One of the insights I receive from many of my clients is that so many of us grew up with the message inside us “I am not enough”. Putting aside when that message got ‘implanted’ and what caused it to become so ingrained in your psyche, there is another, equally important question - what have been the consequences of believing you’re not enough? Perhaps you lost your confidence at school, a teacher told you that you were useless or hopeless...... and of course you believed them, because as children, we believe what adults tell us. We don’t have the skills to evaluate what’s true or not true. Maybe you were bullied and it left you feeling vulnerable and not good enough.      Or perhaps you’ve always struggled with your self esteem and confidence? By the time you hit 45 and any time after that, you are under tremendous pressure to stay looking young, to have no wrinkles or lines and of course to keep your figure and look just as you did 20 years earlier.  And so began the era of aesthetic medicine and cosmetic surgery. And with it, a boom in the number of women having procedures that they do not need. Here’s why: women compare how they feel on the inside with how other women look on the outside. You might want to read that again! How much cosmetic surgery is carried out I wonder, to compensate for a deep, inner belief of not being good enough, smart enough, clever enough, pretty enough; not to mention the belief that many women have when they hit fifty, that they are ‘past it’. I know women who become recluses, I know women who feel invisible, I know women who spiral into depression. Will cosmetic surgery lift them out of depression or get them out of the house or transform how they feel emotionally? Based on what I hear in my practice I don’t believe so.

One of the insights I receive from many of my clients is that so many of us grew up with the message inside us “I am not enough”. Putting aside when that message got ‘implanted’ and what caused it to become so ingrained in your psyche, there is another, equally important question - what have been the consequences of believing you’re not enough? Perhaps you lost your confidence at school, a teacher told you that you were useless or hopeless...... and of course you believed them, because as children, we believe what adults tell us. We don’t have the skills to evaluate what’s true or not true. Maybe you were bullied and it left you feeling vulnerable and not good enough.      Or perhaps you’ve always struggled with your self esteem and confidence? By the time you hit 45 and any time after that, you are under tremendous pressure to stay looking young, to have no wrinkles or lines and of course to keep your figure and look just as you did 20 years earlier.  And so began the era of aesthetic medicine and cosmetic surgery. And with it, a boom in the number of women having procedures that they do not need. Here’s why: women compare how they feel on the inside with how other women look on the outside. You might want to read that again! How much cosmetic surgery is carried out I wonder, to compensate for a deep, inner belief of not being good enough, smart enough, clever enough, pretty enough; not to mention the belief that many women have when they hit fifty, that they are ‘past it’. I know women who become recluses, I know women who feel invisible, I know women who spiral into depression. Will cosmetic surgery lift them out of depression or get them out of the house or transform how they feel emotionally? Based on what I hear in my practice I don’t believe so.

You may have seen in the news recently how important sleep is to your wellbeing. In fact, last year there was an article in The London Evening Standard saying that a healthy amount of sleep is better for your well-being than a 50% increase in disposable income  a healthy amount of sleep is better for your wellbeing than a 50% increase in disposable income. But what if you’re not sleeping? You lie awake at night worrying about your workload and how you're going to get through it; or perhaps you just don't get on with the people in your office; or maybe you're wondering whether you should leave but the fear is you might not easily get another job that pays as well/is so close to home...   {i'm sure you have your own version of the good stuff about the job}   I think we can all agree that stress and problems at work are not the formula for a good night’s sleep! In fact, stress at work can lead to a variety of health problems. How much stress is there in your office? Some people’s automatic response would be “a lot”. What does “a lot” mean? Maybe the business you work for is going through a difficult time – staff are under pressure to meet higher targets due to budget cuts and redundancies. Or perhaps your boss is struggling to recruit staff due to the dramatic fall in net migration which looks as if it will continue to get worse? Lots of businesses report that Brexit has had an impact on sales and employees say they are left trying to meet unobtainable targets. Whatever the business issue it’s clear that these types of circumstances create massive stress. you feel there are unachievable expectations placed on you or you're deeply worried about your security, it’s entirely natural that you default into fear mode. If this is you, you’re probably living on 24 hour cortisol and adrenaline. Which means that the creative, trusting, sharing and caring part of your brain closes down. You feel under permanent threat and you start to behave differently. You’ve probably read hundreds of times about how your body produces adrenaline and cortisol when you’re in danger, when you have to run for your life from the sabre toothed tiger. Stress at work produces the same hormones! High levels of cortisol can affect your sleep; you may feel unusually tense and uptight or you might have panic attacks which have no rhyme or reason.   Your feelings of fear and panic then shape your reality – you see things through your “fear glasses” and you interpret situations very differently from normal. Some people have been carrying stress and insomnia  from  childhood into their adult lives.  I worked with Kerry using RTT , here's what she said: Marian, I want to thank you for the session we had around my sleeping issues.  As you know, I cannot remember when I have ever slept well, even as a child I regularly woke, one or twice during the night, however as I have got older, my ability to fall back to sleep after has got less and, consequently, I have felt completely fatigued and it was at this point I turned to you. I must admit I was sceptical, I had heard that you had had some amazing results, however I was unbelievably surprised when after only one session I was already sleeping better.  The most amazing thing is from the initial improvement, my sleeping patterns have continued to change.  I am less likely to wake, and once away I find it considerably easier to drift back off to sleep, I’m more rested, I have more energy, and far more patience!! As a result of the hypnosis, when we got to what seemed to be the root of the problem, I have also found a number of additional benefits in my attitude, mindset and general demeanour. I’d like to say a big thank you to you Marian, so THANK YOU Please contact me if sleep and stress are a challenge for you.  We could have a conversation to explore what is going on - No cost, No obligation, Just a conversation!  020 8542 7907      

