I Can Take Your Fear of the Dentist Away

Hands up who likes going to the dentist? Not that many of you huh?

Many people are downright scared of going to the dentist, to the point where it be could be called a fear, or even a phobia which is an irrational fear. Having dental treatment can be unpleasant but it is unlikely to be dangerous or kill us so it is irrational to fear the man or woman looming over us in a mask.

No one is born being afraid of dental visits. So everyone who is afraid has learned somewhere that dental treatment is something to fear. Some people learn this because they have had previous bad dental experiences. The sense of loss of control in the dental environment may be enough to avoid dental treatment forever while others may be afraid due to stories they have heard, movies they have seen or other indirect experiences. The message conveyed to a child from a scared parent might be that going to see a dentist is something to be afraid of. Such messages may cause individuals to avoid treatment and not have any opportunity to learn that things can be different.

Some people fear going to the dentist so much that they just don't go, for years, sometimes 10 or 20 years and then they may well need some treatment reinforcing their negative expectation. The fact is that a routine check-up and good oral health will keep the cavities away and improve our chance of long-term trouble-free teeth and gums.

Did you know that safe and relaxing hypnosis can rid you of the fear, whether you are an adult or a child? Children love hypnosis and they are very good subjects because they enjoy sitting in the "magic chair" and going on a "journey of fantasy". A negative association with the dentist can easily be replaced with a positive reinforcement of looking after our dental health.

As the English Skype Hypnotist, I help clients all over the world from the comfort of their own home using the wonderful free technology of Skype hypnosis. I also see clients face to face on the South coast of England. Let me help you and trips to the dentist will be short and trouble free. There is nothing to fear, only fear itself.

Antonia Harrison is the English Skype Hypnotist

I Can Help Solve Your Child's Problems with Hypnosis

You want the best for your children and it pains you to see them unhappy, without friends, struggling at school, lacking confidence or plagued by an unwanted habit, fear or phobia.  Talking to them does not solve the problem and the doctor just says they will grow out of it.  But you want to help your child now.  Good.  I can help.  I am a Mum and know how precious children are and have lots of experience helping children using hypnosis.

Children really enjoy hypnosis.  They love the “magic chair”, pretending to “fly on a magic carpet” or seeing themselves “scoring the winning goal”. 

Any parent knows that children pretty much live in a trance state.  Call it daydreaming if you like but they can easily be somewhere else in a flash.  In fact younger children can enter hypnosis with their eyes open and not even sitting still. 

Children also respond well to hypnosis and there are several key areas which bring effective results ie habits; self-confidence and overcoming shyness; coping with pressure at school and exam nerves; coping with divorce or death in the family and chronic health conditions.

As with an adult, there is far more going on in the subconscious mind (below the water) than in the conscious tip of an iceberg (above the water).  Even at a young age, a child has already clocked up thousands of experiences, any one of which could be causing a problem.  You only have to read how big a problem child obesity and eating disorders are becoming to know that is true.

What sort of problems do I help?  

• Habits eg bedwetting, thumbsucking, hairpulling.

My blog post on the Ericksonian Approach to Thumbsucking

http://hypno4change.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/ericksonian-approach-to-treating.html

• Fears and phobias such as spiders, dogs, school, needles, blood, medical treatment, the dentist, the dark.
• 
• Weight problems, obesity, eating disorders ie anorexia or bulimia and fussy eating.
• Children can be badly affected by divorce, arrival of a new step-parent, a new sibling or a death in the family.  I know.  Don’t let your child carry these issues into adulthood and affect their relationships.
• Children can hate school because they are being bullied, are left out, are shy or a favourite teacher has left.  They cannot concentrate because the teaching methods do not match how they need to learn.  That is where my NLP skills can help.
• 
• Children are under tremendous pressure in these uncertain economic times.  Competition is fierce and the need to do well at school is paramount.  Some sail through but many suffer from stress and bad exam nerves.  Occasionally we hear the sad news of a teenager ending their life because of the stress.  It can be avoided.

 “I can’t thank you enough for helping my daughter (16) through her exams.  She was so stressed, had developed an eating disorder and was even cutting herself.  She is a changed girl and this is all thanks to you.   She scored excellent results in her exams and now has confidence.  She has gone to China for a year to work as an au pair.  This was unthinkable before you helped her. ”  - Eva, Sweden

Whatever problem your child has, I would like to help.  I have the knowledge and experience to do so.  

We can do this face-to-face in the UK or over  video anywhere in the world.

Antonia Harrison is the English Skype Hypnotist.  Download the free ebook "21 Myths and 30 Truths About Hypnosis" at http://www.21HypnosisMyths.com

Hypnosis for Exams and Tests Nerves

The exams period is starting and for some that means nerves, worry, disturbed sleep and eating patterns. If your nerves get the better of you and anxiety takes over, you may actually sit down and find your mind goes blank. You know you know the answer but the anxiety is causing a cloud making it difficult or even impossible to recall. The more you “try” to remember, the more anxiety you suffer.

But it does not have to be this way.

There is a well-known phenomenon in psychology - known as state-dependent memory. The state you are in determines what you can remember. If you are in a very different state to when you learned, it is hard to recall things.

If you are very anxious, your brain is simply in the wrong state for thinking!
Hypnosis helps by putting you in the right ‘state’ to learn and teaching you how to recall that state when the exam is about to begin.

