PBP CONSULTING is continuing to develop individual and group treatment options for these often treatment resistant populations.

	Acceptance and Commitment Therapy		Bio-feedback
	Cognitive Behavior Therapy		Debriefing and Defusing
	EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization		Hypnosis
	Coaching: Life and Personal		Mindfulness
	What is Neuro-feedback?		Pain and its Management
	BREATHING TRAINING and RELAXATION		MEDITATION
	Hypnosis		Bio-feedback
	A Solution Oriented Approach		Stop Smoking
	Stress: in its various forms		Thought Field Therapy
	Voice Dialogue

1. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, ACT (pronounced "act" not "ay see tee"), is an empirically based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, together with commitment and behavior change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility.

Basics

While the following explanation can sound complex, the practice is quite simple and logical with some coaching.

ACT is developed within on a pragmatic philosophy called functional contextualism. ACT is based on Relational Frame Theory (RFT), a comprehensive theory of language and cognition that has emerged within behavior analysis. ACT differs from traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in that rather than trying to teach people to better control their thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories and other private events, ACT focuses on what they can control more directly: their arms, legs and mouth.

ACT teaches them to "just notice", accept, and embrace their private events, especially previously unwanted ones.

ACT helps the individual get in contact with a transcendent sense of self known as "self-as-context" — the you that is always there observing and experiencing and yet distinct from one's thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories. ACT aims to help the individual to clarify their personal values and to take action on them, bringing more vitality and meaning to their life in the process.

Suffering and Avoidance

The core conception of ACT is that psychological suffering is usually caused by experiential avoidance, cognitive entanglement, and resulting psychological rigidity that leads to a failure to take needed behavioral steps in accord with core values. As a simple way to summarize the model, you can say that ACT views the core of many problems to be FEAR:

	Fusion with your thoughts
	Evaluation of experience
	Avoidance of your experience
	Reason giving for your behavior

	Accept your reactions and be present
	Choose a valued direction
	Take action

As of 2006, ACT is still relatively new in the development of its research base. Nevertheless, ACT has shown preliminary research evidence of effectiveness for a variety of problems including chronic pain, addictions, smoking cessation, depression, anxiety, psychosis, workplace stress, diabetes management.

Mediational analyses have provided evidence for the possible causal role of key ACT processes, including acceptance, defusion, and values, in producing beneficial clinical outcomes. Correlational evidence has also found that absence of these process predicts many forms of psychopathology. A recent meta-analysis showed that ACT processes account for about 25% of the variance in psychopathology at baseline, using correlational methods – not only for psychological problems, but for enhanced fulfillment in life.

ACT has also been adapted to create a non-therapy version of the same processes called Acceptance and Commitment Training. This training process, oriented towards the development of mindfulness, acceptance, and values skills in non-clinical settings such as businesses or schools, has also been investigated in a handful of research studies with good preliminary results.

With Bio-feedback we use highly sensitive sensors connected to a computer to monitor a person’s heart rate, breathing, temperature, perspiration rate or muscular activity.

These measures are seen and heard as feedback to a person in such a way that they can learn how to gain control over these autonomic functions.

Combined with breath training, mindfulness practice and other skills and strategies, a person can make lasting and significant reductions to their stress levels and break the vicious cycle between physical, emotional and mental stress.

Research shows that stress is a primary and secondary cause in many physical diseases.




4. Cognitive Behavior Therapy

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is a kind of psychotherapy used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, phobias, delusional disorder, eating disorders and other forms of mental illness. It has been clinically demonstrated in over 400 studies to be effective for many psychiatric disorders and medical problems for both children and adolescents.

CBT is, in fact, an umbrella term for many different therapies that share some common elements. Two of the earliest forms of Cognitive Behavior Therapy were Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), developed by Albert Ellis in the 1950s, and Cognitive Therapy, developed by Aaron T. Beck in the 1960s. Other types of Cognitive Behavior Therapy include Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Self-Instructional Training, Schema-Focused Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and many others.

