Susanne Ridley Hypnotherapy

SUSANNE RIDLEY
HYPNOTHERAPY

Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy

For Positive Lasting Change

PHILOSOPHY

COGNITIVE
BEHAVIOURAL
HYPNOTHERAPY

Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH) combines Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) with evidence-based hypnotherapy. This combination is designed to give you the keys to your own mind.

Our habitual thoughts impact almost everything we do and say over the course of our lives. This includes our; decisions, interactions with others, default stress response in challenging situations, habits & routines, and the way we respond to the events in our lives.

Unbeknown to many of us the way we think is highly biased by a lens of unconscious beliefs and perceptions which we hold about ourselves and life in general. Some of these we absorbed from others and our environment as children, and others we have picked up through the proceeding events and experiences in our lives.

CBH uses evidence-based techniques to help adapt and improve your way of thinking. This can be aimed at specific target situations or addressing your general outlook and mindset. So, rather than running on the outdated, cognitive programming of your past, you are put in the driving seat. And can decide how you would like to think, feel and act now.

Applied Relaxation & Stress Reduction Therapies

Evidence-based techniques to help manage stress, reduce anxiety and deal with everyday challenges in a calm and effective state. These therapies can be used as powerful stand-alone interventions and are also foundational in other Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy techniques.

Meet Susanne

About CBH

"WE DON'T SEE THINGS AS THEY ARE. WE SEE THEM AS WE ARE."

Anais Nin

SERVICES

APPLIED RELAXATION

Do you ever find yourself in situations where it would benefit you to remain calm and focused - but instead you find yourself flustered, anxious or reactive? This is where one of the most practical and transformational applications of Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy comes in.

Applied Relaxation is a process which is quite well described by its name. We learn how to relax, and then how to apply that state of relaxation to situations and events in which we might otherwise feel nervous, stressed or anxious.

What you’re doing, neurologically, is teaching your nervous system to move out of its primal stress response and back into equilibrium. You’re then creating a neural connection in the brain between this state of relaxation and a ‘trigger’. This allows you to shift yourself into this state of calm on command. Which means you can take on everyday stressors in a more calm, relaxed and mentally resourceful state, rather than a flustered, revved up or reactive one.

Read more about this skill (or to describe it more accurately: 'super-power') here.

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COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING

Changing the way you think in order to make positive changes in your life is one of the core principles of Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy. So, how does changing our habitual thoughts lead to positive change? Well, the way you approach and respond to anything in life - whether it's a problem, challenge, opportunity or decision, always, always begins with a thought. Or, to put it more accurately, with a collection of habitual thoughts.

Therefore, whether you are striving to overcome specific difficulties or would like to make positive changes in any area of your life, adapting your habits of thought around that thing is crucial.

Cognitive Restructuring is a technique from the field of Cognitive Science (an interdisciplinary study of psychology and neuroscience) which is designed to change the way you think. This can be your overall outlook, or the common thought cycles and patterns you tend to have about a specific problem or area of life in particular.

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IMPROVE SELF-ESTEEM & SELF-TALK

The beliefs we unconsciously hold about ourselves and the way we internally speak to ourselves often goes largely unnoticed. But the reality is that our self-perception and self-talk fundamentally impact most, if not all, areas of our lives.

So, where did our self-perception and self-talk come from? Well, from an early age we are exposed to ideas about ourselves. This could be direct or indirect comments made by our families or caregivers. It could be absorbing the messages of culture, society and the media and naturally comparing ourselves in the context of that distorted messaging. Wherever we adopted these ideas from, these external ideas are often internalised and develop into our own self-perception and self-talk.

If you grew up in a perfect family in a perfect society (!) then all of these messages will have been to your benefit. However, if not - there is a very good chance that there are aspects of your self-perception and self-talk which are inaccurate and unhelpful. In these sessions we use Cognitive Restructuring specifically targeted at reassessing and reprogramming your own perception of yourself, to improve self esteem, dispute harmful and distorted beliefs you hold about yourself and install new more helpful and positive ones.

