Cognitive behaviour Therapy

CBT is a form of psychotherapy which combines cognitive and behavioural therapy. Cognitive therapy looks at how our thoughts can create our feelings and mood. Behavioural therapy pays close attention to the relationship between our problems, our behaviour and our thoughts. CBT may focus on what is going on in the present rather than the past, but often the therapy will also look at how thinking patterns may have begun in early childhood and the impact patterns of thinking may have on how we interpret the world as adults.

CBT differs from other therapies in the nature of the relationship that the therapist will try to establish. Some therapies encourage the client to be dependent on the therapist, as part of the treatment process. The client can then easily come to see the therapist as all-knowing and all-powerful. The relationship is different with CBT.

CBT can substantially reduce the symptoms of many emotional disorders - clinical trials have shown this. For some people it can work just as well as drug therapies at treating depression and anxiety disorders. And the benefits may last longer. All too often, when drug treatments finish, people relapse, and so practitioners may advise patients to continue using medication for longer.

When patients are followed up, for up to two years after therapy has ended, many studies have shown an advantage for CBT. This research suggests that CBT helps bring about a real change that goes beyond just feeling better while the patient stays in therapy. This has fuelled interest in CBT. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends CBT for common mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety.

CBT can be an effective therapy for a number of problems:

• Anger management

• Anxiety and panic attacks

• Child and adolescent problems

• Chronic fatigue syndrome

• Chronic pain

• Depression

• Drug or alcohol problems

• Eating problems

• General health problems

• Habits, such as facial tics

• Mood swings

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder

• Phobias

• Post-traumatic stress disorder

• Sexual and relationship problems

• Sleep problems

Neuro Linguistic Programming

NLP is a set of principles, attitudes and tools. NLP was first developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the early 70's. The first use of NLP was a project designed to model and understand the skills of excellence and how they could be learnt and taught to others. Rather than asking the person being studied to explain how they achieved their results. John and Richard set out to understand how the person was thinking. What they may be saying to themselves and how they were using mental pictures. The first subjects were all experts in therapy from a range of fields. This study resulted in a range of ground breaking books that not only detailed how excellence in a chosen field can be studied, broken down into structures and learn able set of mental skills. It also resulted in a detailed understanding of some of the experts in therapy and how they achieve excellent results. Today NLP is being applied to a huge array of areas and it offers a large set of tools that can help you learn and change the way you think and feel. Most of what you see today from people like Paul Mckenna, Anthony Robbins are applications of NLP.

NLP and CBT share a huge amount of similarities. Both started out around the same time and both take a lot of the principles they use from other fields. Neither can be classed as therapies in there own right, rather that they are both therapeutic approaches that choose the best of a range of therapies and bring them together. This allows for a great deal of flexibility and is why they offer so much to many issues.

Hypnosis

These comments are purely my own and may differ somewhat to the many fanciful explanations and claims made about it. I use hypnosis when and where I feel it adds to the therapeutic process. Hypnosis does not have the power to change you in any way, however if you chose to use hypnosis it can help to support your change process.

Hypnosis can go by many names , guided visualisation, daydreaming, mental rehearsal and some forms of role play.

A hypnotic state is much like daydreaming and engages the imagination, while in the hypnotic state your imagination can help strengthen the minds neuro pathways that support your desired goals. The hypnotic state or trance state is actuality a natural focused state that we drift in and out of many times during the day.

Hypnosis could be considered to be nothing more than a very powerful form of mental rehearsal. During mental rehearsal our minds actually use many of the same neuro pathways as if we were really doing the thing in question. Which is why so many people at the peak of their profession use self hypnosis to enhance their performance.

It is just about unheard of nowadays, that any top athlete does not engage in some form of mental rehearsal or self hypnosis in their training program.

Top actors and performers use it to help develop their ability to get into character

Hypnosis is not mind control, something that someone does to you, but a powerful way of learning to train your own mind in a way that supports you.