CBT is based on the idea that how we think (cognition), how we feel (emotion) and how we act (behavior) all interact together. Specifically, our thoughts determine our feelings and our behavior. Therefore, if an individual is experiencing negative and unrealistic thoughts, this may result in distress and can result in problems.

With thoughts stipulated as being the cause of emotions rather than the outcome or by-product, cognitive therapists reverse the causal order more generally used by psychotherapists.

Therefore, the therapy is to identify those irrational or maladaptive thoughts that lead to negative emotion and identify what it is about them that is irrational or just not helpful; this is done in an effort to reject the distorted thoughts and replace them with more realistic alternative thoughts.
CBT is not an overnight process. Even after patients have learned to recognize when and where their thought processes go awry, it can take months of concerted effort to replace an irrational thought process or habit with a more reasonable, salutary one.


CBT is one of the treatment approaches used by PBP CONSULTANCY’s Psychologists.

Cognitive behavioral group therapy (CBGT) is a similar approach in treating mental illnesses. In this case, clients participate in a group and recognize they are not alone in suffering from their problems and can share their own understanding of the CBT process with others.

Further information on this approach. CBT has a good evidence base in terms of its effectiveness in reducing symptoms and preventing relapse and is an integrative, interactive approach that involves recognizing unhelpful or destructive patterns of thinking and reacting, evaluating whether or not these patterns are realistic or accurate, learning to see the causal connections between one's thoughts, feelings, actions and physiological responses, and learning how to address and change all of the above through a variety of techniques.

One of the most well known Cognitive Therapy techniques is to modify or replace dysfunctional thoughts with more realistic or helpful ones. Cognitive Therapists work from the cognitive model, which says that a person's core beliefs (often formed in childhood) contribute to 'automatic thoughts' that pop up in every day life in response to situations.

Cognitive Therapy practitioners hold that clinical depression is typically associated with negatively biased thinking and irrational thoughts. Cognitive Therapy is often used in conjunction with mood stabilizing medications to treat rapidly changing moods.




5. Debriefing and Defusing

Debriefing and Defusing are terms referring to therapeutic processes that are employed following a severely traumatic event, or what is often called a “Critical Incident”.

The major purpose of Debriefing is to bring together a group of people who have shared a traumatic experience, where they can openly discuss their reactions and derive mutual support from the process.

Defusing refers to a less formal process of support. It may simply involve “checking in” with a colleague as one passes in the corridor, or offering to get a friend a coffee or snack. The act of Defusing, as the name suggests, will generally involve helping another feel supported, and perhaps even allow for informal situations to arise that offer opportunity for them to release thoughts and feelings.

Listening is a key to effective Debriefing and Defusing.

Debriefing is usually a single session crisis intervention that is designed to reduce and prevent debilitating psychological symptoms by: promoting the processing of emotions; the ventilation, acknowledgement and validation of reactions; the design of any therapeutic actions that may be important for participants in the immediate future; and the preparation and planning for possible future experiences.

Debriefing can often circumvent common attempts to be helpful that may in fact prove otherwise. Too often in our attempts to help friends or colleagues we can feel pressured to offer suggestions, make explanations, or “fix” their discomfort. Such comments as “you’ll get over it” or “just don’t think about it” can be offered with the best of intentions, yet can often contribute to the person feeling unheard and not understood, thus even more alone.

Effective Debriefing requires a deal of skill. The process typically occurs when high levels of emotion, vulnerability, uncertainty and confusion can readily cloud the progress and judgment of those who have experienced the trauma. For this reason, research findings as to the effectiveness of the process have tended to be variable.

In our experience, we have found that the effectiveness of any Debriefing process can be greatly enhanced when:

	intervention is prompt and occurs as soon as possible following the incident;
	the participants are given ample opportunity to express their reactions and support each other in an open and permissive atmosphere;
	attention is given to any immediate steps that may be useful for participants to take to assist in their recovery;
	any further steps that may be useful for the group to consider and put into action.

6. EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

Much has written and debated about EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) over the past two decades. At PBP CONSULTANCY we have been trained in both Introductory and Advanced courses of EMDR with Dr. Francine Shapiro, a Psychologist and Senior Research Fellow at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, USA., who created the treatment in 1987. Since our training, we have been offering and using the treatment of EMDR since the mid 1990’s.

We have incorporated here some research and descriptive information from the EMDR Institute, the European EMDR Association , and the EMDR International Association, and would recommend an inspection of these sites as a starting point for those wishing to learn more about the history, efficacy and research base of the treatment.

EMDR is an innovative clinical treatment, which has successfully helped over one million people who have experienced psychological difficulties which originate from some kind of traumatic experience, such as sexual abuse, childhood neglect, road traffic accidents and violence. EMDR is also successful in treating other complaints such as performance anxiety, self-esteem issues, phobias, and other trauma related anxiety disorders.

EMDR is a complex method of psychotherapy which integrates many of the successful elements of a range of therapeutic approaches, and combines them with eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation in ways which stimulate the brain's information processing system.
Under most circumstances, we have natural ways of processing problematic and mildly traumatic experiences.

We tend to “process” the experience through conversations with others (and ourselves) and make adjustments over time. However, when a person is severely traumatized, either by an overwhelming event or by being repeatedly subjected to distress, this healing process may become overloaded, leaving the original disturbing experiences unprocessed. These unprocessed memories can be stored in the brain in a form where they can be continually re-evoked when experiencing events that are similar to the original experience.

EMDR utilizes the body's natural healing ability and allows the brain to heal psychological problems at the same rate as the rest of the body heals physical ailments. Because EMDR provides for a parallel healing of the mind and body, treatment can be rapid. The number of sessions required for EMDR treatment, however, will vary according to the complexity of the issues at hand. In general, the more isolated the traumatic memory being treated, the shorter the treatment tends to be.

There have been many controlled studies supporting the efficacy of EMDR (you might try these sites for example, www.emdr. making it the one of the most thoroughly researched methods in the treatment of trauma. A recent series of studies with people suffering from a range of events such as rape, combat, bereavement, accidents, natural disasters etc. have found that 84 - 90% of the participants had significantly reduced symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder following EMDR treatment (see research sites above). Given its wide application, EMDR promises to be a widely utilized therapy of the future.




7. Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a topic that has attracted a lot of interest and misunderstanding since its more formal therapeutic usage over the last century or more. The mystique surrounding the experience and effects of a trance state continue to draw debate and curiosity, both from those who seek - as well as those who deliver hypnotic therapy.
Traditionally, hypnosis has been a process that was considered to be highly dependent upon the direct suggestion of a therapist or “hypnotist”, and the “degree of hypnotizability” of the subject or client. Under this assumption, the “subject” would in general be told what to do and have their experience prescribed by the therapist (e.g. “your eyes are getting heavy”, “you are feeling very sleepy and will fall into a deep state of rest when …”, “you will never ….. again”, etc), and it was found that some people would respond very readily to such suggestions, whilst others would not.

It was this variable effect among “subjects” that lead many theorists to conclude that: some people were very “hypnotizable”; whilst others would respond to suggestions to a moderate degree; and of course there were some people who displayed little if any cooperation with such suggestions. Some theorists have even devised “scales of hypnotizability” that purport to measure the degree to which an individual may be susceptible to direct hypnotic suggestion.

Milton Erickson and Solution Oriented Hypnosis.

Modern day hypnosis operates from a quite different set of ideas, and has been very largely influenced by the work of Milton Erickson, who began to gain notoriety and influence in the mid 1900’s until (and beyond) his death in 1980. He has left an enormous and enduring legacy of ideas and knowledge to our field, and highlighted the importance of identifying, awakening and using the power that we all bring to our life situations.
Those who practice the more modern hypnotic techniques will tend to emphasize and work with the resources, strengths and values of the person they are working with.

