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Habits are a part of life, and good habits make life much easier by stopping you wasting time and energy on having to consciously think about everything you do. The way you dry yourself after a shower, or put your clothes on in a particular order, for example, are certainly useful, as you can see when you notice how much thought and energy a young child has to put into those actions.
But many people have a habit they would like to stop, but find that willpower and making New Year Resolutions don’t last.
Habits are made when the primitive emotional part of the brain (the limbic system) creates a pattern between a feeling and an action. You feel tired and need a break and go outside for a cigarette; you feel a bit anxious and start biting your nails; or you feel a bit low and reach for the box of chocolates.
hypnotherapy can help you break a habit you don’t want by:-
- helping you change the relationship between the emotion and the action.
- working at a level deeper than willpower, where the habit originated.
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Food plays a very important part in people’s lives apart from the obvious one of keeping you alive.
Eating with other people is associated with hospitality and caring; eating particular foods can bring back childhood and pleasurable (or unpleasant!) memories; eating can be linked in your mind with being comforted in times of stress - the very British cuppa to solve all problems!
Sometimes the brain pattern matches a feeling to a food or the act of eating in a way that becomes unhelpful. And usually these foods are ones that give you a quick “lift” – a surge of sugar that ups your insulin levels, creates a brief surge of energy and comfort, and then lets you and your blood sugar down equally quickly, so you want some more of the same. Chocolate, biscuits and coffee are the main culprits, followed closely by crisps!
You feel bored and go to the biscuit tin, not once but repeatedly; an occasional chocolate bar becomes a regular visit at all times of day to get your “fix” ; you can’t have only one portion of a particular food but “stuff yourself” without tasting what you are eating. And then you put on weight, or your teeth start rotting with the sugar, you feel bad about yourself and because you feel bad and guilty, you find your nibbling and snacking happens more frequently and turns into eating more than you eat at a proper meal.
hypnotherapy can help you to stop snacking and nibbling by:-
- scrambling the links your brain has made between your initial emotions and the food you are snacking.
- helping you deal with any temptations to buy your particular snack.
- enabling you to create new brain patterns that can create an indifference or dislike of a particular food.
- helping you to make different responses at the times when your snacking begins.
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Nail-biting can be something you do without noticing what you are doing. You look at your hands and see that the fingernails are bitten to the quick. Or you may become aware that you are pulling at pieces of skin but find it almost impossible to stop.
Nail-biting often happens when you are a bit anxious, feeling ill-at-ease, or concentrating hard. Some people can’t remember a time when they didn’t bite their nails, while others can remember the actual time they started. No matter how long you have bitten your nails, it is one of the easiest habits to stop for good.
hypnotherapy can help you stop biting your nails by:-
- giving you alternative ways of dealing with situations where you would like to relax.
- breaking the link between a particular situation and the nail-biting response.
- giving you the self-confidence to deal with worrying situations.
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You don’t need telling about the ways in which smoking shortens your life, or the ways it makes your body age more quickly, from wrinkles to poor eye sight to lessening your bone density.
Cigarettes are no-one’s friend. They steal your money and time, push you around by telling you when you want them, try to con you by associating smoking with being ‘cool’ or strong.
You may want to stop smoking cigarettes because they are costing you too much money, or for health reasons, or because someone who matters to you has asked you to, or because you don’t like being manipulated by them.
hypnotherapy can help you stop smoking for good by:-
- breaking the habitual patterns of when you smoke.
- enabling the brain to stop expecting something good when it receives a dose of nicotine.
- by-passing the willpower element of stopping smoking by dealing with the underlying brain patterns.
- helping you develop new ways of giving yourself a ‘breathing space’.
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