Skills Training
Psychological flexibility and long-term resilience
These skills lie at the heart of the techniques you will learn to use when working with me in one-to-one consultations.
Once you develop psychological flexibility and resilience, you can make fundamental changes to the way you approach life, now and in the future.
As a nutritional therapist, CBT hypnotherapist and former personal trainer, I can motivate you to adopt a healthy lifestyle by eating the food you enjoy and leading the life you love.
I’m a firm believer that you need to be in control of your food, not have it control you.
We start by nourishing your hormones with the right amounts of quality nutrients so that they can do their job of looking after you.
We explore the potential causes of your symptoms. This means looking at your individual and family health history, your nutritional intake, hormonal cycles, lifestyle and exercise, along with your beliefs and thought patterns.
You learn to nourish your body better through a combination of nutrition and lifestyle modifications.
You shift your mindset so that you can make informed decisions around your food and lifestyle habits.
Only by feeling well within yourself can you be fully functional in your relationships, family, community and workplace.
Nutrition and Lifestyle Habits
In such a busy world, being in the “present” moment is something many of us do all too rarely.
Worrying about things that have already happened, or things yet to happen?
These thought patterns are NOT reality because they are not here and now in the present moment.
Mindfulness based CBT and ACT therapies are about appreciating and living in the here and now. It’s about accepting thoughts and feelings even if they are negative.
How mindfulness helps
'De-hypnotising' or broadening your attention away from focused negative thoughts such as worry/rumination or anxiety/panic attacks.
Compassion for yourself rather than enduring constant self-criticism.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) uses mindfulness to bring about committed action to connect with your values.
Enjoyment of the task at hand, rather than focussing on the outcomes.
You do not have to meditate every day to be mindful!
If your experience of mindfulness has been meditating for half an hour a day and you just can’t keep that up, you are not alone! It’s vital to live mindfully all the time, not just during the time you take out to be mindful.
Many mindfulness techniques are very simple and can be readily integrated into your daily habits.
MINDFULNESS
We all know that relaxing is often easier said than done.
Yet relaxation is fundamental to dealing with many emotional issues. It’s physiologically impossible to worry or be anxious if you are truly relaxed.
Relaxation is the key to managing your thoughts
Learn to do it and relaxation can be transformative.
The 'relaxation response' is a physiological response, opposite to the 'fight or flight response, associated with anxiety or stress. Therefore, with practice, as you learn to relax, you start to control your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
The relaxation skills you learn with me include a combination of progressive muscle relaxation, tension release breathing and hypnosis. Why not give it a try and start feeling the benefits right away?
Relaxation
If you want to build better resilience to whatever life throws at you, self-hypnosis is a coping strategy that you can soon master.
Self-hypnosis is a powerful technique that changes your underlying attitudes towards many issues - from anxiety and stress to low self-esteem, depression, perfectionism and even managing chronic pain.
It enables you to relax your body and mind within minutes, which is essential when stressful situations arise.
We start by using audio recordings of hypnosis sessions which you can later adapt to move away from negative thoughts. Use self-hypnosis on trains, buses, in queues, or wherever you need to take 15 minutes out to completely unwind in peace.
SELF-HYPNOSIS
Low self-esteem or self-worth might have you constantly seeking approval from others. It also means you don’t like yourself much or trust in your ability to make judgements. In turn, you don’t feel you have the right to express yourself in the same way as others do.
I help with practical social skills training that enables you to become more assertive and to honour your values, feelings and wishes.
Put an end to public speaking or performance anxiety, poor job interviews and anxiety in social situations. Soon you will be asking questions and engaging effectively with others, or being confident in crowded places.
Assertiveness training gives you the confidence to do exactly what you want to do, without the constant need for validation from others.
Assertiveness
If you worry - or worry about worry - then poor problem-solving techniques may be part of the problem. Worry is the brain’s random attempt at solving problems but to no avail. To problem-solve effectively, you need to stop the worry and look at things more systematically and clearly.
Problem-solving is a skill
If you’re a procrastinator or you struggle with making decisions, it may be time to look at problems in a different way. But first, you need to understand and accept your set of values. Putting them in the right context means you can solve problems, rather than create even more.
Let me help you to stop procrastinating and start looking at things more systematically.
Problem Solving
The bain of our lifestyles, breaking bad habits, or habit reversal, can be challenging.
Some habits - like binge eating - are sometimes linked with anxiety.
Alternatively, they can simply be habits acquired over time, but luckily it’s perfectly possible to reverse them.
By fully understanding the relationship between your thoughts, feelings and behaviour, you will soon be better equipped to handle your habits. Rehearsing the run-up stages to your habit enables you to apply simple techniques to stop the habit entirely.
When breaking your bad habits, you will often work closely with my nutrition & lifestyle programmes.
Breaking Bad Habits
Emotional Intelligence Consists Of 5 Key Elements:
Self-Awareness
Self-Regulation
Motivation
Empathy
Social Skills
Emotional Intelligence (emotional fitness) refers to the ability to identify and regulate our own emotional state INTERNALLY independently of what´s happening EXTERNALLY, to recognise the emotions of other people and feel empathy towards them, communicating more effectively and building healthier relationships with (good) values.
Most people are living their lives from the outside in instead of the inside out, which is why you are constantly feeling triggered, and constantly at the effect of circumstances, other people and life.
Without emotional intelligence you will feel like you are surviving rather than truly living and thriving.
The next level of emotional intelligence is taking what you have learnt and applying it to your own personal, real-life struggles and teaching you how to make those skills work 100% of the time when you need it the most.
