The work
There are many aspects to the work. I've included some overviews here.
These are more descriptive than proscriptive; guiding principles rather than rigid practices; because everything we do will be adapted to you.
If you're interested, I encourage you to read the original sources.
If you have any questions, please ask.
- Cognitive Hypnotherapy
- Positive Psychology
- NLP
- and other influences
Cognitive Hypnotherapy
Cognitive Hypnotherapy is an evidence-based, solution-focused practice. Here’s a short video, if you prefer to watch rather than read the following text.
Trance: states of awareness
One of the key concepts is that of ‘trance’. Trance is a state. In a state of trance our attention is focused in a particular way, making some things possible, and other things less possible. We experience many trance states as we go through our day to day lives.
Examples of specific states of attention include daydreaming, driving a familiar route and forgetting how you got the place once you arrive, and being in deep focus when playing sport, meditating, creating, or being immersed in a conversation or whilst watching a film. In these examples you’ll have noticed, out of all the possible things we could be aware of in our environment (the colour of the ceiling, the feeling in your left earlobe, the action on screen) we’re focused on only a small part of it. We’ve decided what’s significant.
Why does this matter? Have you ever decided to buy something new, let’s say a red car, and suddenly you start seeing red cars everywhere… they’ve always been there, it’s just that now your mind is looking for them because you decided that this element of your environment is now important to you.
Love dogs? Hate dogs? If you walk in the park you’ll be looking out for them, and what you ‘see’ will be either a lovely friendly animal to go towards for belly rubs, or aggressive teeth-baring unpredictability to move away from to save yourself from being chased. The creature is the same. Your perception is different. This changes your reality, your actions, and thus your life.
Problems are trance states - and that's a good thing
As you can see from that last example, our ‘problems’, like a fear of dogs, can be defined as specific states of awareness too.
For example, are you very confident in most environments, but as soon as you have to get up and speak, suddenly you’re aware of what other people might be thinking, all the things that could go wrong as you walk up to give the presentation, and the blank look on your colleagues’ faces that seem to scream disappointment? That’s a very specific state of anxiousness where your attention is focused on all the things that could go wrong and all the things you can’t do right and all the times in the past when things fell apart (…like that time when you were 6 years old and you forgot your line in the school play and it felt like your world was going to end?). There’s a lot going on for you here that isn’t to do with the task at hand.
Fortunately, because our problems operate as these less resourceful states, that also means we can create our solutions as highly resourceful states where you can feel calm, skillful, confident, and ready for the task at hand.
All behaviour has a positive intention
Now, it may seem dysfunctional to have unresourceful states, however, interestingly, cognitive hypnotherapy asserts that all behaviour has a positive intention.
So, the part of you that generates that feeling of anxiousness at the mere thought of public speaking, is trying to keep you safe from the potential negative consequences you’re worried about: “Don’t worry, I’ll save you from repeating the horror of the school play!”… by making it near impossible for you to get up to speak in the first place.
While the intention is well-meaning, the effects of the anxiety that keep us from speaking can keep us from what we want too, be it self-expression, connection with others, evidencing our suitability for promotion, building our business, enjoying our lives, and so on.
Because our mind has made a calculation about what’s possible based on what we’re aware of (the potential horror!), it means that when we change what it is choosing to be aware of, better things become possible (the potential successes).
Understanding that all behaviour has a positive intention allows us to stop being at war with ourselves, move away from conflict, and free up that tense energy to move towards positive collaboration, building trust and confidence along the way.
Neuroplasticity - the power to change
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change as the neural pathways, synapses, and nervous system adapt in response to experience.
This means change is possible. And while we’re still alive, change is inevitable. It also means that we can choose to give ourselves specific experiences, and choose to create useful meanings out of the experiences we have, so that we can direct that change in a way that’s aligned with our goals.
It is because we’re capable of learning and adapting like this, that it is possible to change old habits, thoughts, behaviours and feelings, even old identities.
