, career and relationships.
Rapid Relaxation
A Real Life, Modern-Day Superpower.
Do you ever find yourself in situations where it would benefit you to remain calm and focused - but instead you find yourself flustered, anxious or reactive? This is where one of the most practical and transformational applications of Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy comes in.
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The ability to feel calm and confident under pressure is a superpower like no other. Sure, learning to fly or becoming invisible would be fun. But the benefits of learning to shift your nervous system on command, out of a stress response and back into homeostasis supersedes all others when it comes to facing this thing we call life.
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In Rapid Relaxation sessions we use relaxation skills training combined with evidence-based hypnotic techniques achieve just such a superpower.
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What you’re doing physiologically, is teaching your nervous system to move out of its primal stress response and back into equilibrium. You’re then creating a neural connection in the brain between this state of relaxation and a ‘trigger’.
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This means that you can shift yourself into an optimised state of calm and mental resourcefulness during situations and events in which you might otherwise feel nervous, stressed or anxious.
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Amazing for work stress, public speaking, parenting stress, social anxiety, performance optimisation, job interviews, exam stress, conflict resolution, first dates and so much more.
Anxiety Management
Evidence-based techniques to reduce stress and manage anxiety.
The world can feel overwhelming at times. Our current climate is a perfect storm of over-stimulation, rapid change, financial pressure and extreme demands on our time and energy. The result is that more people than ever are experiencing anxiety on a regular basis.
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The Office for National Statistics recently revealed that 37.1% of women and 29.9% of men reported high levels of anxiety. The same report showed that 60% of UK adults with anxiety experienced it interfering with their daily lives.
From an evolutionary standpoint, our minds and bodies are not really designed to live in the world that we live in. This means that anyone facing the everyday demands of modern life can experience anxiety.
Three key factors which determine whether you will experience anxiety or not are: your baseline physiological stress levels, your automatic thinking habits and your coping strategies.
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In these sessions we approach anxiety from all three of these angles. Sessions include:
- Relaxation Skills Training: To lower your baseline stress levels.
- Cognitive Restructuring: Addressing cognitive habits such as ruminative thinking cycles.
- Coping Skills: CBT coping skills training to manage target situations and common triggers.
Cognitive Restructuring
Shift Your Thoughts, Change Your Life.
​​​Our habitual thoughts impact almost everything we do and say over the course of our lives. This includes our; decisions, interactions with others, default stress response in challenging situations, habits & routines, and the way we respond to the events in our lives.​
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Unbeknown to many of us, the way we think is highly biased by a lens of unconscious beliefs and perceptions which we hold about ourselves and life in general. Some of these we absorbed from others and our environment as children, and others we have picked up through the proceeding events and experiences in our lives.
Cognitive Restructuring is an evidence-based technique which helps you adapt and improve your way of thinking. This can be aimed at specific target situations or addressing your general outlook and mindset. So, rather than running on the outdated, cognitive programming of your past, you are put in the driving seat. And can decide how you would like to think, feel and act now.
FAQs
Will I have to revisit past experiences in order to update my way of thinking? No. Unlike psychoanalytic models of therapy which place an emphasis on analysing past events, CBH focuses on your current experience. So, rather than hours spent revisiting your past, we assess the way in which unhelpful patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving are hindering you now and get straight to work on updating these into something more helpful.
Is hypnosis mind control? Will I remember anything? Even though relaxed, you will remain awake and aware throughout the entire process. There is little evidence to support the phenomena of hypnotic ‘trance’ or posthypnotic amnesia. There has, however, been extensive research done to support the efficacy of giving focussed concentration to a dominant idea whilst in a ‘highly suggestible’ state. This includes reports by the British Medical Association, American Medical Association, British Psychological Society and American Psychological Association. As well as ongoing research in dedicated labs at Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley. Therapeutic hypnosis carried out by a qualified professional is completely safe. You need only ever follow along with hypnotic suggestions that you want to accept. If anything hypnosis, used therapeutically, is one tool that gives you control of your own mind. So in some ways it could be described as mind control - but you are the one finally put in control.
Are my thoughts really that important? In short, yes. Your thoughts are the initiators of everything you say and everything you do over the course of your life. Every single decision you make, every interaction you have, the way you feel and function day-to-day, is predominantly the result of your thoughts. Some of our thoughts are conscious - which means we are able to observe the thought as it happens. However, many of our thoughts are unconscious and have become ‘automatic’, arising without our conscious awareness. These unconscious thoughts include some of our core beliefs and are responsible for many of our habits and emotional responses. And it’s these more elusive, hidden thoughts we aim to identify, target and adapt in CBH.
What is happening in my brain during hypnosis? Research into mental rehearsal (including studies using fMRI brain scans) has come to demonstrate that the physiological processes which happen in the brain when you imagine an event in your mind and when you experience it in real life are startlingly similar. So much so, that when you strategically use your imagination in a particular way, especially while your mind and body are in a specific physiological state (down regulated brain waves and activation of your parasympathetic nervous system) - your brain is recording these experiences as if they have actually happened. In more traditional models of hypnosis this has been referred to as ‘reprogramming the subconscious mind’. But what is actually happening neurologically, is that you are laying down new implicit memories. It is these memories that form the new neural connections and networks in your brain - which are what create new habits of thinking, new emotional response-sets and therefore new ways of being.
What does a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy session involve? In your first session I’ll explain the rationale behind the approach and answer any questions you have about the therapy. This is followed by an assessment and the development of your treatment goals. CBH is a solution focussed therapy so we always work to SMART therapeutic goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based). I then guide you into hypnosis, which tends to feel like a pleasant state of relaxed concentration. In hypnosis we strategically use imaginal absorption, hypnotic suggestion, mental rehearsal and a range of evidence-based CBT techniques to set about achieving your therapeutic goals and making positive, measurable change that lasts.
Do you offer online sessions? I offer both in-person sessions in Reigate, Surrey and online sessions via zoom. In person-sessions are perfect if you struggle to find a quiet, private space at home. Equally though, online sessions work fantastically well for this form of therapy.
Articles
Your Powerful,
Changeable Mindset
The Stanford Report
Rediscovering the
Power of Self-Belief
British Psychological Society
Interview with
Dr David Spiegel
Huberman Lab
The Biology of
Positive Habits
Harvard GSE
What is Cognitive Hypnotherapy?
The Guardian
Does Mental Practice Enhance Performance?
Research Gate
CONTACT
Appointments available online and also in-person in Reigate, Surrey. I offer a free 20 minute initial phone consultation for all new clients. Please visit the bookings page to book your appointment.
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For all other enquiries, please submit a contact form or email susanneridley@outlook.com.
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