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PERFORMANCE OPTIMISATION

Hypnosis for performance optimisation has been utilised by elite athletes, performers and professionals working in high-pressured environments for decades now, and for good reason. Finally though, this method is becoming more commonplace as a powerful tool for improving a wide range of performance related outcomes for us all.

Whether it’s an important exam, public speaking event, job interview or first date - we all have things we really want to do our absolute best at. This can feel challenging if it’s something we have never done before, or if it’s something we have had a negative experience with in the past.

In Performance Optimisation sessions we strategically utilise mental rehearsal to give you the best chance of succeeding. Mental rehearsal, when used systematically, programmes the mind to make the unfamiliar or scary feel more familiar and safe. This helps you enter into new or challenging situations feeling more calm, confident and in control.

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Cogniive Restructuring

FAQs

Will I have to revisit past experiences in order to update my way of thinking? No. Unlike psychoanalytic models of therapy which place an emphasis on analysing past events, CBH focuses on your current experience. So, rather than hours spent revisiting your past, we assess the way in which unhelpful patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving are hindering you now and get straight to work on updating these into something more helpful.

Is hypnosis mind control? Will I remember anything? Even though relaxed, you will remain awake and aware throughout the entire process. There is little evidence to support the phenomena of hypnotic ‘trance’ or posthypnotic amnesia. There has, however, been extensive research done to support the efficacy of giving focussed concentration to a dominant idea whilst in a ‘highly suggestible’ state. This includes reports by the British Medical Association, American Medical Association, British Psychological Society and American Psychological Association. As well as ongoing research in dedicated labs at Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley. Therapeutic hypnosis carried out by a qualified professional is completely safe. You need only ever follow along with hypnotic suggestions that you want to accept. If anything hypnosis, used therapeutically, is one tool that gives you control of your own mind. So in some ways it could be described as mind control - but you are the one finally put in control.

Are my thoughts really that important? In short, yes. Your thoughts are the initiators of everything you say and everything you do over the course of your life. Every single decision you make, every interaction you have, the way you feel and function day-to-day, is predominantly the result of your thoughts. Some of our thoughts are conscious - which means we are able to observe the thought as it happens. However, many of our thoughts are unconscious and have become ‘automatic’, arising without our conscious awareness. These unconscious thoughts include some of our core beliefs and are responsible for many of our habits and emotional responses. And it’s these more elusive, hidden thoughts we aim to identify, target and adapt in CBH.

What is happening in my brain during hypnosis? Research into mental rehearsal (including studies using fMRI brain scans) has come to demonstrate that the physiological processes which happen in the brain when you imagine an event in your mind and when you experience it in real life are startlingly similar. So much so, that when you strategically use your imagination in a particular way, especially while your mind and body are in a specific physiological state (down regulated brain waves and activation of your parasympathetic nervous system) - your brain is recording these experiences as if they have actually happened. In more traditional models of hypnosis this has been referred to as ‘reprogramming the subconscious mind’. But what is actually happening neurologically, is that you are laying down new implicit memories. It is these memories that form the new neural connections and networks in your brain - which are what create new habits of thinking, new emotional response-sets and therefore new ways of being.

What does a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy session involve? In your first session I’ll explain the rationale behind the approach and answer any questions you have about the therapy. This is followed by an assessment and the development of your treatment goals. CBH is a solution focussed therapy so we always work to SMART therapeutic goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based). I then guide you into hypnosis, which tends to feel like a pleasant state of relaxed concentration. In hypnosis we strategically use imaginal absorption, hypnotic suggestion, mental rehearsal and a range of evidence-based CBT techniques to set about achieving your therapeutic goals and making positive, measurable change that lasts.

Do you offer online sessions? I offer both in-person sessions in Reigate, Surrey and online sessions via zoom. In person-sessions are fantastic if you struggle to find a quiet, private space at home. Equally though, online sessions work fantastically well for this form of therapy.