Self Confidence

Con­fi­dence can be hard to pin down at times! Most peo­ple have had the expe­ri­ence of observ­ing some­one they know at a party or in a work sit­u­a­tion, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with ease and nat­u­rally, with­out a hint of self-consciousness and have thought, “Why cant that be me?” It may be that you lack con­fi­dence within spe­cific rela­tion­ships and want to learn how to be more assertive, per­haps cer­tain sit­u­a­tions give you trou­ble or you may want to become a bet­ter pub­lic speaker, or at least find it less anx­i­ety pro­vok­ing! Per­haps you want to be able to share some of the knowl­edge and ideas that you have inside your head, which you hold back because of lack of con­fi­dence or you find it dif­fi­cult to speak up in front of groups of peo­ple or lack con­fi­dence in all areas of your life. All these expe­ri­ences are com­mon and can be helped by hypnotherapy.

Of course, in life there will always be nat­ural dif­fer­ences among peo­ple. Some peo­ple just seem to be more intro­verted, whilst oth­ers seem to enjoy the lime­light and draw oth­ers towards them with ease. Whether con­fi­dence is a prob­lem, must be self-defined, by the indi­vid­ual. If it impacts on your life in sub­tle or more obvi­ous ways and you feel frus­trated or held back by lack of con­fi­dence, then hyp­nother­apy could ben­e­fit you.

Hyp­nother­apy is an appli­ca­tion of hyp­no­sis for ther­a­peu­tic pur­poses. Hyp­nother­a­pists at the West Lon­don Hyp­nother­apy Clinic utilise hyp­no­sis to help peo­ple solve per­sonal prob­lems, such as lack of con­fi­dence. Hyp­no­sis is a state of mind, typ­i­fied by deep relax­ation, a nar­rowed focus and height­ened sen­sory aware­ness. This state of mind occurs nat­u­rally and peo­ple slide in and out of this state, known as ‘trance’, all the time, in every­day life. Exam­ples of trance states include fan­ta­sis­ing about some­one you are attracted to, becom­ing deeply absorbed in read­ing a book, being anx­ious about an event caus­ing you to re-live what could go wrong over and over in your head and day­dream­ing. As you may see from the exam­ples given, trance states can be pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, depend­ing on what is being focused on.

Hyp­nother­a­pists induce deeply relax­ing trance states and utilised them to bring about pos­i­tive change. This is because, when a per­son is deeply relaxed, as they are dur­ing trance, access to the uncon­scious mind is enabled. The hyp­notic process is won­der­fully pleas­ant and relax­ing, which in itself is ben­e­fi­cial for peo­ple who lack con­fi­dence and expe­ri­ence stress and worry on a reg­u­lar basis. Being free of stress and worry, dur­ing the hyp­notic process, allows the ther­a­pists to pack your uncon­scious mind with pos­i­tive sug­ges­tions of con­fi­dence. Whilst in this state you also get to prac­tice sit­u­a­tions in which you will act with con­fi­dence and con­vic­tion, through a process known as visualisation.

Hyp­nother­apy can also be effec­tive in remov­ing neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tions that you have devel­oped between sit­u­a­tions and feel­ing uncon­fi­dent and it can also be used to remove and free you from neg­a­tive emo­tions from the past. Some­times self-esteem can be related to child­hood expe­ri­ences and these can be dealt with through hypnotherapy.

Dur­ing your hyp­nother­apy treat­ment the hyp­nother­a­pist will also work with you to achieve con­fi­dence through a process called anchor­ing. Anchors are nat­u­rally occur­ring asso­ci­a­tions between an exter­nal stim­u­lus and a behav­ioural or emo­tional response. They occur because the human mind con­stantly seeks to make sense of the envi­ron­ment by look­ing for pat­terns and asso­ci­a­tions between things. It is likely that you have had the expe­ri­ence of hear­ing a cer­tain piece of music that reminds you of a per­son or event from the past. Not all anchors are pos­i­tive. Peo­ple learn to make neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tions between things, such as feel­ing anx­ious or wor­ried when they are asked to go to their bosses’ office or when they are required to give a pre­sen­ta­tion to colleagues.

Dur­ing con­fi­dence ses­sions , the ther­a­pist delib­er­ately makes use of anchors in order to empower peo­ple to have con­trol over their emo­tional states. There are spe­cific tech­niques in which a stim­u­lus is used to trig­ger and link an emo­tional state. The stim­u­lus is usu­ally exter­nal and may be a sound or touch. Through these tech­niques it is pos­si­ble to for an indi­vid­ual to build up a resource of pos­i­tive emo­tional states, which they can access in any sit­u­a­tion in which they need them. This will mean that by acti­vat­ing your cho­sen trig­ger, such as squeez­ing your fore­fin­ger and thumb together, you will be able to access con­fi­dent feel­ings, when you need them. It is also pos­si­ble to com­pletely col­lapse neg­a­tive anchors so that exter­nal stim­uli that cause you neg­a­tive emo­tional states will no longer be a problem.

If you are fed up with being held back or not being able to do what you dream of doing because of lack of con­fi­dence, make an appoint­ment with one of our hyp­nother­a­pists now!