My name’s Richard and I’m a clinical hypnotherapist. I help people every day who need to alter their way of thinking because they have picked up bad habits or cannot seem to break a cycle of negative thoughts and behaviours. So, I thought I’d share with you all, some information about a very common problem I help some clients with. And that is ‘nail biting’.
First of all, nail biting is a nervous habit. So the first part of my hypnotic therapy is to teach the biter how to be more relaxed at all times. To that end, I have found that traditional hypnosis techniques are very effective, and that’s because the very essence of hypnosis is relaxation. The individual can learn to apply several different methods to increase both the relaxed state, as well as his/her overall feeling of well-being.

The second step teaches the nail biter awareness of this unconscious habit. Post-hypnotic suggestions are then given to the subconscious mind to make you more consciously aware that you are bringing your hand towards your mouth for the purpose of biting your nails. Then you get to consciously decide whether or not you are actually going to bite them.

I help my clients to set up an “Anchor” or trigger so that he/she can momentarily mentally step outside of him/herself. This is an excellent technique that will effectively relieve the urge to bite.

The last part of the hypnotherapy for nail biting is to eliminate the compulsion to bite. Sometimes I offer suggestions that the client has a compulsion to not bite his/her nails, in other words a ‘repulsion’.

With nail biting behaviour, being realistic is very important. First off, you, the sufferer,  have rehearsed the unwanted habit thousands of times. You must accept that the urge to bite your nails will not be overcome in a few days.

Second, you are fighting the fact that it feels good to do, and it offers a lot of short-term satisfaction and either stimulation or soothing feelings.

It takes time and effort to master, but I believe you’ll find that it is well worth the effort.

Here’s some more general information about Nail biting for you to consider…

Skin picking, hair pulling and nail biting are all related behaviours. Skin picking, hair pulling and nail biting are labelled as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders. People who bite their nails often keep their hands hidden in their pockets. People who bite their nails often feel social embarrassment and shame and experience out-of-control feelings at times. They often wonder why they cannot stop biting their nails and they also question whether or not they are sane.

Nail biting usually happens when people are in one of two modes. Some biters do it in an automatic way, as if they are in some kind of a trance and not really thinking about what they are doing. It’s often when they are engrossed in some other activity at the same time such as talking on the phone or watching TV, etc. For others, the deliberate picking or biting is their main activity at the time, and they will usually interrupt other activities to engage in it.

There is also a strong commonality in the purposes behind these three problems (skin picking, hair pulling and nail biting). At a very basic level, these symptoms satisfy an urge. Many report an almost uncontrollable urge to do them. Biting, picking or pulling also seems to deliver a pleasurable or relaxed sensation.

When sufferers feel stressed, doing these things has a kind of soothing effect on them and reduces levels of stimulation. On the other hand, when they are bored or inactive, they seem to provide a needed level of stimulation to the nervous system. This probably accounts for why so many people who have these habits find it so hard to break these habits. It simply “feels good” at the time no matter what.

Even if you suffer from more than one of these habits, do not despair. These symptoms can be overcome if you have a sufficient amount of motivation. More important is learning to “de-stigmatise” yourself. You are not crazy, helpless and morally weak or totally out of control, even though you may feel like you are at times. Once you become aware of the fact that you are just a person who simply happens to have a problem, you can make some serious progress.

Skin picking and nail biting are chronic problems, so there is not currently a medical “cure” but you can find relief if you are willing to work at it and hypnotherapy in my experience has been very successful at helping my clients do just that.

That’s all for now,

kind regards

Richard Scott
Clinical Hypnotherapist
www.greymatterz.co.uk

Long time no blog… busy busy busy.

But, I found an interesting article online today. Thought you may like to read it.

Here’s the link.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2003267/Cancer-Hypnotism-speeds-op-recovery-cuts-chance-returning.html

Let me know what you all think.

regards

Richard Scott
Clinical Hypnotherapist

www.greymatterz.co.uk

The Allergists voted to scratch it, but the Dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves.

The Gastroenterologists had a sort of a gut feeling about it,  but the neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve.

The Obstetricians felt they were all labouring under a misconception.

Ophthalmologists considered the idea short-sighted.

Pathologists yelled, “Over my dead body!” while the  Paediatricians said, “Oh, Grow up!”

The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, while the Radiologists could see right through it.

