Tried everything?

When no one else seems to have the answers, consider the possibility that you do.

It really is a puzzle, isn’t it? How we’ve ended up with higher than ever levels of chronic illness, mental health issues, and obesity.  We live in a world where healthcare alongside education and social care is the highest investment for governments in the developed world. We have made huge advances in discovering treatments for major illnesses and the pharmaceutical industry is booming.  If you are not already aware of how to maintain a healthy happy lifestyle, a quick search on google will set you straight, and yet there you are – back in the doctor’s surgery no further forward than you were 10 visits ago.  I know how you feel because I’ve been there.  The receptionist knew me by name when I called before I even had to introduce myself – she was lovely, always very kind.. but I was mortified.

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it”

(Helen Keller)

Suffering is of course part of life and always has been.  But there are so many people suffering, mentally, emotionally, and physically.  Even in childhood I always hated to see people suffer.  I’d feel compelled to somehow fix it, to make them smile again. I soon discovered that I could certainly do the latter but not the former.  The power of human connection can be so useful in aiding any kind of recovery but without an awareness of what is really causing an issue, we cannot discover how to resolve it.  Without a firm understanding of the cause of our issues we will not commit to the treatment for it.  When mainstream treatments don’t work for us, we start to lose faith in the system but worst of all, we start to lose faith in our ability to do anything to improve our situation.

Medications and clinical treatments are developed using scientific research methods – effectiveness is measured by majority outcomes but of course, no one treatment has 100% success; there will always be a residual number of people who do not respond to the treatment (not to mention the people who respond but have not received any treatment, but that’s a whole other Journal!)

And then some can’t get a diagnosis – that was me a few years back!  I see clients who have already run the gauntlet of clinical exploration of neurological symptoms, chest pain, and muscle pain, etc without answers.  “I’ve tried everything else” is a common response I hear in the initial consultation’ both for emotional issues and physical symptoms that are as-yet unexplained.  I feel for those clients, but I’m also delighted they’ve ended up in my clinic because I know their journey to feeling so much better has already begun.

Stress is a major contributor to chronic illness of that there is no doubt. The Mind-Body connection is acknowledged by mainstream medicine, but the problem is that, when you are experiencing very real, very debilitating physical symptoms, the last thing you want to entertain is that they are stress-related.  It can make you feel ‘fobbed off’ and like a failure.  In my case, I believe I developed physical symptoms because I denied my stress for so long – I didn’t have the vocabulary to ask for help or to admit I wasn’t able to cope.  My physical symptoms gave me a far more comfortable avenue to go down to signal my alarm call. Eventually after so many phone calls announcing “good news Mrs Murray– your test results are all normal” I decided to listen.

“Remember all the answers you need are inside of you; you only have to become quiet enough to hear them”

Debbie Ford

In my clinic, I provide a safe environment to quiet the mind.  I talk to my clients about neuroscience in a straightforward way so they can understand better why their symptoms may have developed, because when we understand the ‘why’ it empowers us to figure out the ‘how’.  We all have our own unique set of resources available to us if only we learn how to access them and this is where I have seen Solution Focused Hypnotherapy come into its own.

“It really is amazing what people can do.  Only they don’t know what they can do”

Milton Erickson

Given sufficient time and focus in therapy it truly amazes me what people achieve.  People who suffer panic attacks for years find they are gone in a handful of sessions. Clients with insomnia sleeping like rocks after a few weeks.  People with depression finding somethings just suddenly click and make sense.  Migraine and IBS symptoms gone in a couple of months, it truly is inspiring.  I don’t advise people how to overcome their issues by the way – they figure their solution out as we go along and the best thing about learning from experience in this way is that it sticks. Clients walk away from sessions confident that they now have the resources to cope with whatever the future brings.

My aim is to make Solution Focused Hypnotherapy the first point of call rather than the last!

No matter what issue you have please do get in touch to see if Breeze Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help you.  More information is available on my website www.breeze-hypnotherapy.com