This is the story of a client who I saw for cannabis cessation.  I think it’s best told by him…….

“I started using cannabis as a young man aged 18. I had recently split with my first long term girlfriend, whilst at the same time dealing with several other significant changes in my life such as my family being broken up by my mother deciding to move her and my sister to Spain, my brother went to live with my father where there was not room for me resulting in me having no choice but to live with my grandparents, a move I objected to profusely.

It started as a distraction to take mind away from the upside down life I has just acquainted with. Me and my good friend ZH would sit in my car on my grandparents driveway smoking £20 worth of weed every night for the first few months. At first it seemed fun and harmless and that it would soon pass once everything sunk in and began to return to normal I thought oh well if everyone else does it what’s the harm its scientifically proven you cannot get addicted and it will pass when I am ready. I WAS WRONG.

Before I could realise smoking weed had become a daily occurrence and almost a ritual. It got harder and harder to get through an evening without smoking a joint. By the end of the forth month I had a new girlfriend who also began to smoke it regularly with me. After that I felt it was out of control, I had found something to take away the pain of the sudden life change combined with missing my family and the even the occasional absence of this began to bring out the worst in me once again. It got the the stage where the thought of going an evening without at least a single joint would send me into a deep state of unrest and agitation. I tried to quit for the first time after 6 months when my mother pleaded with me to stop for fear I would follow in the footsteps of a distant relative who was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. I agreed but the attempt and quitting lasted less than 2 days before I was punching my pillow in sheer anger from the withdrawal of weed.

For the next 18 months I continued to smoke weed daily and often in large quantities it surrounded peers, it resulted in my only really associating with others who enjoyed the drug and several friendships dematerialised as the whole planning of my evenings a was who was I going to smoke with today. After several failed attempts to quit, the longest being 3 weeks before breaking I began to accept that this was my life now. I would spend only 6 months in every job and all of my free money on weed. As the more I smoked it the more I hated it as time went on but couldn’t bring myself to break the habit.

In October of 2015 I met Kerry Williams a hypnotherapist while I was out delivering advertising leaflets for my new job.   I knocked on her door after spotting the sign outlining her profession. I had my first session with her three weeks later, I was a little dubious about the process and wasn’t entirely convinced by it but thought what harm could it do. After my first session I managed to go three weeks without weed. The first week was beyond brutal in the withdrawal symptoms, I was angry, snappy and sleep was near on impossible prior to 4am, I eventually broke when my friend ZH brought some weed round and convinced me one wouldn’t hurt and before I knew it I was back into the same daily cycle.

It took another 8 months for me to come to the conclusion that weed was a problem in my life, this time it was mainly the effects it was having on my new found career. I was noticing a significant decline in my short term memory. So I took the decision to go and see Kerry again for my second session of hypnotherapy. This time I was determined, nothing was going to stand in my way.  This time round I responded far better to the treatment. I was in a deeper state of relaxation and afterwards the thought of weed repulsed just as Kerry said it would. Since that day I have had it smoked in front of me without a second thought of it. I have had one myself a fortnight after treatment although I felt the full effects of the drugs that I had once loved, the entire experience was a nightmare one that I do not intend to repeat.

Giving up weed may feel like the hardest thing in the world and believe me you’re not in the state of mind where you want to do it then it will be hardest thing in the world. Once you have that winning mentality to finally quit you will do just that, all it takes is a strong will and a single phone call to Kerry Williams at About Mind Hypnotherapy.  I hope this testimony on my experiences will be of help to others hoping to win the battle I have just won.  Good luck”.

Jack

Have you ever considered using hypnotherapy to enhance the positive personality traits or successes that you already have? People will often call on my services when something has gone wrong for them, perhaps affecting their ability to live the successful life they desire. This is the core of my work, but I also use hypnosis to enhance existing success.

You may pride yourself on your confidence, perhaps you are great at relationships, or you may excel at a particular sport. Whatever is working for you now can work even better for you in the future by using hypnotherapy to harness that success and then increase it’s presence. Hypnosis can also help you to reflect that same success in other areas of your life so you can experience it across a broader range of activities.

I have just published my latest testimonial given to me from a recent client who was addicted to gambling.  Of course, I   won’t share the detail of the case with you but I can say that the addiction was serious and the consequences of the gambling, had it continued, would have been heart breaking.  The testimonial reads:

“I can honestly say you have changed my life.  I haven’t gambled once since I saw you.  I’m back in control.  It’s an amazing feeling.  I have money in my pocket all the time now.  I can’t thank you enough for what you have done.  It’s not only stopped me gambling but I feel different, a lot happier.  My wife can’t believe the change.  I am not a gambler any more.  It’s amazing”.

I saw this person once before the testimonial was sent to me.

The power of hypnotherapy never fails to surprise and delight me.  It’s true to say that not everyone will get such dramatic results after only one session and that often a number of sessions are required before the desired outcome is achieved.   The extremity of the results achieved will always differ from person to person.  Some people will experience just enough change in order for them to tip the balance of control back in their favour, and for others hypnotherapy really can be like flicking the off switch to an unwanted behaviour or feeling.

When I get this kind of feedback from my clients it acts as further testament to my belief that carefully constructed and personalised hypnotherapy really can be life changing.