The Surgeons were fed up with the cuts and decided to wash  their hands of the whole thing.

The ENT specialists didn’t swallow it, and just wouldn’t hear of it.

The Pharmacologists thought it was a bitter pill to swallow,  and the Plastic Surgeons said, “This puts a whole new face on the  matter….”

The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the Urologists were pissed off at the whole idea.

The Anaesthetists thought the whole idea was a gas, but the  Cardiologists didn’t have the heart to say no.

In the end, the Proctologists won out, leaving the entire decision up to the a*seholes in London.

Have yourself a great day, today.

Richard Scott
Clinical hypnotherapist

www.greymatterz.co.uk

Hypnotic Shop is an installation by “sensual artists” Sam Bompas and Harry Parr at Browns Focus clothing store on London’s upmarket South Molton Street.

The idea is to use smells and subliminal messages to make people buy things, although it goes some way beyond pumping out baking smells, a la Tesco.

It starts with an optical window installation that uses “vertigo therapy” to pull you in, and then employs music which will make shoppers feel sexy while also making them less inclined to nick stuff.

Bompas and Parr have even “spiked” the shop with “micro-encapsulated vanilla scents” to be released as customers walk across the shop. American research has shown that when these kinds of “feminine” scents are released, sales of clothes can double. When the installation comes down on March 15, sales data will be analysed – or “crunched” as they say in the retail business – to see if it’s made any difference to profits.

Bompas and Parr are Old Etonians with quite a track record for this sort of bonkers behaviour. Their core business is actually jelly-making, and among their previous projects are a glow-in-the-dark alcoholic jelly created for Mark Ronson’s 33rd birthday party and a Willy Wonka-style chewing gum that changes flavours as you chew.

They’ve also created something called Alcoholic Architecture, a breathable mist of gin and tonic that you walk into – and then stagger out of looking for a taxi and a kebab. (Note to Janet Street-Porter: that’s the sort of rambling you should be promoting.)

“We worked with three doctors to calibrate the ratio of gin to tonic,” Bompas tells me. “If you were in the mist for 45 minutes, you would have had the equivalent of a large G&T. One of our experts was Dr Andrea Sella, a chemical explosives expert at University College London. With that much gin in the air, there was a risk of explosion.”

Full story here:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/life-style/fashion-beauty-wellbeing/male-order-redefining-the-power-of-persuasion-1.1086398

Let’s see if their hypno antics are successful or if more traditional values of friendliness, comfort and safety within a retail environment will prevail!

Happy Hypno Shopping

Richard Scott
Clinical Hypnotherapist
www.greymatterz.co.uk

New Year’s Resolutions.

A term which signifies a process which if applied with vigour and followed stringently can have a life changing effect on one’s life.

…And therein lies the failure clause! One has to enter into an agreement to follow the whole process until results start showing.

Make that resolution

Having the desire to change something about your life is all fair and good – but IT alone will not change anything. You have to make a resolution and then follow it through. The best way to make a resolution is to make one that is detailed with measurable markers of success.

For instance… you could say you’d like to lose weight. How? When? Where? By doing what? In what length of time? So many variables, so many chances to fail.

How about this one – “I am going to shed 2 stone of excess weight. I’m going to do this by cutting out alcohol that is drunk during the week. I am going to visit the gym to exercise on Monday and Thursday between 6pm and 7.30pm. I will weight myself weekly, record the results and review my exercise regime to enhance further weight loss until I have reached the 2 stone weight reduction”.

Now that’s a detailed resolution.

It shows a purpose and a method to achieving it. It also gives a Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Time-based account of what’s going to happen (S.M.A.R.T. for short).

You need to make this resolution, and really understand why you’re making this resolution and what this resolution is going to achieve for you.

Take ownership of this resolution and make sure that you’re doing this for yourself, for your own purpose, for a good reason and not because someone has told you to do it.

Tell everyone you can about it

Doing this will not only give it more strength but will strengthen your commitment to succeed.

Most Importantly – you must be aware that YOU have a choice. You have the choice to travel down the path of least resistance, down the path you’ve always travelled which has led you to this point in your life. OR you can choose to take the path to a new future, a less travelled path but one which you’ve made a decision to walk along.

In making this decision you have empowered yourself. You’ve given yourself the power to choose your own future. You have made a deliberate and voluntary decision to change your life.

I hope this has helped some of you to strengthen those resolutions or kick start the beginning of your new life for 2011.