The more we practice a skill the greater the connectivity of the brain regions responsible for it. This way, the new becomes the normal; the conscious skill becomes unconscious. Just like we once had to think about how to walk, now we do it without thinking. The same applies to any skill, thought, or behaviour. We can practice how we want to be until we become that way. And that is a very powerful and very hopeful thing.
Published evidence - the Mental Health Review Journal
In 2011, Quest Cognitive Hypnotherapy (QCH) launched a unique research project. Using a team of QCH therapists, people with anxiety and depression were assessed using the same outcome measures currently used to assess the effectiveness of talking therapies within the NHS.
The results of the sessions with these 118 people were published in the Mental Health Review Journal in 2015. Measuring the effectiveness of Cognitive Hypnotherapy for the treatment of depression and anxiety, 71% of those people considered themselves recovered after an average of 4 sessions. This is compared to an average of 42% for other approaches (e.g. CBT) using the same measures. To QCH’s knowledge, this is the only hypnotherapy approach to have been validated in this way.
For further information about the research project and pilot study published in the Mental Health Review Journal please visit QCH’s evidence-based therapy research page.
Positive Psychology
Positive Psychology was established by Martin Seligman (anecdotally, when his 5 year old daughter told him that if she could learn to change her behaviour then *he* could learn not to be grumpy!).
It studies how we can grow from challenges. Whilst traditional psychology tends to focus on failure, illness, and dis-ease, positive psychology focuses on wellbeing, strengths, happiness, satisfaction, meaning making, health, hope, passion, pleasure, empathy, joy, play, compassion, gratitude – in short – what makes life worth living, and how to make that living even brighter.
You can see this isn’t simply a deficit model of therapy – where something has gone wrong and we’re trying to repair it to return to somewhere close to normal. Often, it isn’t enough to identify and remove the symptoms of a problem. We can address the causes, and create drive towards a future that is better than the previous normal.
How good can we make your ‘new normal’?
What would you love to do now that wasn’t possible before?
As Mary Oliver once wrote: what will you do ‘with your one wild and precious life?’
If you’re familiar with Viktor Frankl’s work ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’, Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset, and with Stoic philosophy, (popularised most recently by Ryan Holiday e.g. ‘The Obstacle Is The Way’), you’ll see there are some overlaps here, as there are with Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s concept of antifragility, where there are things that tend to get broken under stress (like a plate being smashed), things that tend to get better under stress (our focus) and things that tend to get better after stress (like muscle growth, or in the case of Post Traumatic Growth).
Neuro Linguistic Programming
(NLP)
NLP was developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder and is the study of the structure of subjective experience. It works with the theory that there is a connection between perception, language, and action. It recognises that the meanings we make of our experiences matter. It is used extensively in role modelling to create improved responses, be they mental, physical, emotional, and relational.
Other influences
My approach to therapy is practical, not ideological. We have many tools available to us and it is about finding and using what works for you. Among many influences, beyond those listed above, are
- Eye movement integration (EMI) has been developed from the work of Robert Dilts, and is usually used to work with very distressing, traumatic, or painful memories that have resulted in ongoing unwanted or dysfunctional responses. It can be a rapid way of ‘desensitizing’, reducing pain, and helping find greater emotional freedom by ‘reprocessing’ the feelings and meaning of difficult experiences. A particular advantage of this work, is that it can be done without disclosing highly personal information.
- Carol Dweck‘s work on growth and fixed mindsets
- Angela Duckworth‘s work on grit
- Steven Kotler’s work on altered states of consciousness
- Gottman Couples Therapy Having completed Level 1 of this training, I can bring additional knowledge and tools to improve couple and non-couple interactions.
- Brené Brown‘s work on vulnerability, shame, guilt, courage, and empathy
- Esther Perel‘s work on aliveness and connection
- Stephen Karpman‘s concept of the drama triangle
- James P Carse‘s exploration of Finite and Infinite Games.