Erickson was a therapist who emphasized strategies that empowered his clients. In a prelude to a recent publication compiling “The letters of Milton Erickson”, Jeffery Zeig and Brent Geary noted that: "simply put, Milton Erickson (1901 - 1980) was the foremost authority on the use of clinical hypnosis in the twentieth century. And there are many who contend that he was the century's premiere hypnotherapist. What Erickson added to the practice of therapy can be compared to Sigmund Freud's contribution to its theory" (p. ix).

Of the many revolutionary ideas that Milton Erickson offered, perhaps his most pervasive was that the experience of trance or hypnosis is a natural, everyday experience, what one might call a symptom of being human. Most of us would recall the experience of driving a car and discovering at some point that we were further progressed on our journey than we may have realized. We may have actually gone through a town that "we had not noticed" at the time, or missed the street that we intended turning into, perhaps on occasion even missed our own street.

Sometimes the trip back home can seem to take less or more time than it took to get there, even though we traversed the same geography and the clock showed little or no difference in "real" time taken. Waiting and watching for that bus can seemingly stretch five ("real time") minutes into what appears to be a much longer period.

Effects associated with time distortion and even amnesia are common in our everyday lives. Frequently, conversation around a memory of an event can seem to evoke more of the mood and detail of that occurrence - in a way, like an experience of regressing in time or age. For example, if a friend has forgotten where they placed their car keys, we might assist by asking them to retrace their movements, and “climb back into the experience” involving their actions and thoughts relevant to when they may have placed their keys.

These ideas and realizations about hypnosis, dissociation or trance have pointed to our experience of it as being more a natural part of our everyday living. Our regular experience of being “entranced” or engrossed in thought begins to demonstrate to us all the frequency with which our attention is removed from the “here and now”. Clients who feel that they may not be capable of experiencing hypnosis are often pleasantly surprised to learn how they can generate the experience and intentionally use it for their own purposes.

Therapists practicing a more modern approach to hypnosis tend to take the view that everyone experiences trance or hypnosis quite naturally and frequently. With this in mind, it then becomes part of the task of the therapist to assist the client to discover and use their own skills and style to develop the experience, rather than “do hypnosis to them” or tell them what to do and what they should or will experience.

In a similar way, clients are assisted to evolve their own solutions and directions for their own issues, which can often be more potently, delightfully and enduringly achieved in a more focused and comfortable state, largely chosen and evolved by the client themselves. Importantly, this process can proceed with the client “in the driver’s seat”, moving at their own pace, making their own decisions and thus in a way that is clearly relevant to them. The therapist’s skill is in guiding, supporting and generally assisting the client to achieve this.

These methods tend to reduce the necessary time in therapy, as the client can quickly learn to become more self sufficient and to even use some of the techniques themselves.

In our clinic, we use hypnosis to assist with many issues, not the least of which is teaching our clients self hypnotic techniques that they can take and use whenever a need might arise. Additionally, we will often provide our clients with hypnotic aids such as tapes and CD’s for relaxation and habit cessation. We can also design and provide CD’s specifically for individual clients that are targeted to particular needs.

Whilst hypnosis can be used to assist a broad range of problems, it can perhaps most relevantly be used in situations where a client can be assisted to stop doing something that they no longer wish to do – something which may seem to be beyond their choice or understanding. Stopping smoking, teeth grinding, hair pulling, anxious thinking, thought avoidance and nail biting are a few examples of common presenting issues.

In our experience, many problems that we treat tend to involve a sense by the client of having little or no choice. We believe that useful therapy will frequently involve the discovery of existing possibilities (that may not have been evident to the client) or the generation of new possibilities (choices).

8. Coaching: Life and Personal

The coach was designed to get the traveler to their destination as comfortably as possible. They further propose that whilst our desire for comfort is still relevant, these days, we want to reach our destination quickly and effectively as well.

In this way, they extend the metaphor by suggesting that - it is the focus of the modern day coach to assist clientele to go from point A to point B with comfort and speed.