  For a lot of people, old-fashioned stereotypes of a magician type hypnotist that stands on stage, picks a member of the audience “at random” and “makes them” do something embarrassing and silly springs to mind. It's unfortunate that these sort of images have created a bad impression because the truth is that hypnosis is not the razzamatazz you see on television; it's not about getting people to do weird things and nor is it something to fear. It is not a parlour trick or glitzy stage show either. Science and medicine are validating the use of hypnosis. Brain surgeons are turning to hypnosis as an alternative to anaesthesia and curious scientists have been studying how it works So, how could hypnotherapy help you? People often seek help to address a particular behaviour – to quit smoking, stop over-eating, give up alcohol and frequently to overcome fears - of flying, driving, spiders to name but a few common fears. Have you ever noticed how many books are out there for dealing with your fear? Put a search into Google "dealing with fear" and you get over 87,000 results! People trawl through self-help books, online articles and even take pills to try and get a result. Ever heard of the book “Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway”? Well, there are two ways of thinking that people sometimes use regarding fear; "F....k everything and run" or "Face everything and recover". But if people knew how to 'face everything' to recover they would do it. The problem is though, that no amount of rational thinking or logical explanation ever gets to the bottom of why we have a particular fear, which is a pity because the chances are that our fears affect our relationships, our health, our careers, not to mention our ability to lose weight or achieve a good night's sleep. I have a friend who had a fear of driving. No matter how many times she got in the driving seat for lessons with her instructor, she couldn’t overcome physical symptoms of anxiety. This is a woman who could present to a boardroom of top Executives and manage hundreds of thousands of pounds of budgets. Yet, as soon as she was at the wheel her hands would get sweaty, her heart rate would start racing and she reported that within minutes she would lose all feeling in her legs whilst shaking uncontrollably! She could barely sit still without her legs shaking, let alone make use of the clutch and brake pedals. This was an extreme reaction for her and she knew she needed to do something to conquer it. At first, she put it down to a fear of crashing as her father had been in a car accident that had a very debilitating effect on him. But after pursuing that line of thought it became clear that though this was the simplest explanation, it probably wasn’t the right one. So as a last resort, she tried hypnotherapy, specifically RTT, [Rapid Transformational Therapy] where she discovered that her fear was actually due to issues of control and a perfectionism that meant she had an inability to let go.   The power and beauty of RTT is in bypassing the rational mind, bypassing conscious thinking and instead, accessing the subconscious. I liken it to the ice of an iceberg that's below the waterline, the part of the iceberg we don't see. Our subconscious is where we store all our memories, our beliefs and our stories that are quietly running our lives, much like the software on your computer. After a course of only a handful of sessions she addressed the perfectionism, her physical symptoms of anxiety ceased and I am happy to report she not only learnt how to drive but passed her driving test and now drives around with none of her original symptoms! Rational thinking and logical explanation will always play second fiddle to how you feel emotionally about a problem. Always. And the best way I know to get to the root and cause of a problem is through hypnosis, specifically RTT. What might take me 3 months in a coaching situation can be resolved in 1-3 sessions of RTT. If you want to find out more about Hypnotherapy and RTT and how it can help you please do get in touch. 020 8542 7907 [Generally, most problems can be addressed in just 1-3 sessions][/st_text][/st_column][/st_row]