Confidence & hypnotherapy.

Are you lacking in confidence? Do you find it cripplingly stressful to give a presentation at work, or to be in the company of a group of people, or to ask for a pay rise, or to approach a potential partner? The scale of the problem is wide, and some people feel really held back in life by an inability to be themselves and show what they can really achieve.

We all need to interact with others and develop social skills, in order to get on, but some people place a psychological boundary around themselves, which they think they cannot go beyond – so limiting their fulfilment in life. The trouble is that such a view of ‘I am not good enough’ becomes a dominant frame of mind, tending to influence many different areas of their life. Not surprisingly, a powerful frustration can build up causing further unhappiness.

Therapeutically, we can help transform the client’s self-image to one that is positively accepting of success and growth. The therapist may notice that the client unconsciously uses self-denigrating phraseology ‘I could never do that’ ‘That’s beyond me’. Such negative terminology ‘stamps in’ the self-concept of inferiority, so these are altered to positive affirmations.

The general procedure of hypnotherapy is firstly to reveal the origin of the issue. Hidden causes are often based on bad childhood experiences. Some children are very sensitive to criticism, and suffer life-changing consequences to ridicule or embarrassment. For instance, a child who was publicly humiliated at school may revert to that childish mind-set in any subsequent situation that seems similar. The hypnotherapist ensures that the child-part of the adult is, using a special technique, repaired and allowed to ‘grow up’.

Having pinned down the source of the problem, the therapist will then focus on undoing the pattern of habits in thoughts and behaviours that had been blighting the client’s life.

A later follow-up approach may be to teach self-assertiveness to the client. Some people have no confidence to, say, ask someone for directions in the street, or to go out of a shop without buying something, or to return an item to a shop for a refund.  Within hypnosis the individual practices each of these previously ‘impossible’ behaviours, several times, and then during the next week, actually carries them out. All these methods may help change the individual from a frustrated under-achiever, to a confident success story!

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We offer treatment for lack of confidence in Egham, Surrey, London, etc.