Personal or Life Coaching has a deal in common with Solution based counselling.

	tending to be a brief intervention;
	focusing on the generation of a future via change through action;
	assisting clients to discover/clarify their goals and their relevant resources;
	assisting clients to discover what they are doing that they want to do differently;
	assisting clients to discover what they are already doing that is useful; and
	assisting clients to discover what they could be doing more of that would assist the goals of the process and their personal agenda.

9. Mindfulness

Mindfulness is applied to both bodily actions and the mind's own thoughts and feelings.

In Buddhism, the second kind of mindfulness is considered a prerequisite for developing insight and wisdom.

Mindfulness skills might realistically be considered essential for happiness and success in this ever more complex and demanding world. It is the basis of the emotional intelligence required for personal effectiveness and successful relationships. It certainly contributes to lower levels of stress related illness and to good and restful sleep.

There are many, many forms of mindfulness and meditation. One example of mindfulness is to mentally give a verbal label to each in breath and out breath during sitting meditation. So, each time one breathes in, one thinks (e.g.) "rising", and each time one breathes out, one thinks "falling". In this type of meditation, the breath serves as a tether that the practitioner uses to bring his or her awareness back to the present moment.

By residing more frequently in the present moment, practitioners begin to see both the inner and outer aspects of reality. Inner reality may unfold as one sees that the mind continually chattering with commentary or judgment. By noticing that the mind is continually making commentary, one has the ability to carefully notice those thoughts - and decide if those thought have value. Most often, mindful people realize that "thoughts are just thoughts" - the thoughts themselves have no weight. People are free to release a thought ("let it go") when they realize that the thought is not concrete reality. They are free to observe life without getting caught in the commentary.

As one more closely observes inner reality, one finds that happiness is not a quality brought about by a change in outer circumstances, but rather by realizing happiness starts with releasing attachment to thoughts; therefore releasing "automatic" reactions toward pleasant and unpleasant situations or feelings.

However, mindfulness does not have to be constrained to a formal meditation session. Mindfulness is an activity that can be done at any time; it does not require sitting, or even focusing on the breath, but rather is done by bringing the mind to focus on what is happening in the present moment, while simply noticing the mind's usual "commentary". One can be mindful of the sensations in one's feet while walking, of the sound of the wind in the trees, or the feeling of soapy water while doing dishes.

One can also be mindful of the mind's commentary: "I wish I didn't have to walk any further, I like the sound of the leaves rustling, I wish washing dishes wasn't so boring and the soap wasn't drying out my skin", etc. When one notices the mind's running commentary, he or she has the freedom to release those judgments: " washing dishes: boring" may become "washing

dishes: washing dishes". In this example, one may see that washing does not have to be judged "boring"; washing dishes is only a process of coordinating dishes with soap and water. Any activity done mindfully is a form of meditation, as watching the mind can be done during any time.

In addition to various forms of meditation, there are mindfulness training exercises that develop awareness throughout the day using designated environmental cues. Individuals are encouraged to select cues that then become triggers for awareness of the present moment, essentially making mindfulness a habit. Those who find it difficult to practice sitting meditation may consider trying a mindfulness training approach that focuses on establishing the habit of mindfulness through daily cues.

Mindfulness skills and the awareness that comes from this practice forms an important part of the following approaches that we find most useful in our clinic. These approaches both promote mindfulness as a skill and eventually a habit, and utilize mindfulness to help reveal the ways of thinking and acting that interfere with peace of mind and happiness.

Solution Oriented Counselling AND Positive Psychology
Personal Coaching
Hypnosis
Be Set Free Fast (BSFF)
Meditation
Mindfulness based CBT

Largely associated with Buddhism, the practice of mindfulness is also advocated by such people as medical researcher and author Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn who developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. MBSR is a form of complementary medicine offered in over 200 U.S. hospitals and is currently the focus of a number of research studies funded by The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

