How hypnotherapy can help to cut down your drinking
After a stressful day at work many look forward to getting home, kicking off their shoes and relaxing with a nice glass of wine. Although a drink a day might not mean you need to immediately sign up to alcoholics anonymous, there is another kind of therapy you can try that could stop you sliding down the slippery slope and into alcoholism.
This month, the Department of Health came up with a new idea for the Know Your Limits Campaign after comments from the Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo in March: “Professional women who drink too much, but do so without causing harm to others, have for a long time gone under the radar. People need to be reminded of the health consequences. It is not only the issues around breast cancer but also, increasingly, liver disease and ruptured bladders.”
These one-day workshops are run by clinical hypnotherapist Georgia Foster and are designed for those who are becoming concerned by how much they are drinking.
Their has been an alarming rise in women’s alcohol consumption and related health problems: the number of women aged 35 to 54 dying as a result of alcohol-related damage has more than doubled over the past 15 years.
80 percent of those who attend Foster’s workshops are women in their thirties, mainly high flying professionals who have little time to relax and working mums who can’t wait to put the kids to bed and open a bottle of Chardonnay. Foster explains that the body becomes used to that extra glass quite easily and that it’s not long before people can be downing a bottle a night without really noticing. “I mainly deal with people who are not ruining their lives with alcohol but recognise that they drink more than they should, and they have got into a bit of a rut. Many people have got themselves into an automatic pattern of drinking, which is pure habit. They start drinking because of social shyness, or to de-stress and turn off from the difficulties they face daily, and that slowly creeps up because the more they do it the more the mind thinks it’s normal.”
Foster believes that it is hypnotherapy, which seems to be the most rapid and effective treatment for this kind of drinking problem. Although it may seem like one session is little time to rid those od their drinking demons, it is just enough for many. When they leave they are provided with a self-hypnosis CD, this way if they feel themselves falling back into old habits they can listen to the CD to build up the momentum once again.