Articles

Strange fact number 1: Scientists trained flat worms to curl up when exposed to light by electrocuting them every time the light was turned on. A pure Pavlovian, conditioned response. Even more unfortunate for the flat worms is their ability to regenerate themselves if cut in half . An amazing thing in itself; cut [...]

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is an umbrella term that covers a number of different therapies that share common elements, such as Cognitive Therapy, Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy and Motivational Enhancement Therapy. Cognitive Hypnotherapy is another approach that fits under this umbrella, which is pleasing having heard the news that the Government is going to spend £170 [...]

In Cognitive Hypnotherapy it’s taken as read that the way we imagine our future will influence the future we get.
When we visualise, the same parts of the visual cortex become active as when we’re processing something we’re seeing in front of us. Our eyes and our mind’s eye share the same equipment. One of [...]

We all work from a set of assumptions – mainly without being aware of what they are. Here I talk about a recent insight that reminded me of the importance of raising them to our awareness.

For many years I’ve worked on the principle that something doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be plausible – something I think I got from some research from Xerox into how we go about making buying decisions. I’ve found this to be very useful in therapy; the world we live in, and [...]

I’ve found that one of the hardest things people find when they begin working as a therapist is how to sort the information they gain from the client. In fact, even before then, how to hear what the client is telling them in a way that leads somewhere useful. It’s so easy to be overwhelmed, [...]

Everyone knows of Bruce Lee as a kickass martial artist. As a child I was mesmerised by his skill and dreamed of running away to the Shaolin Temple that Kwai Chang Caine waited outside in the TV series Kung Fu. Sadly my Mum wouldn’t give me the bus fare.
Despite that inauspicious start I still [...]

Miss X arrives in my office complaining that she never meets nice men. Investigation uncovers her fear of being hurt. How is it that with this fear she keeps ending up in abusive relationships?
Mr Y finds himself increasingly isolated socially because he smokes, yet we establish that his unconscious motivation to smoke began when he [...]

Most of us have a sense of our own history, our successes, our failures, our ups and downs. Our memories form an intrinsic part of our self-identity; that elusive entity that helps to give us a feeling of coherence as we navigate through time. But how reliable is this sense of our past? Is who [...]

On those occasions when I’ve been on the Motorway alternating between 60mph and zero for no apparent reason, I’ve often wished I could be in a helicopter watching the traffic acting like one of those slinky springs that used to make their own crazy way down our stairs when I was a child. I find [...]