’30 second anxiety relief’ video

30 Second Anxiety Relief

Anxiety can arrive out of the blue and begin to overwhelm you at a moment’s notice. It can be really useful to have a quick-fix technique which can take your mind off the impending anxiety and help to defuse your problem state. This 30 Second Anxiety Relief technique does just that.

Many of my clients want something that they can use in the heat of the moment to help distract them from the immediate anxiety. This helpful during the early days of therapy whilst the client is letting the initial therapy work take hold…

This post was originally published on tonyburkinshaw.co.uk

Click here to see the original website post & see me in this video…

A Positive Purpose: The Power of Emotions

Whilst some aspect of our life is getting our full attention ensuring that the advantage is taken/danger avoided, our attention simply isn’t focused anywhere else. This leaves us extremely vulnerable because most of our environment isn’t being attended to. We might miss an opportunity or worse, we might not see the danger sneaking up behind us with its shiny pointy teeth…

Read More:

Delight or Warning?

©Tony Burkinshaw

Positively Stressful; TBTalks (again!)

If you have the ability to cope with the pressures you face, then those pressures become positive stress. It all boils down to how much meaning the pressure has for you and how much control you exert over it.

Positive stress is something which can motivate you to perform beyond your usual levels. Often we think of this as being a work-related issue where some people appear to thrive whilst others fall by the wayside. Positive stress extends to the world of sports too, think of any major sporting event and there are individuals and teams that have lifted themselves beyond anything they’ve done before. Where do you think World Records come from? It’s positive stress in action.

Read more in the TBTalks monthly Newsletter here

[If you like it, subscribe today – the New year edition is out on Friday evening!]

Look Into My Eyes

You might have seen me before!
© Tony Burkinshaw 2012

It occurred to me a little while ago that many clients don’t know what to look for when they’re deciding who to approach about hypnotherapy. To help you decide, I’ve put a post together on my website which walks you through some things to consider.

If you’re interested, why no take a look?

What should you consider when looking for a hypnotherapist to work with? There are many therapies and many hypnotherapists to choose from. Unless you’ve been recommended to one, it can be daunting to have to decide who to choose.

Obviously there are more aspects to whether a particular hypnotherapist is right for you, but these 6 areas might help you make a more informed judgement about what you’re looking for. READ MORE…

Reblogged from Tony Burkinshaw Cognitive Hypnotherapy

Flashbacks: Patterns of the Past (reblog)

This is a reblog from a post on my new website. I thought you might like it

We’re surprisingly well adapted to find problems.

In essence our unconscious mind uses our senses to scan everything in our environment like a multi-level radar system. Our brain, which by the way is the most complex system known to science according to that keyboard-playing Professor Cox, is superb at identifying patterns. It matches them to past experience and projects them into potential futures. In the blink of an eye it decides whether we are safe & sound or whether to sound the alarm to keep us safe.

It is simply stunning.

But…

Sometimes the patterns it matches to are out of date, belonging to a you that is no longer here. Things that troubled you as a child are innocuous as an adult but we still feel the fear of speaking to strangers or talking to those we automatically see as authority figures. We respond to bosses as if they were teachers and we were children, either acquiescing quietly or becoming tongue-tied. Being called into the office is so like the walk to the headmaster’s room that we feel the same sense of trepidation and dread. (Or is that just me?)

Sometimes the pattern is more recent but the rawness of it resonates long after it ought to have past.

I got clobbered with one of these last week.

Read More: Click here

TBTalks

I’ve started writing a monthly Newsletter for my Hypnotherapy clients. It focusses on aspects of my specialisation: Anxiety, Depression & Stress.

I wondered if you might like to take a look?

Here’s the July edition: Negative Self-Talk

Or you could subscribe to get the August edition (out on Friday): Social Anxiety

Many thanks…

MY BAG

Sometimes being proud of your daughter just doesn’t say it. Watch this & you’ll see what I mean.
Please share.

Ten days later

You might remember the mill. We’ve been through it often enough. The rollercoaster duly threw in its ups and downs. The screams echo inside and it seems like it’ll never end. One long nightmare ride that can’t be real. An end that never comes into sight.

It takes an age to progress. The future is so far off that time distorts its blanket and wraps eternity around each day. The team is shorthanded. There aren’t enough skills to go around. National policy trumps clinical discretion.

And then the future arrives.

With enough challenging of the accepted norm, we find the one surgeon who believes his own judgment matters. He stands up & gets counted. We count on him.

A long day and five hours pass.

Much sooner than anyone expected, the pain subsides and the healing takes hold.

Much sooner than anyone expected.

She’s home.

Paper Drum
© Vinum

Paper Drum: The EP

Coughs and sneezes

I’ve been fighting a cold for 3 days and now that it’s at its peak, the central-heating’s packed up. Typical.
According to theory, this is an opportunity.

Really?

Difficulties are easy to find. My immediate challenge? I have to keep away from my hospitalised daughter. Heavily immunosuppressed, a cold ridden parent does not a welcome visitor make. Tough but there you are. Gill’s having to take it all on. Again.

What’s love got to do with it? Every damn thing.

Anyway in the work/cold balance of the last few days, I decided to let the slight-edge habits drift. And to keep doubling them up so that I would be on back track as soon as practicable.
It could have been the start of a long-term slide but in accepting it as my decision, the responsibility stays firmly in my own backyard and I keep control.

As it turns out, a bad cold (trust me, it’s pretty nasty) is an opportunity to practice. It provides essential feedback. An opportunity to find out whether I’m at least a little serious about my intention to be in charge of my own fate.
To accept the risk that I might fail despite my best efforts.
To take the risk that I might succeed even though I don’t know what success looks like yet.

And the upshot of all this?
Well, to paraphrase a good book:

Feel the Sneeze…
And do it anyway.

It isn’t easy
© Tony Burkinshaw 2013

…and the plumber turned up in good order. We have heat.

The Choice Option

There’s a glimpse of sunshine. Perhaps two.

Option 1:

Here we go again. Dare to hope or hunker down and wait for the punch that’s always turned up so far.
Every time it’s improved, it’s turned around and slapped us.
Hard.
It’s beyond us. Out of our control.
Life just keeps on happening to us.

Option 2:

Every time it felt like we can’t carry on, there’s been hope. Something has come along and lifted our spirits. A new fact. Uncovering a way of looking at the problem, which gives pause for thought. Get’s the medics thinking again. Trying something new. Adjusting the balance.
Whatever comes along, we’re up to it.
We have to be.
No. It’s more than that.
We choose to be.

External Locus of Control vs. Internal Locus of Control

Simple.
Not easy.

I’ve made my choice.

Enough said.

It’s a delicate balance
© Tony Burkinshaw 2013