Susanne Ridley Hypnotherapy

SUSANNE RIDLEY
HYPNOTHERAPY

Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy

For Positive Lasting Change

PHILOSOPHY

COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL HYPNOTHERAPY

COGNITIVE
BEHAVIOURAL
HYPNOTHERAPY

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: Stress Reduction, Anxiety Management, Cognitive Restructuring - Changing the Way You Think, and Improving Self-Talk & Self-Esteem.

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. Simultaneously, we now know 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.

We no longer view the ‘mind’ and our physiology separately. It’s clear that our thoughts are not just fleeting moments in consciousness but are observable physiological events in the brain. Our habits are not mysterious patterns of behaviour but are governed by neural networks which have been building since we were born.

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.

Meet Susanne

About Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy

Stress Reduction

Applied Relaxation: A Real Life Modern-Day Super Power

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.

Applied Relaxation is a process which is quite well described by its name. We learn how to relax, and then how to apply that state of relaxation to situations and events in which we might otherwise feel nervous, stressed or anxious.

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’. This allows you to shift yourself into this state of calm on command. Which means you can take on everyday stressors in a more calm, relaxed and mentally resourceful state, rather than a flustered, revved up or reactive one.

Anxiety Management

Your Anxiety Makes Sense.

And... It's Time To Feel Better.

The world can feel overwhelming at times. Our current climate is a perfect storm of over-stimulation, rapid change, financial uncertainty and extreme demands on our time and energy. The result is that more people than ever are experiencing anxiety on a regular basis.

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.

As any evolutionary biologist will tell you, our minds and bodies are not really designed to live in the world that we live in. In fact there are many clear mismatches between our physiological design and our environment, which is, in many ways, directly at odds with our nature. This means that anyone facing the everyday demands of modern life can experience anxiety.

What generally determines whether you will experience anxiety or not depends on: Your baseline physiological stress levels, your foundational outlook and automatic thinking habits, and your coping strategies.

In these sessions we approach anxiety from all three of these angles. We begin with relaxation skills training to lower your baseline stress levels. This is followed by a process of Cognitive Restructuring to address cognitive habits such as ruminative thinking cycles. We then employ a range of CBT coping skills to help you manage specific target situations and your most 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.

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.

SERVICES

Improve Self-Esteem
& Self-Talk

Reprogramming Your Thoughts About... You.

The beliefs we unconsciously hold about ourselves and the way we internally speak to ourselves often goes largely unnoticed. But the reality is that our self-perception and self-talk fundamentally impact most, if not all, areas of our lives.

So, where did our self-perception and self-talk come from? Well, from an early age we are exposed to ideas about ourselves. This could be direct or indirect comments made by our families or caregivers. It could be absorbing the messages of culture, society and the media and naturally comparing ourselves in the context of that distorted messaging. Wherever we adopted these ideas from, these external ideas are often internalised and develop into our own self-perception and self-talk.

If you grew up in a perfect family in a perfect society (!) then all of these messages will have been to your benefit. However, if not - there is a very good chance that there are aspects of your self-perception and self-talk which are inaccurate and unhelpful. In these sessions we use Cognitive Restructuring specifically targeted at reassessing and reprogramming your own perception of yourself, to improve self esteem, dispute harmful and distorted beliefs you hold about yourself and install new more helpful and positive ones.

Cogniive Restructuring

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 fantastic if you struggle to find a quiet, private space at home. Equally though, online sessions work fantastically well for this form of therapy.