Welcome to Fife Hypnotherapy Services

There is nothing spiritual, weird or mysterious about the hypnotic state. It is a totally natural state that can be likened to day dreaming or the period just before going to sleep. Hypnosis is an inward focusing of attention where the demands of the outside world are switched off. It is a state of deep relaxation during which the analytical mind shuts off making the unconscious mind accessible.

You are not asleep and nothing can happen without your consent. You can hear everything being said and afterwards will usually remember all that has happened and will definitely remember all that you want to. It is not unusual for people to believe that they were not properly hypnotised because they remember "thinking" during the session, and can remember much, or all, of what happened.

You will remember everything that you want to remember. If you are a bit apprehensive, and most people are at their first session, you will probably remember everything. Once you are used to being in hypnosis, you will often "miss" much of what has been said. It's like a car journey, you will remember the journey, but don't normally remember every lamppost you pass. It doesn't really matter because your unconscious mind has heard every word!

Hypnotherapy is a non-invasive, useful supplement to orthodox medicine and can also achieve considerable success in its own right. Doctors are becoming increasingly supportive of hypnotherapy as an aid to better health.

Psychological: Many people suffer physical and psychological ailments due to prolonged stress or due to unresolved problems from their past. They may feel over-stressed, that they can't cope, have problems that their doctor can't resolve, e.g. skin problems, etc., or just feel a sadness deep inside them.

Many people feel excessive grief at the loss of a loved one, or the breakup of a relationship.

Physical: The sub-conscious mind plays a major part in the running of your body’s systems. Whilst it may not always be possible to obtain a cure, hypnosis can assist in the relief of distressing symptoms and help subjects to come to terms with their illness and so bring about a significant and beneficial change in quality of life. Some people can be taught to ignore their pain using self-hypnosis, although this will work only in around 20% of people. Pain is worse when you are stressed, though, and significant improvements can be made by ensuring clients are relaxed and happy within themselves.

Confidence: Hypnotherapy can help people feel more confident, feel better about themselves, and help them to face difficult or stressful situations. Many people start to find that they get worried about speaking in public and meetings. This can happen even to those who were previously confident.

Habits: It is most effective in helping people to lose weight. This is especially true with "snackaholics". It can help people to stop other habits, e.g. nail biting. NB You are well advised to avoid any therapist who guarantees that you will stop smoking. You can be helped, but YOU have to be determined to stop deep-down.

Hypnotherapy is one of the safest, quickest and most effective forms of treatment for the majority of psychological and emotional problems. It fosters an attitude of independence and mastery in coping with problems and can also accelerate the healing process in many physiological problems.

It always helps to have someone really listen to you, and to believe that you DO have a problem. Unfortunately, most doctors simply don't have time to really talk to their patients and to understand the whole person. They are pressured to quickly prescribe medicine for individual symptoms, or to do nothing. I believe that if you feel ill, then you are ill! Hypnosis will almost always improve how you feel about yourself, inside.

Many people have problems rooted in past events. We can often "bury" traumatic events away for years or decades. In some people, these memories begin to cause us more and more problems. The use of Psychotherapy under hypnosis reveals the root causes and then also helps us deal with them.

Prior to the first session, we have an Initial Consultation. This may take from 20-90 minutes, depending upon the individual. We discuss your problem and possible treatment, and then, if we both agree that hypnosis is the right course, we proceed to the first session. What happens next is dependent upon the nature of the problem the individual. However, the first session normally concentrates upon learning to relax and learning self-hypnosis (where you can put yourself into a hypnotic sleep whenever you feel stressed, etc.) You will then receive treatment. Some people may feel, unconsciously, that they need to retain control, and initially resist going into deeper hypnosis. This is perfectly normal, and, once they discover that nothing unpleasant is going to happen, they simply "let go" and thoroughly enjoy the whole experience. For most people, this will be the most relaxed they have ever been!

You are strongly advised to ensure that your therapist has volunteered for vetting by HM Government under the Disclosure Act. My Disclosure No. is 120100050551342.

I will offer the document for scrutiny to anyone who wishes to be re-assured.

The main concern for most people is that the hypnotherapist will have some sort of magical power over them. There is no magic and the only power used is the natural power of your own mind to heal itself and your body.

The mind has evolved to be able to be hypnotised, and most people hypnotise themselves every day, e.g. when becoming absorbed in a TV thriller, or when trying to work out a problem by "thinking out of the box".

For example: A familiar situation is when you put down your house key, turn away for a moment - and it's gone! You know that the key should be where you believe you put it, but it isn't. You then think furiously, talking yourself through your actions, but still you can't work it out. You then stare blankly at a wall, doorknob, etc., take a breath, and empty your mind. After a few seconds you get that "eureka" moment and the answer comes to you. You have just hypnotised yourself. Your conscious mind allowed the unconscious mind to take over in order to solve the problem.