Best regards

Richard Scott
Clinical Hypnotherapist
www.greymatterz.co.uk

Here’s the link

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12068595

‘ Will you make me cluck like a chicken? ‘,
‘ Will it work? ‘ and
‘ What if I can’t be hypnotised? ‘

All quite benine, yet very important, questions for the new client to ask, and yet the answers all seem to be subject to that client’s own free will.

I usually answer…

‘ Do you want to cluck like a chicken? ‘
‘ If you really want it to work… it usually will! ‘
‘ You’ve already been hypnotised, many times. ‘

Many people are under the misconception that hypnosis is some magical mind control system, wherein the client or subject becomes a robot, doing the bidding of the hypnotist. All very stageshow-like.

Let me assure you, when performed properly by a trained therapist, hypnosis is one of the most enjoyable experiences you can imagine. Complete relaxation, heightened awareness and imagination, positive suggestions and motivation bringing about positive emotional and behavioural changes. It’s all good!

Will hypnosis work?

Some people do take a little time to adjust their behavioural habits. If a client is not losing the symptom straight away it can either be because the symptom has a medical/hormonal route or that the root cause of the symptom is buried and repressed.  In this instance one has to discovery the root cause through analysis therapy and then reframe the original source problem.

Hypnosis works for most of my clients, most of the time, but not for everyone. I have spoken to the select few of my clients (and I’m talking one or two out of hundreds of clients) that can’t get hypnosis to work for them and it’s usually the same.

For whatever reason, they haven’t followed the whole process, listening and retraining their own minds every single day through the techniques I have provided and through the CD work. Perhaps they didn’t quite understand the process, not taken the therapy seriously or sometimes have even slipped back in to their old ways because it was far easier to do so.

What if I can’t be hypnotised?

Many people, if not all of us, usually spend most of our lives in one form of trance/state of awareness or another. They can be states that we have entered or states we have allowed someone else to influence us to go in to. You’ve perhaps heard of phrases such as ‘I’m not in that frame of mind’ or ‘I’m in the zone’.

One of the things that I try to do is to get people to come out of their every day ‘frames of mind’, to help them to understand how they get themselves into these ‘frames of mind’ and then teach them how to change the trances they have been in.

A very good example in a recent article gave great examples of  ‘trances’.

The Nutter Trance. Part 1

Have you ever been at home alone and may be decided that you wanted a cup of tea?
If so, how did you know you wanted it?

Many clients at their consultations when I ask this say “ I just thought I wanted one so I went and made it”. They listened to a voice in their head say it, so they did it. Ok I can go along with that. They did what a voice that no one else can hear told them to do. Sounds like either a trance to me or a nutter.

Can you imagine how any one who listens to these voices would feel if they said your life is no good or something else negative. What if all the voices in their head said powerfully motivating things that encouraged you.

The Nutter Trance. Part 2.

Lets revisit the kitchen again. I ask people “ have you ever been in the kitchen may be making a cup of tea, yet in your head you are running through an argument with someone”? And if so,  do you get really angry feelings in your body and get all wound up?

Usually they say “yes”

So on your own, with no one else around you are able to get your self worked up and angry.

Out of interest when you are arguing with the person, who is not there. Do you hear the argument in your head, and see them.

They usually reply “yes”

I then politely point out that they have been able to do the following.

• Change their state.

• Produce real feelings with no external input.

• Create auditory hulanations.

• Produce visual hulanations.

• They were also able to interact with the fantasies they had created.

• All done while they were wide awake.

Sounds a lot like hypnosis to me.

They usually get the idea at this point as I trust you have.

In order to experience hypnosis and interact with your own hypnotic adventures you do not have to be relaxed,sitting in a therapists office in a trance  – you do it any way!

If you want to learn more about hypnosis, or infact come and experience it for yourself, then please visit my website www.greymatterz.co.uk or give me a call on 01482 464928. I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Alternatively, you could try one of my audio CDs and discover hypnosis from the comfort and safety of your own home. www.greymatterz.co.uk/cd.htm

The choice is yours,

Wishing you happy festive hypnosis,

Richard Scott
SNHS Dip.CH, SNHS Adv Dip.CH.Psy, PHPA, ICHM, NHSTA

www.greymatterz.co.uk

I’ve mentioned this several times already to my clients, but it’s so important that it’s worth re-emphasizing several times over  to everyone out there – the very best way to lose weight is to eat regular healthy meals and to not starve yourself.

