Sleep

Sleep Difficulties

Drift Off to Sleep, Go Back to Sleep, Sleep Walking, Night Terrors

Sleep is a basic human need and should be given high priority because it impacts on mental health, physical health, the immune system and emotional balance.

I will first of all check your sleep 'hygiene' and if the sleep environment is conducive to sleep and only sleep. I will also check your habit of sleep and any physiological factors such as depression, anxiety, illness, medication, pain, stimulants, not eating properly.

Psychological factors include worrying, performance anxiety and trying to consciously sleep. I may set my you specific tasks and teach a self-hypnosis technique for use outside of the session if worrying is a factor.

How can Hypnotherapy help?

Hypnotherapy will teach you how to enter deep hypnotic trance (which happens naturally when you drift off to sleep), whilst giving your unconscious mind suggestions to fall asleep fast and to sleep the whole night through.

Hypnosis will also give you a self-hypnotic method to use to get back to sleep even if you do wake. If you train your brain and body to relax should you wake in the night, then very quickly your instincts will learn that there is no reason or stimulating reward for waking up, so your unconscious mind stops bothering.

Nightmares and Night Terrors

Have you ever wondered why we dream? it's bizarre, isn't it, that we dream when we sleep at night and those dreams seem so real they can even wake us? We are designed to dream so that anything that happened that was emotionally arousing the day before we slept, but wasn't resolved, is flushed out, or switched off, by dreaming.

A nightmare is an emotionally negative dream, usually producing some level of fear, and the emotion can be strong enough to wake us. Repetitive bad dreams or nightmares can leave us feeling exhausted and frightened and often have a classic theme of being chased or dying.

Night terrors are more common in children although adults can suffer too, usually as a result of a traumatic experience. Night terrors and nightmares are very distressing for children who don't understand that it was "only a dream".

How Can Hypnotherapy Help?

We can stop nightmares by changing them so that they are no longer fearful. This can be done hypnotically and the process is fast and comfortable. In fact, you can look forward to a better night's sleep straight away.

Sleep Walking

Also known as somnambulism. The danger of walking while asleep is that you have no conscious control over what you are doing. People have been known to boil kettles and even attempt to drive cars while sleep walking, so I urge you to seek medical advice if you are a sufferer. You can also use hypnotherapy in conjunction with medical interventions.

Children tend to grow out of sleep walking, Causes may be anxiety or insufficient sleep, so sleep walking is not necessarily a sign of psychological problems.

Adult sleep walking may be related to alcohol abuse, brain seizures or reactions to drugs and medications. Again, it is important to get medical advice and it is just as important to ensure your environment is as safe as possible, with windows and doors locked.

How Can Hypnotherapy Help?

Hypnosis and sleep walking are actually connected because hypnosis is a way of entering the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) state when you are still awake. Because sleep walking occurs in the REM state when you are asleep, suggestions given in controlled REM - hypnosis - can influence the uncontrolled sleep-walking REM state.