This last weekend, for example, we signed the lease agreement for my shiny new office in Waterman House.

It’s a lovely office space. Bright, clean, comfortable, air conditioned, with a manned reception and everything.

And after months of being without a proper office, it’s like a dream come true.

(Long story short: our old office got flooded, and by the time I realised I’d have to find somewhere new, it was summer holidays and the kids were off school)

So, I was desperate to get back to work and really excited about starting over in a modern office.

But, at that moment of signing – of handing over deposits and rent in advance – I had a moment of panic…

Was it the right thing to do?

Will I be able to get enough clients through the door to cover the rent?

How quickly will I be able to get the message out that I’m back in business?

And even though I had run all the figures a hundred times with my husband, Rob, and I knew this was the perfect choice…

… I still froze with fear at the thought of the commitment.

But then I remembered Richard Branson’s favourite saying…

“Screw it, Let’s do it!”

And you know what?

As I sit here today, having set up my lovely new office, I feel really, really alive.

I feel the same excitement that I felt when I first qualified, 12 years ago.

All the fear is gone now I’ve taken the plunge.

You can do it too.

Maybe you want to stop smoking, beat a phobia, stop being so anxious, get more confidence.

Whatever it is, if you are desperate to make a change in your life, but are hesitant to take the first step, then I can help.

If you book a session with me during September 2016 and give me the phrase “Screw it, lets do it”, I’ll give you a £20 discount on your first session.

So, clicky clicky and get in touch…

Heidi Woodgate

Low self confidence doesn’t always follow from a failure or bad experience, however. Sometimes, it can simply be a natural progression of having low self-esteem over a period of time.

Low self-confidence can make it difficult to cope in many areas, including work, social and stressful situations. Outward signs of low self-confidence include appearing shy, nervous or socially withdrawn, especially in confrontational or stressful situations.

And in the same way that low self-esteem can encourage low self-confidence, so too can suffers of low self-confidence begin to experience feelings of low self esteem, such as feeling worthless or inadequate.

The important thing to remember is that people are not born with low self-confidence.

Low self-confidence is a learned response which is often the result of a bitter disappointment or failure, bullying, or years of critical parenting.

Not only can ongoing low self-confidence damage self-esteem, but it can also lead to a host of other problems, such as stress, depression and anxiety.

This is why it’s important to seek help as quickly as possible if your confidence is knocked for a long period of time, as negative thinking patterns can quickly develop and spiral out of control.

Left untreated, low self-confidence can have a knock-on effect and spread to all areas of your life, from your ability to maintain a job to your ability to maintain supportive relationships.

Thankfully, low confidence can often be easily reversed in a relatively short period of time – that’s because most people with low self-confidence have simply got into a habit of feeling that way.

By helping your to change these habitual thought patterns and giving you back a degree of control, confidence quickly returns.

As confidence begins to improve, this creates a positive feedback cycle in which improvements in relationships, social and work life begin to fuel confidence at an ever increasing rate.

One of the best treatments for low self-confidence is hypnotherapy, as it deals with the underlying factors causing habitual low self-confidence.

When you come to see us, we can help you to identify and resolve the underlying issues so that you can begin to create a positive feedback loop, and begin to adopt new, more helpful ways of thinking.

And once the underlying issues are dealt with, most clients find it much easier than they imagined to to get back to a ‘normal life’.

So if you’ve suffered a loss of self-confidence or low self-esteem, why not get in touch and see how we can help you too.

Over that time, as you might imagine, we’ve gotten pretty good at it. However, there are only so many clients that we can physically see in each day, and we wanted to find a way to make a difference for even more people.

So we put together this brief book which is designed to help you to quit by yourself this Stoptober.

Researchers from Karolinska University in Sweden have found an increased risk of hypertension among subjects heavily exposed to road traffic noise at home.

Their findings support a major review of research published in the Lancet last October, which showed that exposure to noise can not only disturb sleep, concentration and academic performance, but can also increase the risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

The Karolinska research, which followed over 5,000 people for a ten year period in Stockholm, suggested a strong connection between exposure to road traffic noise and heart attack (myocardial infarction), as well as a correlation between noise and obesity. The risk was dramatically increased for those heavily exposed to air craft noise.