Article begins…

When you restrict your food intake, or effectively start to starve your body, your metabolism slows right down and your body will soon go in to “starvation mode”. Once your metabolism slows down, your body is unable to burn calories as effectively as it should be able to, which ultimately means your weight loss slows right down or may even grind to a halt.

What happens then is that your body begins to feed off itself for the nutrition it needs, which means it starts digesting your muscles more than your fat reserves (muscles hold more nutrients than fat, which is why these get “eaten” as well as your stored fat).

Any weight that you do lose while you’re starving your body will sure enough come right back once you start eating properly again. The main reason for this is that your body will still be in starvation mode, so will just store everything that you eat as fat simply because it thinks this may be the last nutrition it gets for a while.

If you continue to eat a normal diet with regular meals only then will your body come out of starvation mode and start to properly digest the food you eat.

So the best way to lose weight is not to starve yourself, but to eat regular meals – the best option is to eat 4 or 5 smaller meals throughout the day so that you keep your metabolism high. Your body gets used to regular and frequent meals so actually switches into overdrive, burning off more calories because it knows it doesn’t need to store any.

Using hypnotherapy to help with this will give your emotions more stability, you’ll have much more motivation to stick to a healthy eating regime, you will focus on goals and results,  you’ll believe in yourself and have the confidence to achieve those weight loss goals.

Happy hypno dieting…

Richard Scott
www.greymatterz.co.uk

The singer suffered severe breakouts as a teenager and became obsessed with picking her pimples.

She eventually decided a drastic course of therapy was needed to change her behaviour – and she’s pleased her bad habit didn’t leave her with acne scars.

Contostavlos tells Britain’s X Magazine, “I stopped doing it about six months ago. From the age of about 14, I used to spend hours in front of the mirror squeezing literally anything I could find. I could have the tiniest little blackhead and I’d attack it until it was bright red and my skin was all broken and damaged. I’m so lucky I don’t have loads of scars.

“I had hypnotherapy. I was really sceptical about it working but it totally did. Now I’ll only squeeze a spot if I really need to and then I’ll put Savlon on afterwards to heal it. It’s made such a dramatic difference to me. It’s amazing.”

Source Daily Star
Nov 14 2010

To burn significantly more calories than you take in!

Yet the most efficient technique to do this is to improve the manner in which you feed on and exercise on a regular basis.

Now, this may sound simple and basic; however it takes a bunch of will power, durability along with commitment in order to stay in command of our food consumption routines and to keep motivated to workout constantly. Anybody who’s previously tried out a diet program or fat loss routine is aware of that undoubtably. So before you are able to simply shed bodyweight and keep it off lastingly, you really need to get rid of this cravings along with your appetite to overeat!

That is exactly where hypnosis for weight loss is very useful.

Medical investigation testifies hypnotherapy for the purpose of shedding unwanted weight will assist anyone lose two to sixteen times more weight than not using it in anyway!

Hypnotherapy for weight reduction may possibly appear weary|strange|goofy initially; however, if performed correctly, you’ll understand that out of the blue it is possible to stick to virtually any diet program or workout routine which you’ve chosen. And even far better, you are able to do so without the need of having to force yourself all through this.

You will begin to enjoy the diet routine simply because of the altered attitude when it comes to consuming. Not any longer will you have tempting hunger pangs or over-eating compulsions. Not any longer will you miss out your exercise program simply because you are sick of. Hypnotherapy re-programs your thinking and patterns so that sticking with your personal weight loss plan and training will grow to be second nature to you.

Several researchers have demonstrated that emotions are normally stronger then logic. That’s precisely why sometimes you understand that you shouldn´t eat specific products but then you “can’t resist” and eat it anyway. Which is due to the fact our complete habitual and habits managing is located in the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is furthermore the location where your feelings and emotions are recorded.

Weight loss hypnosis enhances your diet plan or training program through altering the self-sabotaging thinkings hidden inside your subconscious mind. This kind of re-programming of feelings and habits is actually a lot more important than merely losing some bodyweight. This is the spot where it decides whether it´s merely temporally slimming or if  it´s for the rest of your life.

Read more about weight management here at

http://www.greymatterz.co.uk/weightloss.htm

Richard Scott
Clinical Hypnotherapist