I felt a general sense of calm and wellbeing that I cannot remember experiencing before, having lived with depression since my early teens. That was the main reason I stuck with the programme: a self-help programme that works while you snooze and in fact sends you into a deeper sleep, happy days!Īnother reason was that I could feel the benefits after one week. I often fell asleep while listening to the recordings but as Brennan explains, this is not a problem, as your subconscious absorbs the messages.
What really appealed to me was the fact that listening to the hypnotherapy recordings would not take any time out of my already jam-packed day as a working mum of three young children.Įvery night in bed for 20 minutes, I listened to the MP3s through earphones. Having read far too many self-help and positive psychology books over the years without ever really getting anything of value out of them, I was much more interested in the MP3 element of this programme. The result of my initial “positive feelings” survey was 19.4 out of 100. My goal at the outset of the programme was to become more positive, get more energy, and to enjoy life more. I started the programme last July with an open, yet slightly sceptical mind, having tried many other alternatives over the years that did not have any long-term beneficial impact on my anxiety levels and mood.Īlthough my current antidepressant medication regime has been quite successful in helping to keeping the worst of my clinical depression at bay, I was still not really “enjoying life”. Progress is monitored closely with a “positive feelings survey” that you complete at the start of the course and the end of each of the six pathways. Once you sign up online for the programme, you follow a different pathway each week, watch videos featuring Fiona Brennan, carry out simple exercises and listen to self-hypnosis MP3s. She explains: “I think self-help will be moving more online in the future, and my programme is designed for the person on the go as it is user-friendly, interactive and accessible on all devices.” Neuroplasticity research demonstrates that the brain is flexible and malleable, as opposed to being rigid and unchangeable, and has the ability to change and adapt throughout life.īrennan says she sees evidence of this every day in her Dublin hypnotherapy clinic, where clients from all over the country attend for treatment for anxiety, stress, low mood and other common mental health issues.
However, clinical hypnotherapist Fiona Brennan points out that more recent scientific evidence has revealed that we can rewire our brains, alter our thoughts, perceptions and experiences, and change a negative mindset into a positive one. So if you believed or were told you were “a born worrier” or had a melancholic personality, the accepted belief was that there was nothing that could be done to change this programming in your brain. It’s not that long ago the consensus regarding brain development was that your brain was programmed at childhood, and further development in adulthood simply did not happen.
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