How Hypnotherapy Can Support Cancer Patients: A Gentle Approach to Managing Pain and Anxiety
A recent study has brought to light the significant benefits that hypnotherapy can offer to patients undergoing cancer treatment, along with the pressing need for greater awareness among medical professionals about these advantages. In my own practice, I’ve had the privilege of working with several clients who were diagnosed with cancer and undergoing treatment during our sessions. Through clinical hypnotherapy, I’ve been able to assist them in managing their anxiety, taking control of their pain, improving their sleep, and alleviating their depression.
A cancer diagnosis can be one of the most stressful moments in a person’s life. If you’ve had previous experiences with anxiety, depression, trauma, or stress, the weight of the diagnosis can feel overwhelming. In our sessions, I focus on helping clients establish new neural pathways, equipping them with tools to better manage their experiences, and ultimately, regain a sense of control. This process can become a powerful part of your recovery, potentially transforming your outlook on life as you move forward.
How we experience pain is often tied to the emotions we attach to it. Individuals who don’t have an emotional response to pain frequently report feeling less pain compared to those who do. This is where hypnosis in a clinical setting can be incredibly effective – by helping you change your emotional response, you can regain control over how you experience the physical symptoms and discomfort from your medical treatment. I’ve seen remarkable results in this area, with one client even leaving me a voice message the day after major surgery, calling me a miracle worker. The work we had done on managing her pain had been so effective that she experienced no distress, even when nurses were struggling to find veins for catheters.
Having a gentle, non-invasive treatment option to address the emotional and physical impacts of diagnosis and treatment can be immensely beneficial to many patients. If you or a loved one are facing this challenge, I encourage you to reach out. Together, we can explore how I can support you in managing this journey.
Rediscover Your Calm: A Strategic Approach to Overcoming Anxiety and Depression
Are you feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or burnt out? These are common feelings that often lead people to seek help from mental health professionals. But when you dig deeper, anxiety and depression are often at the root of these experiences, no matter what label you give them. Understanding how these challenges manifest and how a strategic approach can effectively address them is crucial in choosing the right therapy for you.
Contrary to popular belief, anxiety and depression aren’t hereditary or fixed conditions. They’re learned processes—patterns of thinking and reacting that we pick up as we grow, often from those around us. If you were raised by an anxious parent, you might have unconsciously adopted their anxious responses. Over time, these responses can become so ingrained that they feel like the only way to react to certain situations. But here’s the good news: just as we learned these patterns, we can unlearn them and create new, healthier ways to respond.
Strategic Hypnotherapy works on the premise that learning a new response is similar to learning any new skill. Think about how you learned to ride a bike—you didn’t just hop on and start cycling perfectly. You learned each step, practiced them, and eventually, it became second nature. In the same way, you can learn the steps to respond differently to anxiety or depression. Hypnotherapy helps by reinforcing these new, more helpful responses in your subconscious, making them feel natural and automatic.
Anxiety is often rooted in future-based thinking. If you struggle with anxiety, you might find yourself fixated on worst-case scenarios, constantly worrying about things that haven’t happened and may never occur. With a strategic approach, we help you learn to distinguish between thoughts that are useful and grounded in the present and those that are simply unhelpful fears about the future. This process empowers you to live more fully in the moment, with a greater sense of control and calm.
Depression, on the other hand, tends to be tied to past-based thinking. If you’re dealing with depression, you might spend a lot of time replaying past events, focusing on what went wrong and how you’ve been affected. Unfortunately, we can’t change the past, but we can change how we relate to it. A strategic approach helps you learn how to let go of the past and move forward, building a future that reflects the life you truly want to live.
If you’re ready to break free from the cycles of anxiety and depression and start creating the life you desire, I invite you to take the first step. Book a free 20-minute consultation today, and let’s explore how Strategic Hypnotherapy can support you in this journey. Your path to calm, balance, and a brighter future begins here.
Does Anxiety give us magical powers?
A client recently commented that she was reluctant to talk about the good things that could happen as it could ‘jinx it’. My response to her was ‘Wow – let’s talk about your magical powers! If you can stop something good happening by talking about it, can you make something good happen by talking about it too? Or are your magical powers only limited to stopping the good stuff in life?’
She of course laughed and said that she doesn’t have magical powers but understood the point that I was making. If what we say and don’t say could impact our future negatively, why can’t it also impact our future positively? The reality is that when we have a well-trodden anxiety response we look at the future through the lens of all the things that can go wrong, and we forget to also look for the things that can go well. When we are looking for the things that can go wrong, we subconsciously look for evidence to support our expectation. When we expect things to go badly we see the missed parking spot as a sign that we don’t deserve good things, or the rainy day as a sign that the universe is against us. We see a person walking slowly in front of us as deliberately trying to make us late, and the neighbours playing loud music as them trying to stop us from enjoying our TV show.
If we look for the good in each day and reframe our thoughts, we start to look for the evidence to support the expectation that good things happen. The missed parking spot becomes a chance to find another spot that is closer to where we are going, the rain is an excuse to break out our favourite umbrella or be grateful for the garden being watered. The person walking slowly is a chance to smile at them as we walk past, or to be grateful that we are healthy enough to walk faster than them. The loud music next door can be an excuse for a dance party in the kitchen, or to knock on the neighbour’s door to have a chat. Saying that ‘good things will happen today’ can change our whole demeanour so that we are looking for good things to support our statement.
Using our magical powers for good and setting ourselves up to find the moments of joy in each day is a powerful way to reframe our thinking and improve our mental health. How can you reframe your day today?