Cognitive Calm
Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy
It’s easy to feel stuck, or perhaps a bit tangled. Life can get busy – feelings of overwhelm and indecision can dominate and this can leave you feeling a bit adrift from where you want to be.
You’re not alone in feeling like this. This sense of unease can occur at any time of life but particularly when going through significant life changes, whether emotional, social or physiological.
The nature of modern life, the constant stream of accessibility of information, as well as an expectation of being accessible to others can keep us in a state of high alert – biologically we are primed for action. However, this is not a healthy default or dominant state, and doesn’t allow us to rest meaningfully, repair and recover adequately from some of life’s mental, emotional and physical challenges.
You often know what you ‘should’ be doing, or what you’d like to be doing, but that gap between knowing it and doing it seems vast. You can bridge the gap and unlock your potential.
Learn how you can relax, reframe and reset with person-centred integrative psychotherapy combining cognitive and behavioural therapy with hypnotherapy.
- Relax – learn to rebalance your nervous system and release mental, emotional and physical tension
- Reframe – benefit from cognitive therapy to explore alternatives to the unhelpful thought patterns that might be keeping you stuck, or contributing to feelings of overwhelm
- Reset – benefit from behavioural therapy and hypnosis to make the changes that you want to make
“When we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Viktor E Frankl
What is Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy?
It’s an evidence-based therapy that can help you to understand yourself better and support you to make lasting realistic changes.
Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy uses:
- cognitive techniques to help you recognise unhelpful thinking patterns, release these and reframe them with more rational and helpful thoughts
- behavioural strategies to enact your helpful thought patterns in real life, as well as change old behaviours in favour of new ones
- hypnotherapy to promote relaxation, motivation and to provide opportunities for your imagined rehearsal of implementing changes in your thoughts, feelings and behaviour
How these three elements are woven into your sessions and treatment plan is flexible and responsive to your needs, depending on what’s keeping you stuck. We are complex creatures so issues rarely exist in isolation, either in how they present or what drives them.
If you think of a time when you felt moderately anxious, you might recognise that it wasn’t simply an emotional situation, but it might have impacted or been driven by your thinking, behaviour, your physiological state and also how you imagined the situation might pan out. Using a holistic cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy approach allows us to address all of these interconnected aspects of the situation. More detail about this can be found in About CBH.
CBH (or Hypno-CBT®) has been gaining more traction as a multi-modal approach with reviews of research (see Research Links page) showing that when clients have hypnotherapy with cognitive behavioural therapy, outcomes are improved for more than 70% of people than for CBT alone. Outcomes measured following longer periods post treatment also demonstrated that more clients had sustained their positive changes if they participated in hypnotherapy alongside CBT.
Whilst not a quick fix, CBH can help you to overcome your issue more quickly than other talking therapies (often in 3 -8 sessions), takes a problem solving approach and places you at the centre.
CBH is well suited to addressing sub-clinical issues, for example: disordered eating, rather than an eating disorder; or social anxiety, rather than severe anxiety. Other contra-indications exist – see FAQ for details.
Issues I Address
anxiety (inc. social anxiety)
Low level situational anxiety responds well to CBH. Working together, we identify how you feel, think and act when you feel anxious. This then helps us to establish what’s maintaining the anxiety. This can then be overcome using a personalised integrative approach involving restructuring maladaptive thoughts and behaviours and identifying and training helpful new behaviours, both with hypnosis and in real-life.
assertiveness
Personal and professional assertiveness can be developed using a combination of cognitive and behavioural strategies, and supported with hypnotherapy.
driving test / exam anxiety
Test / exams can provoke anxiety because you want to do well – for some people they can feel ‘high-stakes’ which adds to anxiety. When people are anxious or stressed they often don’t perform as well as they might have done. I treat this using CBH in 3 sessions to support you to feel more relaxed and confident in these situations and give you the tools to help yourself so that you can feel more relaxed and alert.
habit change (physical and lifestyle)
Whether you’re dealing with a physical habit like nail biting or a lifestyle habit like mindless eating, issues like this often respond well in very few sessions – sometimes one longer session can be effective if it’s a simple habit.
menopause / peri symptoms
These can be varied but CBH can help with help with relaxation, anxiety, low mood, pain control (provided other medical causes have been discounted), hot flushes, confidence, motivation, sleep.
phobias
Whether you’re dealing with a fear of flying, animals, heights or learning to swim, CBH is well placed to help – not only can we look rationally at your thinking around the fear but we can use behavioural strategies, bolstered by hypnotherapy to help you overcome your fear.
procrastination
This is a really common issue – whether it affects your home or work life. For many people it’s often life wide. This is why the benefits of using CBH to address procrastination can be profound – small changes have a really big impact and you really can feel like you have given yourself the gift of time!
personal development
Job interview nerves, sporting performance (at any level), household organisation respond well to CBH, often with just 2-3 sessions.
public speaking
Occasions like a presentation at work or wedding speech can be daunting but just 2 sessions could have you enjoying the event and performing well.
relaxation / tension release
A vicious cycle exists with physical tension and feelings of stress – as one increases, so does the other. CBH is well placed to help you break that cycle and my integrative approach includes mindfulness, breathing techniques, meditation and psychoeducation which will help you to develop skills to rebalance your nervous system.
self -confidence
It’s natural to feel a dip in confidence at times but sometimes this can feel relentless. Perhaps due to life or external events it can be hard to recover and this can then sustain a vicious cycle where to try to rebuild your confidence can just seem too daunting. CBH can help you to reframe your thinking around this to break the cycle and identify a supported way forwards. The hypnotherapy aspect also enables you to rehearse being more confident in situations that are important to you which can be a turning point in enacting change.
self-consciousness
Often this arises from unhelpful thinking styles or a lack of self-belief. Using, CBH we can challenge and reframe these and create more helpful and rational thoughts. I can teach you to use some really effective tools to help you navigate such situations and behavioural rehearsal, both with hypnosis and real-life experiments allows you take these forward and build in to your new way of being.
weight management / body image
If eating less and moving more was easy, we’d al be doing it! There are often complex reasons why people gain weight and find it difficult to lose or to maintain. Some of these reasons are within our control, some are not and no one knows how it is for you unless they’ve walked in your shoes.
