Having trouble sleeping can be really distressing and frustrating. You go to bed, wishing for a good nights sleep and then lay awake for hours, tossing and turning, becoming more and more anxious about getting to sleep. Or perhaps you drop off to sleep quite easily, and then awake at some unsociable hour and can’t get back to sleep. Either way, the result is that you may feel tired, emotional, irrational and not able to function in a way that you would like to in daily life.
Most people have had problems getting to sleep at some time or another and often this is due to specific worries or concerns, such as having a speech to give, an interview to face or being in new or unfamiliar surroundings. If you suffer from a sleep problem that affects your everyday life, it is advisable to first seek advice from your G.P to rule out any underlying physical cause.
As a Hypnotherapist, in Hertfordshire, I am constantly developing the tools and knowledge that I have to help people manage and overcome insomnia. On a more personal level, I myself have experienced sleep problems in the past, so this is an area, which is close to my heart. In this article I share ways in which hypnotherapy, Herts, can help people that cant sleep due to overthinking.
What I often notice about client’s, who present with sleep problems, is that they are thinkers. If I could identify, one cause in their inability to sleep well, it would be over-thinking. This may be thinking about problems from daily life that need solving or even thinking about sleeping!
Hypnotherapy, Herts can be useful in overcoming sleep problems in several ways. One way, it that hypnotherapy, can be used is to break the pattern of over-thinking at bed-time. This is important because falling off to sleep naturally and easily, is not a conscious act. Our unconscious mind is responsible for knowing how to sleep. In fact, it will have stored memories for how to sleep well and also how to sleep badly. We can’t think ourselves to sleep, in the same way that we can think our way through other problems. During hypnosis, Hypnotherapists, Herts, can help you recall times of good quality, restful sleep and make suggestions for you to experience high quality sleep again. Strategies are also taught which can help you to reduce over-thinking.
In addition, hypnotherapy can also help you to relax and let go off distracting thoughts. Learning how to let go in this way, can enable most people having sleep troubles, to sleep well again. Through hypnosis, clients are supported in planning for a good nights sleep, and cues for sleep are given and associated with activities that you usually do in order to prepare for bed. Suggestions are given in an open and permissive manner, in a way that avoids any resistance from the unconscious mind. For some people, being given suggestions to try to stay awake is the key to overcoming resistance and can break the pattern of consciously trying to sleep.
If you are having sleep problems, hypnotherapy can help you sleep naturally again. Until you have booked your session, why not try the technique below. I have personally found this technique very useful for getting off to sleep when I am kept awake by a busy mind.
Try the following: anytime a sentence begins to form in your mind, stop it in its tracks and separate and deal with each word individually. I like to imagine an invisible conveyor belt, delivering my thoughts that I can stop when I want. Take each word, and examine them one by one. You may want to ask yourself whether the word is anxiety provoking, if you are feeling anxious (once you break down the sentence into words, you can usually find that any emotional associations go) and then let the word float away, or be filed away, whatever works for you. You can then move onto the next word. This technique works by slowing down racing and repetitive thoughts and reducing the emotions they can cause. This help to induce a relaxed state, allowing sleep to happen. You may want to couple this technique with a relaxed breathing process. I find it useful to concentrate on the sound made from breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. By focusing on the sounds only, it is possible to quiet your mind.

Hypnotherapists utilise hypnosis to help people solve personal problems. Hypnosis is a state of mind, typified by deep relaxation, a narrowed focus and heightened sensory awareness. This state of mind occurs naturally and people slide in and out of this state, known as ‘trance’, all the time, in everyday life.
Examples of trance states include fantasising about someone you are attracted to, becoming deeply absorbed in reading a book, being anxious about an event causing you to re-live what could go wrong over and over in your head and daydreaming. As you may see from the examples given, trance states can be positive or negative, depending on what is being focused on.
Hypnotherapy is based on the philosophy, that trance states can be helpful and utilised to bring about positive change. This is because, when a person is deeply relaxed, as they are during trance, access to the unconscious mind is enabled. Hypnotherapists believe that learning, behaviour and change, occur at an unconscious level.
Categorising the mind into unconscious and conscious is just a conceptual model, a way of describing different aspects of the mind. The concept of unconscious and conscious mind is generally accepted in the western world. These different aspects of the mind are believed to have different functions. For example, the conscious mind is logical, rational, and sequential in thinking. It is also analytical, it uses words and numbers and stores short-term memories. The unconscious mind is intuitive, non-sequential in thinking, more creative, uses symbols and feelings and stores long-term memories.
If you imagine your mind as operating on a sliding scale, at one end, you have highly alert states, towards the other end, you have more relaxed states such as daydreaming and further towards the this end still, deep trance and finally sleep.
Often when people present with problems at Hypnotherapy Herts, they have attempted to solve their problem through conscious effort and have struggled with this. For example, the insomniac, who finds that trying to consciously fall off to sleep, just seems to make things worse. At hypnotherapy Herts, the hypnotherapist will use hypnotherapy to gain access to the unconscious mind. This type of therapy can be very useful for treating habits. For example, there are often unconscious issues associated with smoking that are best dealt with through hypnotherapy. Most people do not consciously decide to continue poisoning and damaging themselves through smoking on a day to day basis.
The conscious mind, although strong at logical thinking and the other functions mentioned, tends to be much more rigid in thinking. The unconscious mind is much more flexible and as it stores all your life’s learnings, it is in the unconscious mind where habits are created and maintained. Through hypnotherapy Herts, the hypnotherapist is able to make habit changes much easier and more naturally, by working with the unconscious mind.