It’s the stress, stupid!

It’s great to see research validating what we’ve been seeing clinically for the last 10 years in our Hypnotension work – that Hypertension is a response to long term exposure to environmental  stressors, such as noise, allergens and pollution, as well as emotional stressors such as unresolved anger or guilt, feeling burdened by responsibility, feeling a lack of control in life, and many more.

Since the early days of mankind, noise has often been a signal that danger may be nearby, and so we are programmed to respond to it automatically as a survival mechanism.

When we are exposed to stressors such as noise, our natural ‘fight or flight’ response is activated. The body is flooded with the stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, which prepare us for action. Our breathing pattern changes, muscles tense and pulse rate & blood pressure rises.

The problem is that modern stressors like noise can’t be so easily fought or escaped, which leads to a chronic accumulation of these blood vessel tightening stress hormones.

Noise makes you fat too

The Karolinska research also found that noise increased obesity levels. They noted that each ten-decibel rise in the noise levels a person was exposed to added around 1cm to their waistline.

Ten decibels is the difference between listening to a radio and listening to an alarm clock.

But how does this make people fat? We’ll, the stress hormone, Cortisol, encourages visceral fat storage, which is the type of fat most likely to lead to heart disease.

This increase in fat storage just compounds the hypertension issue, as blood pressure increases proportionately with weight, and research has shown that each 1Kg weight gain can raise blood pressure by 1/1mmHg (adding 1 to both of your blood pressure numbers).

Noise cannot always be easily avoided, so this is where we can help.

Using hypnotherapy, we can help your subconscious mind ignore or respond differently to the noise pollution in your life so that it is no longer is a source of stress.

We can also teach you strategies to help you lower your overall stress levels so you can “mop up” excess levels of stress hormones created by the hidden stressors in your life.

So if you have primary or ‘essential’ hypertension (the kind that doesnt have a known medical cause) or your doctor has told you to look at changing your lifestyle to lower your blood pressure, then you might be a great fit for the work we do.

If so, why not get in touch for a no-obligation chat.

References:

• Long-Term Aircraft Noise Exposure and Body Mass Index, Waist Circumference, and Type 2 Diabetes, EHP 5th May 2014
• Environmental noise and health, SEPA March 2013
• Auditory and non-auditory effects of noise on health, Lancet October 30, 2013

Image: Paul M. Walsh / Wikimedia Commons

It can occur in many different situations, and strike at any time. Even seemingly simple social interactions, such as meeting friends or queueing for a bus can trigger it.

Social anxiety sufferers often fear feeling embarrassed or being humiliated, and this may impact many everyday situations in which other people are present. Shopping, speaking in public, meeting friends – there are many situations which can be difficult to a sufferer of social anxiety, especially if they feel they are being watched.

People with social anxiety often have many insecurities, and are likely to suffer low self-esteem. They may also naturally shy away from situations in which they fear they may be criticised or found inadequate.

Let untreated, the levels of anxiety and fear may generalise and intensify until the person begins to experience panic and anxiety attacks. This can lead people to isolate themselves from friends and family, which can cause further problems both at home as well as at work.

The stress of ongoing social anxiety can eventually lead to mental health issues such as depression, and can lead people to self-medicate with alcohol or other substances to escape the feelings of anxiety.

As the problem escalates, the fears can become self-fulfilling, as relationships start to break down and day to day living becomes increasingly difficult.

The good news is that hypnotherapy can help reduce and overcome social anxiety, regardless of how severe it has become, and it usually only takes a few sessions to help you reverse the spiral of social anxiety and resume a normal life.

The fear and worry in social anxiety is usually fuelled by past experiences of humiliation, or certain habitual thinking patterns. These underlying factors are readily treatable with hypnotherapy.

Hypnotherapy works by helping you to change your perception and feelings about past events as well as boosting your levels of confidence and control.

The benefit of hypnotherapy is that it works with the parts of the mind responsible for maintaining the problem, so as strongly as it was a problem before, it can begin to improve.

And as your confidence and self-esteem rise, this fuels rapid improvements in your relationships, work and social life, which creates a positive cycle of success.