	The Power of Now by author Eckhart Tolle is very easy to read and a good place to start as it is so inspirational.
	The Miracle of Mindfulness by the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh is a simple manual on Mindfulness Meditation
	Mindfulness in Plain English by Ven Henepola Gunaratana lives up to its title.
	Wherever You Go There You Are ; Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zin is a great remedy for when you get stuck in the kind of thinking that believes happiness is to be found somewhere other than where we are right now.
	The Quite by Australian “Guru of Calm” Paul Wilson is a fail safe way to start meditating if you have tried before and found it too hard or if you have stopped your practice and don’t know how to get going again

Yet in another way we see it as quite unavoidable, "un fait accompli" in the face of injury, or the sight of blood, or just living our life. After all, pain is a part of life. The meeting place of these views presents us with the dilemma of "having" to experience something that we "must get rid of" at all costs, whether that be through medication, surgery or some other form of external intervention. However, many a parent will be familiar with the immediate relief that a "Band Aid" can bring to the pain and suffering of an injured child - whether the injury be a bruise or abrasion.

In a related way, many of the clients we assist in rehabilitating from a serious injury will report that the experience of pain came long after the actual occurrence of the injury. Additionally, when invited, these clients may also notice the experience of the pain or discomfort fluctuating throughout the day, where periods of the pain may be less bothersome at times, and perhaps even "unnoticed" at other times (often reported as periods of "distraction").

These discoveries can often surprise a client who can be "caught in the thought" that their experience of pain is unalterable and ever-present. These noticings can also point to natural, recurring and often unconscious ways that we use to modify, alleviate, dissociate from, lessen, soften, distort and even accept the discomforts we are all dealt.

12. BREATHING TRAINING and RELAXATION

This kind of biofeedback training has a powerful effect on people as they learn how their breathing affects the heart rate and blood pressure. In fact, when the EEG is also connected, an amazing synchrony of the Theta waves appears after a very short time.

Under this condition, relaxation deepens dramatically. Heart rate and heart arrhythmia can benefit from training on our Heart Math biofeedback equipment or our more sophisticated CardioPro RSA biofeedback program. There have been many good research publications demonstrating the usefulness of biofeedback to different kinds of stress related health problems including heart health.

Other kinds of biofeedback we can employ includes an infrared pulse monitor (BVP) worn on a finger for blood pressure management, or over the forehead secured by a headband to help train blood flow to the frontal lobes. This assists concentration, relaxation and is used for non migraine type headache control.

A temperature feedback monitor can be held in the hand and concentration with visualization can produce a rise in hand temperature. This has been shown to reduce the incidence of some types of migraine. (You might like to try this with a finely graded mercury thermometer at home.)

Some systems known to benefit from relaxation training include immune, hormonal, nervous, cardiovascular, bronchial, as well as all aspects of physical, mental and emotional health. It is also important for academic and professional success, athletic performance and good relationships. Almost as useful as oxygen don’t you think?




13. MEDITATION

Meditation is the natural process of withdrawing attention from externals, including from physical and mental processes, and consciously directing it inward to a chosen focus of concentration.

The beneficial side-benefits of regular meditation practice have been widely reported in a variety of excellent books and magazines,( some of which are listed below).

These benefits can include stress reduction, strengthening of the body's immune system, better organized thought processes, improved powers of concentration, enhanced powers of memory, refinement and enlivening of the nervous system, awakening of regenerative energies, slowing of biologic aging processes, and orderly functioning of the body's organs, glands, and systems.

For these reasons, regular meditation practice is now increasingly recommended by many physicians and representatives of health research centers as a pleasant way for patient-clients to be more responsible for their own total well-being.

We recommend learning from a trained teacher. It has been said that many “cushion sitting hours” have been wasted due to improper technique.

The most important thing is to begin, and to practice well for 5 minutes twice a day at regular times. This is far more beneficial than longer stretches at irregular intervals practiced with impatience.

The habit of practice sets you up for eventual success. A short, regular session eventually becomes a longer regular session because it is immensely satisfying and rewarding. Inconsistent practice can begin to be associated with boredom and frustration, leading to aversion to practice.