Hypnotherapy is used to alter a person’s negative thought and behaviour patterns.  Not all of these thought and behaviour patterns are voluntary.  Some of our unwanted behaviours, like loss of sleep or interrupted sleep, occur without us going through any conscious decision making process.

I have worked with many people who wake up during the night and can’t get back to sleep and others who find it difficult to drift off to sleep in the first place.  Sometimes the loss of sleep is exacerbated by stress and worry and sometimes there is no obvious reason at all for it.  It can often be the case that a person simply gets into the habit of not sleeping, for example, ex shift workers commonly fall into this category.

The result of not getting enough sleep can range from feeling exhausted in the morning and tired and listless through the day, to devastatingly affecting our ability to function normally, be it at work or at home.  There can be serious social, family and health implications.

Hypnotherapy can work in a multiple of ways to resolve sleep issues.  As always, the treatment delivered depends on the individual and his/her specific circumstances and needs.

Where loss of sleep is habitual, hypnotherapy delivers to the subconscious mind techniques and visualisations that will retrain the mind to be able to drift off to sleep and stay asleep through the night.  Often a combination of suggestive therapy and neuro linguistic programming is used to achieve this.  In other cases there may an underlying cause for the lack of sleep, stress being a common one. In these cases the cause of the problem will be addressed as well as the immediate sleep issue.

In my experience, if your loss of sleep is habitual, 2 sessions of hypnotherapy is usually enough to get you back to sleeping soundly through the night.  If there is an underlying cause, such as stress, then depending on its severity and complexity, 1 to 3 additional sessions may be required.

Before you embark on hypnotherapy to resolve your sleep issues you should always pay a visit to your doctor who will assess your symptoms and rule out any causes that require medical attention.

Some people I see for hypnotherapy have previously experienced what is known by hypnotherapists as the ‘trance state’ and know what to expect. Others may have a friend who has experienced hypnotherapy and will expect to have the same experience as them, and some of my clients have no experience at all but have heard that hypnotherapy works.

If you don’t know what to expect then the prospect of the unknown can be somewhat unnerving. The reality is that the ‘trance state’ is a wholly relaxing and enjoyable experience. I often describe it as a ‘massage of the mind’. The majority of people will dip into some form of hypnotic state several times a day, typically when day dreaming or drifting off to sleep at night. If you have ever driven a car on a familiar route and seemed to arrive without any recollection of the journey then you would have just experienced a hypnotic state.

The actual experience of being hypnotised is difficult to describe, feeling as if you are neither asleep nor awake. The state is characterised by a voluntary pleasant state of relaxation, sometimes described as an altered state of consciousness which enables the reception of desired beneficial suggestions given directly by me to your unconscious mind. Of course everybody experiences hypnotherapy differently. Many of my clients describe their experience as ‘feeling so deeply relaxed, I know I can move but I just don’t want to’.

I always explain to my clients that they are in full control throughout the session and should anything be suggested that they are uncomfortable with or perhaps not ready to accept, they are able to terminate the trance. In saying that, as a hypnotherapist it’s my job to ensure that the content of each session is driven entirely by the client’s needs and is consistent with their value set and as such is gladly received.

The science behind weight loss is simple.  If you consume less calories than you burn you will lose weight.  If you consume more calories than you burn you will put weight on.  So it makes sense that if you follow a calorie restricted diet, the chances are you will lose weight. So, if it’s that simple why do so many of us struggle with being over weight?  The problem comes when the diet is dropped, normal eating patterns are resumed, and all of the weight, and often more, goes back on.

I’m sure this will be a familiar cycle to many of you and when it happens it can lead to feelings of despair and exasperation.  So why is it that although you know that consuming too much of the wrong kinds of foods is going to result in unwanted weight gain, you still do it?  You just seem to be unable to resist the temptation of those unhealthy foods.  Why would you undo all that good work and sabotage all your good efforts?

The answer is, that it is likely that your relationship with food is driven by learnt behaviours that are deeply rooted in your subconscious mind.  For example, it stands to reason that if perhaps you were repeatedly pacified or rewarded with food as a child that in adult life you will seek to self pacify or reward yourself in the same way.  It felt good then so it will feel good now, so you reach for a bar of chocolate or biscuit from the cupboard.  What is happening here is that your subconscious mind is sending you the message that if you eat that chocolate or biscuit or whatever it is you have the urge to eat then you will feel better.  The reality is that temporarily you may well feel better but soon after you are likely to either feel guilty or disappointed in yourself knowing that you have sabotaged what you really want, to lose weight.

This is where hypnotherapy steps in.  It breaks down the learnt misguided beliefs about food and reframes your emotional relationship  with eating. There are many ways of doing this and many possible outcomes which of course will be guided by you.  Some people just want to stop eating a particular food whilst others want to change their preferences across their whole diet.  Whatever it is you want to change about the way you eat, hypnotherapy takes the pain out of making these changes.  Quite simply it makes what has previously seemed like an impossible feat, easy.

I’ve just posted another review of my hypnotherapy services on the testimonials page of this web site.  If you would like to add a comment please get in touch.  I do get a lot of good feedback from people and it’s always wonderful to hear how you are doing.