That’s why using a personalised integrative approach with CBH can make a considerable difference to people, whether it’s about changing the way they think or feel, changing habits or acceptance.
Whilst my 1:1 therapy sessions address exactly what’s important to you with a bespoke programme, there are themes that are common to many people who want to get to grips with weight management or body image issues and enjoy joining my online group sessions which focus on psychoeducation and strategies to help you make the changes you want to make. (This also includes people reducing or ceasing weight loss injections.)
This is not an exhaustive list – contact me to find out how I could help with your issue.
My Approach
I take an integrative and holistic approach to therapy, which means that there isn’t a one-size-fits all formula which is applied to every session for every person. However, my general approach is outlined below.
During therapeutic conversations, there’s no blame and no judgement, but more curiosity and compassion. To become unstuck we do need to look at ourselves and take the opportunity to evaluate whether long-established thoughts, feelings and behaviours are serving our present selves and situations well. It will take some effort – both emotionally and practically. The integrative approach of CBH enables you and I to work together to find out.
Often, when someone starts to address issues in one aspect of their life, they notice improvements in other areas too. Many people find it to be an enjoyable, insightful experience and discover that small realisations and changes in their thinking, feeling and behaviour can lead to more generalised benefits and contentment with life. The skills you’ll develop may serve to underpin your response to situations in many areas of life.
You’ll be inspired and supported to experiment with change in between sessions – hypnosis can help with this. This brings to life what we do in sessions and you’ll be supported by free personalised audios that I supply. This is what makes it your therapeutic journey and I’m here to support you all the way – to cheer and challenge to help you achieve your best. If you chose to work with me, it’s a collaboration and you are the project. My role is to facilitate your understanding, nurture your capacity to make changes and equip you with the skills to help yourself.
My approach is focussed on the present and the future – the changes you’d like to make. Whilst your lived experiences are relevant to therapy and contribute to how you interact with the world, the hypnotherapy element is NOT used to explore your past. It’s used positively, you’re in control and have the opportunity to focus your attention on making positive changes, to mentally rehearse feeling, thinking and acting in a way that suits you and your goals and values, even when presented with the situation that causes you to feel anxious, frustrated or stuck.
Benefits of Therapy with Cognitive Calm
- Non-judgemental, calm and empathic therapy from a qualified, insured and professionally registered cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist.
- Holistic approach to identify the root cause of your issue, resulting in more effective treatment
- Empowering psycho-education to help you understand your issue, identify triggers and deploy helpful, sustainable coping skills
- 1:1 responsive treatment programmes created and paced for you using evidence-based approaches and techniques
- Relaxation and Mindfulness techniques taught
- Personalised cognitive and behavioural therapy
- Personalised hypnotherapy in session
- Free personalised hypnotherapy audios to support you in between sessions – yours to keep
- Coping skills taught to support you in the future – relapse prevention
- Online sessions at a time to suit you
- First session 90 minutes so you can feel benefits from day 1
Online Sessions
Sessions are held online, via Zoom, making it easier to access therapy at a time to suit you, from the comfort and convenience of your own home. All you need is a stable internet connection.
Research shows that online therapy is just as effective as in person therapy – key predictors of therapeutic success include client readiness to change and the quality of therapeutic relationship with the right therapist.
What to Expect
Each session will begin with a discussion which informs our therapeutic goals for the session. Other features will be included as required:
- Psychoeducation to help you understand your issue
- Cognitive and / or behavioural activities to identify and agree helpful changes
- Hypnosis to empower new beliefs / support behavioural change (audio file shared with you)
- Hypnotic skills training to aid relaxation, sleep, mindfulness
- Discussion and agreement of therapeutic goals and tasks for before next session
Testimonials
‘Elspeth was incredibly supportive and non-judgemental which made it easy to feel that I could be open with her. I found the different exercises that Elspeth and I worked through to be a really useful package of tools to help me make a change in my life.’ F
‘… I feel I have made significant progress … and have noticed a considerable improvement in my confidence and reduction in anxiety when facing situations that previously provoked it. I was [previously] unaware of the powerful impact that Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy can have in helping to change unhelpful thoughts and behaviours. I wish I had accessed therapy sooner instead of trying to manage my anxiety on my own for so long. ‘ J
‘Communication was professional but warm and empathic. Treatment and interventions were entirely tailored to me and truly personalised. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend working with Elspeth – I loved her holistic and thorough approach – and I now have additional, effective tools that I will continue to use in my daily life and routine.’ A
‘I have found that this has not just been useful in addressing one issue but is something I have incorporated into my life to help with a number of different things.‘ E
‘Elspeth is a good listener and reflected week on week what was happening and checking how my progress had been. She was able to readily adapt sessions as required.‘ G
‘I found Elspeth to be an excellent source of encouragement and support. She is a very good listener who took the time to thoughtfully respond to my concerns and responded in a non-judgemental manner. The audios Elspeth provided are delivered with a calm and soothing voice making them a relaxing experience. I would have no hesitation recommending Elspeth to friends and family who are looking for a professional and kind natured therapist.’ H