RECOMMENDED READING

“The Quiet” is a book on meditation practice by author and popular speaker on calm techniques Paul Wilson. He has written a book which is perfect for the doubtful beginner as well as the lapsed meditator. His book is simple, clear and inspiring. The Quiet practices are based on four simple fail safe steps that take you from a single 13 minute a day quiet sitting all the way through to more complex insight practices.

14. Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a topic that has attracted a lot of interest and misunderstanding since its more formal therapeutic usage over the last century or more. The mystique surrounding the experience and effects of a trance state continue to draw debate and curiosity, both from those who seek - as well as those who deliver hypnotic therapy.

Traditionally, hypnosis has been a process that was considered to be highly dependent upon the direct suggestion of a therapist or “hypnotist”, and the “degree of hypnotizability” of the subject or client. Under this assumption, the “subject” would in general be told what to do and have their experience prescribed by the therapist (eg. “your eyes are getting heavy”, “you are etc), and it was found that some people would respond very readily to such suggestions, whilst others would not.

It was this variable effect among “subjects” that lead many theorists to conclude that: some people were very “hypnotizable”; whilst others would respond to suggestions to a moderate degree; and of course there were some people who displayed little if any cooperation with such suggestions. Some theorists have even devised “scales of hypnotizability” that purport to measure the degree to which an individual may be susceptible to direct hypnotic suggestion.

Milton Erickson and Solution Oriented Hypnosis.

Modern day hypnosis operates from a quite different set of ideas, and has been very largely influenced by the work of Milton Erickson, who began to gain notoriety and influence in the mid 1900’s until (and beyond) his death in 1980. He has left an enormous and enduring legacy of ideas and knowledge to our field, and highlighted the importance of identifying, awakening and using the power that we all bring to our life situations.
Those who practice the more modern hypnotic techniques will tend to emphasize and work with the resources, strengths and values of the person they are working with.

Erickson was a therapist who emphasized strategies that empowered his clients. In a prelude to a recent publication compiling “The letters of Milton Erickson”, Jeffery Zeig and Brent Geary noted that: "simply put, Milton Erickson (1901 - 1980) was the foremost authority on the use of clinical hypnosis in the twentieth century. And there are many who contend that he was the century's premiere hypnotherapist. What Erickson added to the practice of therapy can be compared to Sigmund Freud's contribution to its theory" (p. ix).

Of the many revolutionary ideas that Milton Erickson offered, perhaps his most pervasive was that the experience of trance or hypnosis is a natural, everyday experience, what one might call a symptom of being human. Most of us would recall the experience of driving a car and discovering at some point that we were further progressed on our journey than we may have realized. We may have actually gone through a town that "we had not noticed" at the time, or missed the street that we intended turning into, perhaps on occasion even missed our own street.

Sometimes the trip back home can seem to take less or more time than it took to get there, even though we traversed the same geography and the clock showed little or no difference in "real" time taken. Waiting and watching for that bus can seemingly stretch five ("real time") minutes into what appears to be a much longer period.

Effects associated with time distortion and even amnesia are common in our everyday lives. Frequently, conversation around a memory of an event can seem to evoke more of the mood and detail of that occurrence - in a way, like an experience of regressing in time or age. For example, if a friend has forgotten where they placed their car keys, we might assist by asking them to retrace their movements, and “climb back into the experience” involving their actions and thoughts relevant to when they may have placed their keys.

These ideas and realizations about hypnosis, dissociation or trance have pointed to our experience of it as being more a natural part of our everyday living. Our regular experience of being “entranced” or engrossed in thought begins to demonstrate to us all the frequency with which our attention is removed from the “here and now”. Clients who feel that they may not be capable of experiencing hypnosis are often pleasantly surprised to learn how they can generate the experience and intentionally use it for their own purposes.

Therapists practicing a more modern approach to hypnosis tend to take the view that everyone experiences trance or hypnosis quite naturally and frequently. With this in mind, it then becomes part of the task of the therapist to assist the client to discover and use their own skills and style to develop the experience, rather than “do hypnosis to them” or tell them what to do and what they should or will experience.

