Before discussing hypnotherapy for confidence it useful to have an idea of what confidence is.
What is Confidence?
There are many definitions of confidence, for this blog we are going with – Confidence is the belief and feeling that you are safe to take a risk. This risk could be a:
- Social risk – such as speaking up or asking someone on a date.
- Financial risk – making a business deal, starting a company, buying property.
- Physical risk – trying out a new activity or committing to a tackle at 5-a-side.
Whatever it may be, confidence is the results for our life experience filtered through our biology.
- Life experience can teach us that taking risks is rewarding or that it hurts and isn’t worth it. This could be from direct experience or by observing or being taught by others.
- Biology can grant us physical strength, a thick skin or a lack of awareness.
Hypnotherapy for confidence
Hypnotherapy for confidence looks to reduce confidence limiters and enhance access to sources of confidence.
Reducing the impact of confidence limiting life lessons and beliefs- Hypnotherapy for confidence
These can take the form of:
- Single event learnings (traumas) – The person has experienced one or more traumatic events which taught them that life is not safe. These may be incidents of abuse, bereavement, accidents or any number of other things. When the person is aware of them. These may be treated with EMDR, dissociative approaches, in-life regressions and several other ways. Treatment will look to dispel the excessive impact a single event can have on our instinctive assessment of risk.
- Multiple events learning – This is where a person has encountered many upsetting events and challenges but may have little memory of specifics and often a poor memory of childhood in general. Various techniques such as inner child, parts therapy, timeline work and many others can help to process this without having to uncover specific events.
- Internalised beliefs and assumptions (Cognitions) – These are the learnings we took from our experience as well as observing others and being taught by them. Wherever they came from they exist within our minds as assumptions. These will usually be automatic and unconscious. The therapist will help to identify beliefs, help to challenge them and then using various techniques (for example EMDR, parts therapy, direct suggestions and hypnotic CBT) will look to alter them to more effective beliefs.
Increasing sources of confidence – Hypnotherapy for confidence
If you’ve had the chance to read my blog on sources of confidence you will know that there are at least 8 sources of confidence. In brief these are:
- Winners’ confidence – Confidence due to a history of winning.
- Competence confidence – Confidence because you know you are good at something.
- Endurance and coping confidence – Confidence which arises by knowing that you will survive and cope with difficulties and thus often prevail.
- Ego confidence – The belief, right or wrong, that you are great and what you do succeeds.
- Habitual confidence – The persistence of confidence beliefs beyond the evidence for them out habits of belief.
- Size confidence – Confidence due to possessing physical power.
- Risk taker confidence – Confidence due to reduced awareness and sensitivity to risk and consequence.
- Group confidence – confidence due to possessing the support of others who you trust.
Several of these can be enhanced by the hypnotherapist, some can provide an immediate boost and others help grow confidence over time.
Short-term confidence boosters
These are techniques which can help access confidence quickly or immediately. However, many of their benefits are short lived so it is important to translate them into real world success and long-term confidence quickly.
- Hypnotically revisiting examples of times of winning and pride can bring those feeling into the present. Imagining future successes can also do this.
- Direct suggestions that encourage a strong ego can boost confidence. If these are used to help recognise existing traits and abilities, they may become long-term sources of confidence.
- By imagining themselves as physically larger than they currently feel a client can become more confident. The use of direct suggestions can also help with this. As with all visualisations the hypnotist will not only call upon their skills to enhance this but is likely to be using knowledge of body language to encourage the client to express their size.
- Various techniques can be employed to give the idea of having a thicker skin or to gently insulate nerve sensitivity, against the buffets and blows of the world.
Long term confidence enhancers
You might call these the slow confidence builders. Less punchy than the short-term boosters but a better investment over the long term
- Suggestions which encourage recognising the presence and value of skills and abilities the client already possesses can help grow confidence. Further, helping the client to recognise the journey and effort they went through to acquire these abilities can help them to recognise deeper strengths they possess. This feeds into the basic belief that they can do what I set out to do.
- Suggestions and mental rehearsal of survival and growth beliefs can nurture long-term endurance, and ultimately confidence. An example of such a belief might be, ‘When I speak at meetings, sometimes my contribution isn’t great and that can be a bit embarrassing, and it isn’t the end of the world, I can cope with being a little embarrassed’. The key to these beliefs is that they should acknowledge the discomfort/challenge of the situation and recognise that this can be coped with or survived.
- Goal setting which includes envisaging overcoming challenges along the way as well as achieving the goal can also helpful.
