Would you like to break a habit or get motivated to develop a good one? Would you like to:
- stop biting your nails?
- get more motivated to exercise or go to bed earlier?
- stop pulling hair out (trichotillomania)?
- stop worrying, checking, or counting more than you need to?
Many habits are useful (or at least convenient), but some are not. You may feel that these habits happen because you have no choice, but the real problem is that you do them without stopping to make a choice. Hypnotherapy can give you tools to change your behaviour and create new, positive and healthy habits. To find out more about how I can help you …
- Book a free 20-minute Discovery call, available by phone or on Zoom
- Call me to book an appointment or get questions answered – 01977 678593
- Email me
Or read on to find out more about hypnotherapy and habits, and for a free download.
How to break a bad habit
To be fair, we should really call these habits unwanted rather than bad. Most have developed over time from behaviours that were positive, at least on some level. If biting your nails helps to distract you from stress or boredom, you do it automatically each time you are stressed or bored because the immediate effects are useful. The part of your mind that controls habits only looks at this, and not at the long-term effects, like having unsightly – and possibly unhealthy – fingers.
How to develop healthy habits
It’s often easier to replace an unwanted habit with a more useful one than to just stop and leave a vacuum. The keys to making a new habit are repetition and positive feedback. (As we saw above, even unwanted habits have had both elements at some point.) Once a new habit is formed through these things, you’ll repeat it just as easily and automatically as you write your name or drive your car.
You can download this free leaflet about making a new habit stick.
Habit reversal therapy
Whether you want to develop a habit or get rid of one, you’ll need to plan ahead, and commit to change. But using hypnotherapy to deliver suggestions therapy for habits can help you make those changes more quickly and confidently. Often just a few sessions will be all you need.
It’s worth mentioning that some habits can be connected to anxiety-related conditions such as OCD, and if I think this might apply to you, I’ll suggest you contact a doctor. But this would not prevent us from working together. Hypnotherapy can be used to help reduce the symptoms of OCD [1], as can EMDR [2], a version of which I also offer.
Please get in touch to book an online or in-person appointment.
[1] https://www.marieelement.com.au/reference%20pages/Application%20of%20hypnotic%20strategies%20sustained%20by%20a%20positive%20psychology%20orientation%20in%20treating%20OCD%20patients.pdf
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cpp.2120