In a similar way, clients are assisted to evolve their own solutions and directions for their own issues, which can often be more potently, delightfully and enduringly achieved in a more focused and comfortable state, largely chosen and evolved by the client themselves. Importantly, this process can proceed with the client “in the driver’s seat”, moving at their own pace, making their own decisions and thus in a way that is clearly relevant to them. The therapist’s skill is in guiding, supporting and generally assisting the client to achieve this.
These methods tend to reduce the necessary time in therapy, as the client can quickly learn to become more self sufficient and to even use some of the techniques themselves.

In our clinic, we use hypnosis to assist with many issues, not the least of which is teaching our clients self hypnotic techniques that they can take and use whenever a need might arise. Additionally, we will often provide our clients with hypnotic aids such as tapes and CD’s for relaxation and habit cessation. We can also design and provide CD’s specifically for individual clients that are targeted to particular needs.

Whilst hypnosis can be used to assist a broad range of problems, it can perhaps most relevantly be used in situations where a client can be assisted to stop doing something that they no longer wish to do – something which may seem to be beyond their choice or understanding. Stopping smoking, teeth grinding, hair pulling, anxious thinking, thought avoidance and nail biting are a few examples of common presenting issues.

In our experience, many problems that we treat tend to involve a sense by the client of having little or no choice. We believe that useful therapy will frequently involve the discovery of existing possibilities (that may not have been evident to the client) or the generation of new possibilities (choices).





15. Bio-feedback

When your heart is racing you can feel easily overwhelmed by your physical response to stress, anxiety and panic.

With Bio-feedback we use highly sensitive sensors connected to a computer to monitor a persons heart rate, breathing, temperature, perspiration rate or muscular activity.

These measures are seen and heard as feedback to a person in such a way that they can learn how to gain control over these autonomic functions.

Combined with breath training, mindfulness practice and other skills and strategies, a person can make lasting and significant reductions to their stress levels and break the vicious cycle between physical, emotional and mental stress.

Research shows that stress is a primary and secondary cause in many physical diseases.

What is Neuro-feedback?
Biofeedback is a way of achieving voluntary control of functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, muscle control and temperature, normally regulated without conscious awareness.

Neuro-feedback is the voluntary regulation of brain wave activity.

Neurotherapy has been successfully used to treat seizures for more than 30 years and ADD and alcoholism for more than 12 years. So this is not a new form of treatment. What is new is the ability of computers to provide fast feedback. Also new is the knowledge that a number of other disorders are caused through some kind of disturbance to the brain’s ability to regulate itself efficiently, thus creating symptoms of brain imbalance. In fact what is now referred to as ADHD was once known as Minimal Brain Dysfunction. Neuro-feedback training challenges the brain out of its ineffective patterns and reinforces its innate and natural ability to self regulate.
Training and Therapy use sophisticated computer generated feedback of brain waves to improve the brain's ability to produce specific brain waves in a balanced way.

How does Neuro-feedback work?

Neuro-feedback Training is similar to training other skills. In sport you assess and develop general fitness as well as the skills, which are specific to your sport or training regime. Through assessment, the therapist identifies the appropriate brain activity associated with your desired outcome. The feedback provided through an EEG driven computer reinforces that pattern through a conditioned visual, audio or feeling response. The client experiences the training as if playing a computer game, with the graphics, sound and scoring dependent on the “appropriateness” of their EEG response.

What is Neuro-feedback Training and Therapy used for?

Neuro-feedback has been successfully used for treating most conditions that have good brain regulation as an important condition for good treatment outcome. It is ideal for those who are reluctant to take medication or where medication has provided only partial or no relief or is not appropriate and where the side effects of drugs are unacceptable. We always advise our clients to never stop taking prescribed medications without first consulting with their treating health professional.

Addictive Behaviour and Addictions; ADD and ADHD and other childhood behavioural problems; Anxiety, Panic Attacks; OCD or obsessional type behaviour; Depression and other types of mood problems such as Bipolar

<