So if you suffer with social anxiety, why not get in touch and see how we can help you.

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A bundle of three of our best stress busting, blood pressure lowering techniques that you can use in just 15 minutes per day. Includes:

• The BRAC Hack: An amazingly versatile technique that can not only help reduce anxiety, stress and high blood pressure, but can also boost your confidence, self-esteem and productivity, help with sleep problems and even reduce the symptoms of IBS.
• The Stress Switch: The ideal technique to lower stress, anxiety and high blood pressure in just 10-15 minutes per day
• The Stealth Superhero: The perfect technique for preparing to go into stressful situations, which can also improve your chances of success in presentations, interviews, negotiations and even dating

Big savings compared with buying the products individually

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The BRAC Hack is an amazingly versatile technique that reduces your overall stress levels and helps deal with a wide variety of stress related symptoms. Using this technique regularly can help you:

• Lower stress, anxiety and high blood pressure
• Boost productivity, concentration and motivation
• Overcome weight problems
• Improve health and immune system response
• Control destructive behaviours (smoking, drinking etc)
• Boost energy, sex drive, and overall mood
• Improve sleep patterns and reduce fatigue
• Reduce stomach problems, such as IBS

This product contains an online video explaining the BRAC Hack, plus PDF handout which you can use to remind yourself what to do.

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The Stealth Superhero is a simple technique that is ideal when preparing to go into stressful situations, such as interviews, presentations, negotiations, and even getting a date.

In just two minutes, it can help you:

• Increase your confidence, self-esteem and sex drive
• Reduce stress levels
• Mentally prepare to improve your chances of success

This product contains an online video explaining the Stealth Superhero technique, plus PDF handout which you can use to remind yourself what to do.

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The Stress Switch is the ideal technique to lower stress, anxiety and high blood pressure in just 10-15 minutes per day.

It can help you:

• Lower your everyday stress levels
• Reduce anxiety and panic attacks
• Lower high blood pressure (primary hypertension)
• ‘Tune’ your performance in other areas too (concentration, motivation, learning etc)

This product contains an online video explaining the Stress Switch technique, plus an MP3 guided visualisation which you can use to remind yourself what to do.

Gravesend people are brave and resilient

Perhaps it’s not surprising, being based just a few miles from the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge and the Blackwall tunnel, that we’ve also seen our fair share of people who couldn’t face heights or enclosed spaces.

At first, we wondered if the presence of these two ‘challenges’ was responsible for the number of phobia clients who come to us for help, but having spoken to colleagues in other parts of the country, Gravesend is fairly typical, it seems.

Our stop smoking programme has also been appreciated by many men and women of Gravesend. Perhaps it’s the effectiveness of the sessions or our 1 year guarantee that excites the volume of word-of-mouth referrals we’ve had.

Or maybe it’s just that smokers are generally quite happy to admit they had help quitting, and to share their ‘secret’ with others.

Certainly, we now attract clients from far and wide to our therapy room in Gravesend – with some travelling from London, Maidstone and even other parts of the country to see us.

You see, Hypnotherapy is such a powerful way to resolve troublesome thoughts, problem behaviours, internal conflicts, unwanted feelings and even pain, that we can often help in surprising ways.

But this blog post isn’t really about us. You see, over the years of working with the people of Gravesend, we have found that they are really quite brave and resilient.

As you walk around town, you’d never guess that there are so many people are coping with major challenges in their lives.

And yet they still soldier on and live their lives apparently normally.

And whilst we’ve helped many, many people over the last 10 years to overcome the damage they have suffered from years of unhelpful conditioning – which has damaged their self-esteem, knocked their confidence, created unhelpful coping patterns and more – these people are not the minority.

They are ordinary people just like you and me. The only difference between them and the thousands of others suffering in Gravesend is that they decided to change their situation and had the bravery and courage to do something about it.

So today we salute you, the brave and resilient people of Gravesend, and thank you for allowing us to help you over the last 10 years. We like to hope that our work together has helped make Gravesend just that little bit better.

And if you’ve been soldiering on with something you’ve had enough of – something you’d like to change which would make a big difference in your life – why not get in touch and we can talk about how we can help.