Can Hypnotherapy cure Insomnia, does Meditation help?
There are many reasons why Hypnotherapy is an effective treatment for insomnia and why regular Meditation will help.
Here’s another case study to help you appreciate the common causes of sleep disruption and insomnia and how Hypnotherapy and Meditation prove beneficial.
Bills Insomnia Cured With Three Sessions of Hypnotherapy!
Bill didn’t immediately call for help with Hypnotherapy for his sleep problems, he actually called with a concern over the symptoms and side effects that insomnia brings.
The disruption to his sleep had begun following a few significant work changes, each one leading to worsening stress that prevented him from falling asleep as he once had.
He came to see me when he found himself becoming more and more irritable with his family and friends. It actually took for the irritability to spread to his work colleagues and complaints to be made before he decided to research what could be causing his mood changes. Insomnia can cause a number of issues and really does impact health and wellbeing more than most people realise. You can read about the benefits of overcoming insomnia on the main Enhanced Life blog.
Sadly it's not uncommon for problems people are facing to become life limiting before they seek appropriate support. My sense is that people just don't know how effective these treatments are until they experience them first hand or they hear it from a good friend or trusted colleague.
Irritability is a common side effect of insomnia and easily calmed with Hypnosis & Meditation.
Bill was advised by his Doctor to learn how to relax and he wisely chose not to take a prescription medication as he felt that was not going to solve the problem. His GP had experiences with Hypnosis himself and was comfortable promoting this along with Meditation practices as a potential way for Bill to learn to relax and prevent the build up of stress that was interfering with his sleep.
After visiting his Doctor, Bill spoke to a good friend who had himself overcome stress with the help of a qualified Hypnotherapist and reported his sleep quality improved thereafter.
On our first meeting, as is often the case we explored what was happening before Bill began suffering Insomnia and what was happening since that became a problem.
Once in the session, hearing my voice and seeing who I am as an experienced Professional, Bill was very open to Hypnotherapy. He shared how having practised Self Hypnosis to improve his confidence in public speaking whilst at University, he had gone on to become a fan but had to his regret, forgotten the usefulness of this medium ... until now.
He did however share that he had some reservations about the treatment helping him overcome what was causing the irritability and stress that ultimately triggered the issues with sleep.
We don't need to resolve everything for situations to improve with hypnotherapy and NLP. We just need your mind to find new ways of managing situations that had perhaps (often!) seemed outside of your control.
Just talking about the before, during and after phases, helped Bill begin to see the pattern of thinking that had exacerbated the insomnia.
Breaking the Cycle: How Hypnosis Offers Relief from Chronic Insomnia
When insomnia and sleep deprivation become chronic, is when the habit becomes a daily issue, if not an expectation!
Bill began to see how life had been before the stress began to develop through issues at work. He then saw how increased stress had led to interrupted sleep which led to him feeling tired the next day.
Being tired led to him becoming irritable and a fixation of thinking around not sleeping as he felt that was to blame. He was effectively conditioning his mind to expect not to sleep and increasing his stress levels which naturally follows any negative thinking.
The more stressed Bill was getting about not sleeping, the worse his sleep would be!
Stress Effects Sleep Which In Turn Leads To More Stress: Hypnotherapy Combats That
Stress interrupts sleep in a number of ways. When you think about it, it's clear, when we're stressed, our bodies release hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which make it difficult to relax and fall asleep.
Stress can also make it more difficult to stay asleep as when we sleep we need to ‘process’ the experiences of our day.
When those experiences include negative thoughts around sleep, we find ourselves in a cycle that’s hard to break.
As he himself said, just recognising how powerfully his mind was working against what he wanted, helped him to feel more in control of how easily he could change that.
I taught Bill a few basic ‘stress management’ techniques. In essence he was learning again how to choose mindful awareness of his day to day thinking, a few pattern interrupts and then the winding down technique to get his mind and body into a calm state ready for sleep.
The Hypnotic Effect Of Positive Thinking On Sleeping Well & Overcoming Insomnia
We concluded our first session with a relaxation induction and hypnotic suggestions for Bill falling asleep easily with his winding down routine and then enjoying a very good nights sleep.
We used a few timeline techniques to embed the suggestions and even practised having problems of waking up in the night so that Bill could use his new ‘sleep anchors’ to get back to sleep easily without delay.
Bill almost fell asleep during our session, not uncommon, luckily we had used a 'setup' phrase for returning to awareness quickly.
Your unconscious is active even when your conscious mind has drifted off but I find it helpful if the client is at least aware of their experiences during our sessions so I choose to interrupt deepening sleep during our sessions.
Of course, I also know that following the sessions, most people sleep well regardless of the work we are doing or the focus of the sessions.
Hypnosis really is a wonderful motivator for better quality sleep!
Bill shared how excited and confident he felt and how his wife greeted him with hope for a return of the Bill she knew and loved.
Sleep Well To Live Well With Hypnotherapy & Meditation
Bill did indeed sleep well the first night. He had some stressors at work during the week but his desire and confidence in using the sleep anchors and winding down techniques prevented those ‘stinky thoughts’ from causing any further stress.
Bill reported he had begun to meet any stressful situation in a new way. He felt that restoring his sleep was the first step to really feeling himself again. Our subsequent sessions gave us the opportunity to keep working on the thinking that had originally caused the Insomnia and any unconscious beliefs that had been triggered by those.
Bill also joined the Enhanced Life membership to get access to audios he would listen to day to day to maintain his sense of control, incorporating Meditation to his morning routine was something he encouraged his family to adopt.
Don't struggle alone with Insomnia. There's many ways to overcome this troublesome life limiting problem, get in touch to learn more.
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