Why suffer from insomnia when you could sleep instead?
I’ve just realised that I have written no quality posts on the topic of sleep, despite the fact that I’ve been using hypnotherapy for insomnia in Reading, Oxford, Thame, Holborn (London) and Wallingford to help clients sleep better with hypnotherapy for years. Despite the fact that sleep is one of those things which nobody can do without.
I also offer hypnotherapy online for insomnia, using vsee, zoom or whatsap. Please get in touch for more details as to how this works.
Insomnia is a terrible curse. It’s impossible to live a healthy and happy life with an inability to sleep. Like food and water it’s one of the very fundamentals of life. If you’ve lost the ability to fall asleep without stress and anxiety then hypnotherapy could help you.
At the time of updating this page we’re still in the middle of learning to live with covid 19. Insomnia has rarely been more of a common problem in my clients than it is at this moment. The whole country, the whole world, is struggling with the stress of living this half life. Jobs are in danger. Social lives are still on hold and romantic relationships were decimated after months of being unable to see one another. The government has succeeded all too well in terrifying the nation and my diary is full to bursting with people for whom the stress of it all has become too much.
If you’re having trouble sleeping, whether you’re reading this in covid times or at some point after it’s all over, then hypnotherapy is wonderful for insomnia.
Hypnos: the God of Sleep
Hypnosis is the ideal therapy for those suffering from insomnia. Hypnosis is a state of mind which, at its most profound, takes us to the very borders of sleep.
Hypnotherapy can teach you to relax and relaxation is all you need to learn. Once you can relax you can sleep. Everyone who falls asleep has to have relaxed first. Learn one and the other naturally follows. Hypnotherapy could help you to resolve whatever it was which turned you into a stress-head to begin with.
At the moment you’ve probably locked yourself into a vicious circle. I expect that you found it impossible to sleep one night and then the next.
Quite soon you became angry with yourself for failing to get to sleep and the very idea of bedtime because a stressful concept. I bet you’ve even started to become a little bit anxious about the very idea of going to bed.
It soon becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby you expect to find sleep difficult, where you’re actually making the problem worse and worse over time. Hypnotherapy could help you to reverse this process.
If you’re living in Reading, Oxford, Wallingford or Thame and are interested in having some hypnotherapy for insomnia then get in touch. I’d be glad to explain how hypnotherapy could help you.
There’s a deeper reason to your insomnia. It’s not just coffee
Of course, it’s quite likely that there’s a deeper reason which led you into insomnia to begin with. That’ll need dealing with or else you’re likely to simply rediscover insomnia later on.
Nobody wants that. You’ve somehow forgotten how to relax enough to allow your body to do what comes naturally at night. I’d be glad to help you to overcome that problem, that reason to be stressed. Lord knows that life is stressful right now. It was before covid came along and it will still be stressful once the present pandemic and all its counter-measures have faded away. That being true, people need to become better at dealing with stress if they are to sleep long and refreshing sleeps.
You can learn to deal with life’s stresses differently. You could learn to deal with any major stressor which is keeping you awake at night, even if you’re not consciously aware of what it might be. We’ll find out, together, and we’ll deal with it once and for all.
I’m both a psychotherapist and a hypnotherapist and am perfectly qualified to work with pretty much anything which might be lying beneath the issue of insomnia. I’m also a child and adolescent psychotherapist and so could be of use to your child, if you’re here looking for help on their behalf.
You needn’t simply carry on with this problem, in the belief that there’s nothing to be done. You needn’t go down the route of drinking a bottle of wine, every night, to knock yourself out. You needn’t become hooked on sleeping pills either. Hypnotherapy isn’t a magic wand but it could help you to work upon both symptom (insomnia) and cause.
How to overcome insomnia
- If you’ve suffered insomnia for some time then all of the bedtime routines have become associated with the problem. The first night of insomnia was an annoyance. The second a pain. Before long you expected not to sleep and at some stage thereafter began to feel stressed at the very thought of going to bed. You have conditioned yourself into a whole set of bad habits, expectations and unhelpful beliefs. To undo them, adopt as many of the following changes as possible.
- So, change those routines.
- Sleep on the other side of the bed.
- Move the bed.
- Sleep with a different number of pillows.
- Bed is for sleep and sex only. read downstairs or in a chair.
- Banish ipads, ‘phones from bed.
- Stop watching TV in bed.
- Get ready for bed – brushing teeth, undressing, going to the loo etc etc in a different order.
- Stop using IT of any kind for at least 30 minutes before bed.
- Limit the use of caffeine, alcohol, tobacco for an hour or more before bed.
- Observe your breathing, how your chest and stomach feel, how the air feels, flowing in and flowing out again. Don’t think about it, just observe.
- Learn to observe thoughts, letting them come and letting them go. Don’t judge them as being good or bad. Just notice the thoughts which come and how they can be allowed to go.
- Observe the sounds going on around you. Observe the sound of your own breathing. Don’t listen, just hear.
- Notice how your feet feel, the weight of the duvet, the warmth.
- Do the same with the rest of your body, working your way up from the tips of your toes to the top of your head.
- Then move on to observing your feelings. Don’t wish them away or try to stop them. Just notice whatever’s there.
- Call me for help if this seems difficult or if you’d like to learn more about the necessary techniques of how to relax and how to leave stress behind.
Call me for hypnotherapy for insomnia. ‘You are feeling sleepy…’
Hypnotherapy is tailor made for insomnia. You need to learn to relax in order to fall asleep and no other therapy has learning how to relax at its very core. Even if ADHD, ASD, chronic pain or other conditions are complicating your efforts to sleep, a little hypnotherapy for insomnia could hardly hurt.
If you live in or near Reading, Oxford, Thame or Wallingford then I’ll be glad to hear from you. Give me a call and we’ll discuss how I could help you. You could call on 07786 123736 / 01865 600970 / 01183 280284, email me at paul@resolvedhypnotherapy.co.uk or else use the contact form below.
Best wishes
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To find out more about my work in Wallingford