Caroline Cavanagh reflects on her week as a hypnotherapist, working with clients on anxiety, OCD, anger, and trichotillomania. She describes how addressing underlying fear shifts behavior and recommends keeping a success list to recognize progress.
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Hi there and welcome to the next edition of Diary of a Hypnotherapist. And why am I doing this? Largely because one of the things that I ask my clients to do a lot is a success list. We focus a lot of time on the things we still have to do, and that can be a source of stress, of anxiety, because that list, if it's anything like mine, just gets bigger and bigger. But we spend very little time on reflecting on the things that we've achieved, which is the things that give us a sense of joy, of success, of achievement. And so this is my way of doing what I ask others to do, practicing what I preach, which is really important to me in my integrity as a therapist. So reflecting on my week, it's actually been a week where I've had quite a few teenage clients. A young lady who has quite a lot of stress with the home, disruptive relationship with her mum, and it's helping her manage that relationship so that it— her mum's anger doesn't really cause her to be quite as negatively impacted as it has done in the past. And another young lady that's quite common dealing with social pressures, peer group issues, that's left her feeling quite anxious about going back to school in September. So rather than leaving it to September, which would have made the whole of her summer holidays being less than perfect, we nipped it in the bud now so she can relax and think about going back to school come September from a very positive state. And also another young lady that has quite an extreme OCD situation and seeing some improvement on that from the one therapeutic session she had week before last. She's already come back and said, I can do things that I couldn't do before. And that's the power of the mind that we tap into, that once something changes, it's like that proverbial rolling stone. Work becomes easier and easier because the mind's going, I can do this, and I've got evidence of it working. I've also done quite a lot of work this week with gentlemen, and it's really nice to see more men coming to seek help with their mental health and their mental challenges. It's something that was a lot more taboo even a while back. And a range of issues of working with them, from dealing with anger, and men are more prone to anger than women, there's a chemistry around that. Someone that again is the other side of the world, I work with him in Sydney. He's very estranged from his family and can feel really lonely at times. And equally, lots of range of other things as well, from weight loss— someone that's seeking to reduce quite a lot of weight. And one of the things with hypnotherapy is not about changing your diet, it's changing your relationship with food. So it doesn't become willpower, you know, I can't eat the chocolate. It actually gets to I can have a couple of squares of chocolate, but I don't need to eat a 200-gram bar. And that's really where we work at, at the subconscious level, is changing that relationship with food. A couple of very specific issues— just worked with someone that pulls her hair when she gets anxious. She starts pulling her hair out. So another episode of that had happened, so we've nipped that again in the bud. So it's been a very varied week, and that's one of the things that I love as, as a hypnotherapist. Therapist, no 2 weeks are the same, no 2 days are the same. But as an anxiety specialist, I know that a lot of the behaviours that I'm working with, with people are caused through ultimately a fear, a behaviour that they're using to distract themselves from the fear or avoiding doing something. And when we deal with the fear, the behaviour itself changes. So I'm very much ready for a weekend. Ahead, and the sun's shining, so it's a lovely time to now finish my week, finish my reflection, gear up for next week. And I wish you a wonderful weekend in the meantime. Thank you so much for listening, and if you would like a little bit of guidance as to whether hypnotherapy may be something that can help you in a behavior that's not working for you, then just get in touch. I'd love to have a chat with you. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye.