In hypnotic trance, many situations seem different somehow. Things that were causing fear or phobic response lose their hold. Situations which caused panic such as speaking in public, attending interviews, giving important sales presentations all seem, well easier. By learning to relax at a very deep mental and physical level, the unconscious mind learns a new way to respond, a new behaviour in response to a trigger. It is the same with looking at exams. It is all too easy to say, “Don’t worry, you’ll do fine” to someone who is anxious. Consciously, we might know we have the ability but it is the unconscious which is sending negative signals. All permanent change has to happen at the unconscious level and that is where hypnosis beats visualizations, affirmations and lots of other techniques. By quickly accessing the unconscious mind, hypnosis brings the desired result.

Mental rehearsal in hypnotic trance of an exam, a test, an interview, giving a presentation or a speech just makes the event seem more manageable without any need for anxiety. Of course, a few butterflies in the stomach or positive stress can actually improve the performance.

Anyone with an IQ over 70 can be hypnotized and children over the age of 7 respond very well to the whole world of imagery and relaxation.

An 11 year old boy came to see me who was under a lot of pressure at one of England’s top public schools where the fees cost many thousands of pounds per year. He was failing in many subjects yet his parents knew he could achieve so much more. He sat in my “magic chair”, listened to my description of a visual journey and in a relaxed state, overcame the exams anxiety.

Last year an 18 year old girl came to see me with restless fidgeting, stress, sleeping and eating disorders, severe anxiety over her upcoming exams and to top it all, she was cutting herself: self-mutilation. This was quite a package of problems but after only three sessions, she sat calmly still, she was sleeping and eating as normal, the self-cutting had stopped and she coped very well with her exams. She passed every subject with even higher grades than her teachers had predicted.

Hypnosis helps people to be calm about exams but also tests such as driving tests and oral interviews.

Remember, “the past does not equal the future”. Just because you have suffered from anxiety in the past does not mean you have to do so in the future. Ask my clients who have overcome severe fear of flying! It is a fairly quick process to reverse the years of negative conditioning and expectation with a positive, calm approach.

© Antonia Harrison 2011. Antonia Harrison is the English Hypnotherapist in Belgium and helps people make positive change in their life through hypnotherapy and NLP.

Hypnosis for Children

By Louise Watts

One day, a little boy living in Germany in the eighteenth century had to undergo a serious operation to remove a tumour that was growing on his head. In the absence of any anaesthesia, the procedure would be a risky one. Before and during the operation, the little boy’s mother held his hand tightly and told him a story so vivid and so fantastic that the little boy was completely engrossed. The surgery was a success and throughout the operation the little boy had felt no great discomfort whatsoever, as his mind had been so completely focused on his mother’s amazing story. That little boy was Jacob Grimm, and the story was Snow White.

Using hypnosis with children is not a new phenomenon – there are references in both the Old and New Testaments describing children responding to treatments using suggestion and faith. It is simply that knowledge regarding this powerful therapy is fairly limited amongst the general public and many medical professionals alike.

Unfortunately, there are still many misconceptions that children hold about hypnosis – some of these come from the parents, but in the majority of cases, television is responsible. An example can be found in the Disney film, Aladdin, which depicts an evil sorcerer using hypnosis to “magically” make his victims obey his commands. However, more often than not, children are drawn to the “mysticism” of hypnosis, and any fears and misconceptions can be corrected before the start of each session.

It is fairly well known amongst hypnotherapists that children are excellent hypnotic subjects. As adults, we lose much of our ability to fantasise and daydream – something children are experts at. Up until around 10 years old, children have little distinction between fantasy and reality, and can usually create imaginative stories and tales with ease. Their imaginative capabilities are, therefore, incredibly useful when it comes to using hypnosis to help a wide range of problems.

Our minds are made up of the conscious mind (logical, rational) and subconscious mind (emotion, behaviour), which are separated by a kind of gatekeeper called the Conscious Critical Faculty (CCF). The CCF filters out anything unwanted that it perceives might harm us (although sometimes it also gets it wrong and filters out the good things!). However, children don’t develop the CCF until between 10 and 12 years. As a result, up to this age they accept everything at face value and their belief systems are very susceptible to suggestion.

Think of the situation whereby a child has fallen over and hurt their knee - the mother calms them by giving them a “healing kiss” and, as if by magic, the child’s knee automatically begins to feel better. This is an example of waking hypnosis being used by a mother, whether she consciously realises it or not.

In children over 12 years old, behavioural change can still take place, as the beauty of hypnotherapy as a treatment method is that it bypasses the CCF and communicates directly with the subconscious, that is, the part of the mind responsible for the behaviour or symptom in the first place.

As a rule, hypnosis will generally not be effective with children under the age of five. This is due to the inability to build the necessary rapport, as well as the fact that children of this age prefer not to close their eyes or sit still for long periods of time.

When we consider that many emotional problems we suffer from as adults have their root in childhood experiences and environment, it makes sense to ensure our children’s issues are dealt with as and when they arise. As a child’s mind is not fully developed, they believe that anything bad that happens is somehow their fault in one way or another: the father who leaves home, the mother who pays them no attention, the child who does badly in their school grades.

Some examples of the way hypnosis can help children and adolescents are:

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Lack of self-esteem
Learning difficulties, including dyslexia
Destructive behaviour
Fears and phobias, particularly injections or visiting the dentist
Habits, including bedwetting and thumb sucking
Chronic pain
Weight control
Relationship problems, perhaps with a step-parent or sibling

The benefits of hypnotherapy don’t just end at when the child begins feeling better. Self-hypnosis techniques can be taught to both parents and children alike and children can be taught to express themselves, either verbally, or through creative methods, such as drawing or writing. Hypnosis works by empowering the child, rather than taking any control away from them, by allowing them to develop the necessarily skills to deal with any difficulties they may face in the future.

Antonia Harrison is the English Hypnotherapist in Belgium with wide experience in helping children through hypnotherapy.