During hypnosis you are more alert than when awake but your attention is focused inwards. You are in a deeply relaxed state where your conscious mind relaxes, allowing your unconscious mind to listen and to react.

Many people, especially in a first session, can be a bit apprehensive, and so may resist a little. They often remember every word, and also remember "thinking" during the session. they may even not believe that they have been hypnotised.

This is perfectly normal. You are able to remember everything that you want to remember. Once you discover that nothing unpleasant, or untoward, is going to happen to you, you will learn to relax more deeply, and will probably find yourself daydreaming for much of the session. This is fine, too! Therapy is very effective no matter how active your mind is.

MOST CERTAINLY NOT! You cannot be made to do anything against your wishes or moral code. You retain full control throughout the entire session. You will remember everything that you want to remember, and would be able to terminate the session immediately, if you wished to. In practice, you will be gaining so much from your session, and enjoying the wonderful feelings of relaxation so much, that you will simply not want to stop midway through a session.

Here comes the complicated bit: Your mind has 3 basic components:- the Super-Ego, the Ego and the ID. The ID equates to the unconscious mind, whilst the egos are the conscious mind.

The Super-Ego is the place you hold your morals and ethics and watches over the Ego. The Ego is the thinking part of your mind, constantly checking everything that it is receiving, and passing information on to the ID. The ID is the unconscious, "feeling", part of your mind. It therefore receives all its information pre-checked by the Ego. It has no capacity to criticise - it doesn't need it, and so believes everything it is told.

In hypnosis, the power of the Ego is diminished, allowing more access to the ID. However the Super-Ego is still firmly in control and will reject anything you believe to be wrong. When the ID, or unconscious mind, listens to the hypnotherapist withouit the usual checking of the Ego, or conscious mind, it believes it. This is why hypnotherapy is so successful.

Definitely Not! Since you retain full control whilst in hypnosis you cannot be compelled to reveal anything you wish to keep secret.

It often does help, though, to have someone who will really listen to you, in absolute confidence.

Almost everyone can enter the hypnotic state with a hypnotherapist with whom he or she feels empathy, using the right techniques. Often, the best hypnotic subjects are intelligent people who are able to visualise well.

Children are easily hypnotised and can benefit greatly.

First of all, the honest answer is: I don't know. Everyone is different. Most clients benefit greatly from the use of Hypnoanalysis techniques to deal with the root causes of their problems. There seems little point in using suggestion therapy alone because the client still has the underlying root cause, and so their problem is likely to recur at a later date. I make it standard practice, therefore, to deal as thoroughly as possible with these underlying issues.

This means that, for most problems, you should think in terms of around 4 - 5 sessions. Occasionally, there are clients who need longer.

If you have a phobia, for example, we use visualisation techniques where we gently expose you to the source of your fears. We need to do this gradually in order to build up your confidence without making it too distressing.

Some clients can be suffering from so much anxiety that they initially find it difficult to relax sufficiently to allow themselves to go into anything but a light level of hypnosis. It may take an extra session or so to achieve the deeper levels needed for psycho-analysis techniques to be effective.

Psychotherapy is a method of uncovering and dealing with traumatic memories. These memories can have a profound effect on how you feel about yourself and about certain situations, usually without you realising it.

To understand what can go wrong, we must first describe how we store memories. The actual workings of the brain, and the complex interactions that convert this biochemical/electrical organ are even now only poorly understood. However, we can best describe it in terms of a simple model.

We sometimes wish we didn't know what we know! For example, let's say we discover that "Mum doesn't love me any more!" The Conscious Mind has worked out that this is why Mum shouted at me today, when I had done nothing wrong. This new thought is passed to the Unconscious Mind to have the emotion added. This new thought, with a huge mass of negative emotion, is then passed to the In-Tray.

This is where the problems start. To a child, this is about as traumatic as it can be. "My whole life has just been turned upside down. After all, who will look after me, feed me and keep me safe? There must be something wrong with me if even my Mum can't love me!"

The Conscious Mind realises that it would have been better not to think that thought. Things were better 10 minutes ago. "I don't want it to be this way!" Apparently you can't delete memories and thoughts, so it does the next best thing: it instructs the Unconscious Mind not to add it to the Model of the universe. It is to pretend that it never happened.

The Unconscious Mind does what it is told. It doesn't take the thought out of the In-Tray to add it to the Model. It simply leaves it there! It adds a big red X and a notice: "Information not to be passed to the Conscious Mind. "It stays in your short-term memory for the rest of your life, as fresh as the day it was put there! Every time the Unconscious Mind requests information from the memory system, the Unconscious Mind finds the repressed memory and feels the associated emotion!

It also "knows" that information stored here is new and overwrites all "older" knowledge. It does this hundreds of times a second and so you constantly feel the anxieties from these repressed memories. The Conscious Mind is often also completely at a loss to know why we feel the way we do!