Adverse Childhood Experiences

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Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE’s) are traumatic events in childhood that can have a profound impact on future health.

Experiencing ACEs can have an impact on our future physical and mental health, and often ACEs can be barriers to healthy attachment relationships forming for children. Some of the effects of ACEs on our physical and mental health can lead to:

An increase in the risk of certain health problems in adulthood, such as cancer and heart disease, as well as increasing the risk of mental health difficulties, violence and becoming a victim of violence.

An increase in the risk of mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. 1 in 3 diagnosed mental health conditions in adulthood directly relate to ACEs.

The longer an individual experiences an ACE and the more ACEs someone experiences, the bigger the impact it will have on their development and their health.
Having multiple ACE’s can have a detrimental impact on future health leading to poorer outcomes.

So what are ACE’s? :
Physical abuse
Sexual Abuse
Emotional Abuse
Living with someone who abused drugs
Living with someone who abused alcohol
Exposure to domestic violence
Living with someone who has gone to prison
Living with someone with serious mental illness
Losing a parent through divorce, death or abandonment

The good news is that ACE’s are preventable and one way is by Positive Parenting. Early learning and development are important for a child’s brain and 90% of a child’s brain growth happens before the age of 5. Right from the start, all those little moments that parents and carers spend together with a child are building their brain. Every smile, cuddle, chat and game makes a huge difference, helping them learn to communicate, develop confidence and make friends.
If you are struggling with anxiety, depression or PTSD and would like to find out more about how hypnotherapy can help, please get in touch.

The secret to a happy life……?

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We are naturally hard-wired to be fearful because our ancestors needed to be constantly on red alert to keep them alive. When we suffer from anxiety or depression this is simply the brains way of protecting us from perceived danger or risk.  So how can we increase our happiness??

By being active

Our body is built to move and when we do our brain releases endorphins, those lovely feelgood hormones. Moving more doesn’t mean you have to join a gym or engage in an expensive activity, it can be anything from walking outdoors, cycling, yoga or gardening.

Connecting with other people

We are better as a tribe and benefit from interacting with other people. Long term loneliness can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease because our brain perceives we are in danger and releases stress hormones. The good news is that just simply speaking to friends and family on the phone can reduce feelings of loneliness.

Reframe your thinking

The brain can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality. At any one time our brain is exposed to 2 million pieces of data. We can’t possibly process all of this information so our brain filters out what is not important. How does it know what’s important however? By what we focus on. So if we focus on positive thoughts then that’s what our brain will seek out. We can’t be constantly happy but by learning to control our thoughts and focusing on the positive aspects of our life we can develop new neural pathways so that our brain spends more time seeking out the good things.

Brain Fog

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Brain Fog

Do you sometimes struggle with your thought processes? Do you find yourself unable to make decisions and remember things that you used to find so easy?

According to Dr Sabina Brennan, health psychologist and author of ‘Beating Brain Fog: Your 30 day Plan to Think Faster, Sharper, Better.‘ the brain has the ability to adapt and change across your life span. Its the reason that habits can be formed and dropped. It takes time and effort to rewire and remap our neurons but victims of stroke have been shown to regain their speech and mobility due to neuroplasticity, the brains ability to create new neural pathways.

Retraining your brain can help to clear the brain fog due its ability create these new neural pathways in the same way that working out at the gym challenges our muscles to make them stronger. We can rewire and remap the neurons by constantly challenging our brain by doing something  new like learning a new skill for instance. It can also be something simple like taking a new route to work.

Hypnotherapy can be effective in clearing brain fog by changing the way you think, feel and behave and creating new neural pathways while focusing on the positive aspects of your life.

World Mental Health Day

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Welcome to my very first blog. I am excited to launch my new website just ahead of World Mental Health Day on 10th October. This day is recognised by the World Health Organisation every year. This year’s theme is ‘Make mental health and wellbeing for all a global priority. This is a day dedicated to a focus on mental health and a chance to talk about it and get help if you need it.

Welcome to my new website

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Welcome to my very first blog. I am excited to launch my new website just ahead of World Mental Health Day on 10th October. This day is recognised by the World Health Organisation every year. This year’s theme is ‘Make mental health and wellbeing for all a global priority.

This is a day dedicated to a focus on mental health and a chance to talk about it and get help if you need it.