Insomnia Hypnotherapy

1. Initial Consultation and Assessment:
   A qualified hypnotherapist will begin with a thorough consultation to understand your history with your condition, its triggers, and its impact on your life. This includes exploring past experiences, current stressors, and your overall emotional well-being.
   This assessment helps the therapist tailor a personalized treatment plan specifically designed to address your individual needs and challenges.
2. Relaxation and Induction:
   Hypnotherapy sessions typically begin with relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing exercises or guided imagery, to help you enter a state of deep relaxation and focus.
   The therapist then guides you into a hypnotic trance, which is not a state of sleep but rather a heightened state of suggestibility and focus. You remain fully aware and in control throughout the process.
3. Suggestive Techniques:
   Once in a hypnotic state, the therapist uses various suggestive techniques to address the root causes of your condition. This might involve:
   Identifying and reframing negative thought patterns: The therapist helps you identify the automatic negative thoughts and beliefs that contribute to your condition and replace them with more positive and rational ones.
   Developing coping mechanisms: Hypnotherapy can help you develop effective coping mechanisms to manage triggers and reduce impulsive reactions. This could involve visualization techniques, self-soothing strategies, or affirmations.
   Accessing and processing past trauma: If past trauma or negative experiences contribute to your condition, hypnotherapy can help you access and process these memories in a safe and supportive environment.
   Strengthening self-esteem and self-compassion: Hypnotherapy can help improve self-esteem and self-compassion, which are crucial for managing your condition effectively. This involves positive affirmations and visualizations to enhance self-worth.
4. Post-Hypnotic Suggestions:
   The therapist may provide post-hypnotic suggestions, which are positive suggestions designed to reinforce the changes made during the session and support your ongoing condition management efforts. These suggestions are embedded in your subconscious mind to help you manage your condition effectively in everyday situations.
5. Integration and Follow-up:
   After the session, you'll gradually return to your normal waking state. The therapist will guide you through this process and discuss any insights or experiences you had during the session.
   Follow-up sessions are crucial to reinforce the changes made and address any challenges that may arise. The therapist will monitor your progress and make adjustments to the treatment plan as needed.

Example 1- Insomnia Hypnotherapy: 

This term covers a multitude of areas. It can manifest itself with insomnia, sexual difficulties, bad habits, tension, anger, relationship difficulties, in fact in so many of the fields that I successfully treat. It is usually insidious and unpleasant to bear.
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and hypnotherapy/NLP work most effectively against these conditions that is seemingly brought upon by life.

Insomnia Hypnotherapy provide 2 ways to help:

Solving The Sleep Problem!

Difficulties with sleep are usually stress/anxiety related.

Clients ask me what the difference between stress and anxiety is.  Stress is the body’s reaction to prolonged pressure.  When the nervous system becomes sensitized or amplified in its reaction to external events.  The person can then become anxious about those symptoms!  They can then panic when they tell themselves just how horrible those awful symptoms are.  Horiibilizing the awfulize in cognitive parlance!

Due to the forgoing cycle the sufferer becomes fearful of the state he or she is now in.  A fear, bewilderment, fear cycle.  “Naturally” this fear vicious cycle follows them to bed.  It is hard to sleep with this amount of discomfort.  The person then projects into the future with the dreaded “what if” I am no use to function tomorrow thoughts.  This of course equals more adrenalin and you guessed it: more awake.  More frustration and awfulizing is sure to follow!

In short, we are in the metaphorical cycle of every time the doorbell rings and the dog barks, the dog barks louder the next time the doorbell rings.

A very good rule of thumb in psychology is that demands, (shoulds, oughts and musts) and inaccurate definitions (global self, other or world ratings) create anxiety, anger and depression. Debilitating.  Whilst preferences and “so what” equal sadness, annoyance concern. All of which are overcomeable.

An example would be a student who tells me that he is anxious as he has an exam coming up.  I ask him what are you telling yourself about the exam?  Invariably the reply is: I must get an A if not I am a total failure and what would people think of me, which leads to anxiety, rather than: I would prefer to get an A and if not, too bad which would lead to a-concern.

When we move our demands in preferences, we reduce pressure on the nervous system and reduce adrenalin. We are more likely to be relaxed during the day and at night and then sleep better.

The best tranquilizer of them all is acceptance based on knowledge and understanding. Dr Claire Weekes.

With Insomnia Hypnotherapy I encourage my clients to then see bed as a wonderful opportunity to rest, rejuvenate and feel good in not a place of danger or conflict or a worry nest of negative “self-hypnosis”.  Relaxing towards bed is a useful way to sleep better, taking time to read or listen to something lighthearted and calmly thinking of the day ahead with positivity. I like my clients define the day rather than let the day define them.

If at first the person is not asleep within five minutes (some people believe this should be the case) I ask them not afulize, catastrophize, magnify, anxietize, depressitize over this.

A deep breath let the body slump by imagining a puppet getting its strings cut.

If anxiety was a wave, then standing up against it would knock you over.  Go under the wave, you will come out on the other side.

Gradually moving your thoughts to pleasant experiences and engaging the senses of visualization, kinesthetic, auditory and imagining the sun shining down out of a clear blue sky warming your head and shoulders, blue sea with wisps of clouds in the sky and the warm salt sea breeze with soft white sand under your feet and letting go of old doubts worries like a twig on a stream being carried towards the open sea, or like a stalactite of ice melting in a heat wave will calm the nervous system and engage the conscious mind thus allowing the unconscious to take you to pleasant relaxing sleep.

Sweet dreams.

• Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy from my Chilvern Cottage practice in Edinburgh
• Stress and insomnia MP3 download

The consultation and first session which is inclusive and combines Hypnotherapy Edinburgh & Cognitive Therapy (see: www.ellisrebt.com) & a generic Hypnotherapy download.

Remember, hypnotherapy is a powerful tool, but it's always best to work with a qualified professional.

Cancellation policy: require 48 hours notice otherwise full fee is payable.