Hypnotherapy for interview confidence

Ever wondered why interview advice can be great in theory but doesn't work in practice?

Often that's because the emotional side of your brain has taken over and served up a stress ('fight or flight') response making you feel really uncomfortable and spoiling your ability to present yourself as you'd like to. This is what is going on when you can feel your heart pounding and sweat building as you're sitting there waiting outside the interview room. They are the physiological signs that your body's gearing up to get you out of there, away from what it recognises as a potential threat. Regardless of your thinking side of your brain wanting that job, your emotional brain has other ideas. It wants you to run!

It's not just fight or flight too. A common emotional response is also to have a 'brain freeze' too so you can't think of what to say. The blood from the thinking part of your brain will have been drained as it was needed in your running away muscles. Some people can even go into 'fight' mode and get aggressive. It can be really upsetting and frustrating for you but meanwhile your emotional side of your brain has succeeded on its terms. Nerves = short interview = getting you out of there.

You'll be glad to know then that these stress responses can often be helped with hypnotherapy. Sometimes it's a matter of uncovering how and when your unconscious started believing something negative about interviews or something else it recognises as interview-like. Clients are often surprised how something seemingly insignificant early in their life can lead to problems in later life.

This is where hypnosis can come into it's own helping you to reframe experiences from the past and correct past faulty learning stuck in your unconscious which is at the heart of the problem. Coaching can help you with what to say. Hypnotherapists can help you to get your mind in the right place for those learnings to be used.

For some people it's not just nerves, it can be an unhelpful attitude to interviews that makes the difference. Some people are reluctant to put on their 'best self' to sell themselves and can go in with a, 'take me as you find me' approach. In today's competitive market, it can be a risky strategy. Others just don't dress the part. It's great to be authentic but if it's not getting the results you really want, it could be time for a change working with a hypnotherapist to help you feel better about the changes required.

Another area hypnotherapists can help with is with your body language. We are trained how to tune-in to how you communicate, not just with your words but also with physiology as these are often more of a clue to what's going on than your words. Your unconscious signals are learned patterns of behaviour. If they are learned; then they can be unlearned and hypnotherapy is great for helping you to uncouple from that unhelpful learning and replace it with something more useful. We could help you to manage better eye contact, reduce blushing or stop fidgeting or jiggling which is distracting.

This is just a taster of what can be done working with a hypnotherapist - it could make all the difference to you getting a job when they help you get your emotions under control and you're more able to present the best version of yourself.