Welcome to my blog

12/06/2009 by admin.

Hi, My name is Cathy Simmons - Welcome to my blog!

I will try and put up here any interesting articles about hypnotherapy and NLP as and when I find them. In the meantime, I thought I would just say a bit about Cognitive Hypnotherapy

Firstly, a bit of background. I was fortunate enough to train in Cognitive Hypnotherapy and NLP at the renowned Quest Institute and I am also an NLP Master Practitioner.  In addition I am an AMT certified EFT practitioner. I run my Cognitive Hypnotherapy practice both in Hampstead and in the City of London and see clients for many diverse issues, from those you might expect, such as helping to stop smoking, weight loss, phobias and anxiety, to compulsive disorders, pain control, confidence and PTSD.

It seems quite amazing that one approach can help in so many different areas. How can this be? This begins to make sense once you start to realise that so many of our behaviours are driven by our unconscious mind. Have you ever behaved in a way that doesn’t consciously make any sense? Do you ever feel something that you don’t want to, without understanding why?

Our unconscious mind is an amazing thing. It keeps us safe, and over the years, it has built up a set of behaviours and responses that it has learned are in some way good for us, leading to certain automatic behaviours. For example, if a rhinoceros is charging towards us, we don’t stand back and consciously think “Hmm, I wonder what the best thing to do now is”!  No - thankfully, we automatically react in a way that keeps us safe (fight or run like crazy!).  Our amazing unconscious mind kicks in way before we consciously realise it.

However, sometimes, it makes some associations that lead to it learning that things are good for us, when they are less than helpful. For example, the unconscious mind of a smoker may have associated the act of smoking with some form of relief of tension – “It calms me down”. The unconscious mind does not realise that it was the cigarette itself that causes the tension, so it drives our behaviour to reach for a cigarette whenever we feel the slightest tension, before we are consciously aware of it.

It can be a similar thing with eating.  If our unconscious mind believes that eating leads to being loved, or comforted (good things), it will motivate us to continue to behave in this way, often before we are consciously aware of it.

Similarly we all have unconscious, underlying beliefs about ourselves, generally as a result of something or many things in our past. Our unconscious mind will motivate our behaviours according to that underlying belief, without us even realising it.  For example, if, as a child, someone is  constantly  told “You’re going to grow up to be as big as your mum” then they may end up unconsciously believing that it is inevitable that they will grow up to be big.

The good news is that Cognitive Hypnotherapy can help you change those unconscious beliefs and learnings in a gentle and permanent way, often more easily and quickly than you might imagine. So you can see why the flexibility of the Cognitive Hypnotherapy approach and the vast toolkit of techniques used in a respectful way with a client, can bring about so much change in so many areas of life.

You may wonder why I am so enthusiastic about Cognitive Hypnotherapy and NLP. I myself stopped smoking, years ago, using Hypnotherapy and NLP and was totally amazed that I have never been tempted to have one since.

Since training at the Quest Institute I have had so much benefit personally from the Cognitive Hypnotherapy approach, that I cannot help but be enthusiastic, and it is a joy to be able to offer the approach to help others.

Cathy Simmons

07792 312 465

http://www.cathysimmons.co.uk

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