You might have heard the term emotional bucket floating around (excuse the pun), but what does it actually mean? And more importantly, how do you know if yours is overflowing?

Let’s break it down, because understanding your emotional bucket is more crucial than ever in 2025.

What is an Emotional Bucket?

Your emotional bucket is a simple but powerful way of visualising how we store feelings — especially the tricky, tough, or heavy ones.

We’re talking about everyday stress, anxiety, self-doubt, feelings of not being good enough, and even the more hidden emotions like shame or embarrassment. Add to that the pressure of rising living costs, job insecurity, digital overwhelm from 24/7 connectivity, and social comparison from endless social media scrolling… well, it’s no surprise that many people’s buckets are dangerously close to overflowing.

When these feelings build up (whether slowly over time or quickly after a tough week), they sit quietly in our emotional bucket. The problem? If we don’t learn how to release or manage them, the bucket eventually spills over. That’s when we start to feel like we’re at breaking point.

How Can You Tell If Your Emotional Bucket is Overflowing?

There are some pretty clear signs, if you know what to look for. You might notice:

• Feeling constantly overwhelmed or on edge
• Bursting into tears or snapping in frustration over small things
• Struggling to concentrate or make decisions
• Feeling anxious, irritable, or trapped in negative thinking loops
• Difficulty sleeping, or waking up already feeling exhausted
• An ongoing sense of “I just can’t cope anymore”

Sound familiar?

As a coach and hypnotherapist, I work with people every day who feel like this. The good news is, we can do something about it.

If you’re looking for help to manage the overflow of emotions then coaching and hypnotherapy can be really helpful to give tools to empty your bucket or rebalance your emotions. Get in touch here to book a call to discuss more.

What About an Empty Bucket?

Interestingly, a completely empty emotional bucket isn’t healthy either. If your bucket feels empty, you might experience:

• Emotional numbness
• Feeling fed up, bored, or detached from life
• Constant tiredness, even when you’re resting
• Low mood or signs of depression
• Struggling to find motivation or enjoyment in things you once loved

We’re aiming for balance — not an overflowing bucket, and not an empty one either.

How Coaching and Hypnotherapy Can Help Rebalance?

In 2025, many of us are juggling more demands than ever, and while self-help tools are brilliant, sometimes you need deeper support. That’s where coaching and hypnotherapy come in.

As a coach, I help you identify what’s filling your bucket in the first place. We work together to build resilience, set healthier boundaries, and create coping strategies tailored to your life. It’s not about adding more to your to-do list — it’s about clearing space for what truly matters.

Hypnotherapy goes a layer deeper. It helps you access your subconscious mind, where many of these emotional triggers and patterns live. Through hypnotherapy, we can gently release the emotional build-up, reduce anxiety, and develop a more positive, calm mindset. Many clients describe it as finally turning off the relentless mental noise.

Together, coaching and hypnotherapy create a powerful toolkit for maintaining emotional balance.

Everyday Tools to Lighten Your Emotional Load

Alongside professional support, there are plenty of small, daily actions that can help ease the strain and either empty your overflowing bucket or fill an empty one.

Here are some tried-and-tested favourites from my coaching clients (and from my own experience too!):

• Spend quality time with people who uplift you
• Limit doom-scrolling on social media (a big one for 2025!)
• Get outside — nature has an incredible way of grounding us
• Move your body in any way you enjoy — dancing, walking, yoga
• Nourish your body with healthy, satisfying food
• Try mindfulness or breathing exercises to calm your nervous system
• Get creative: painting, baking, gardening, or even doodling
• Take a tech break — let your brain recharge
• Listen to music that boosts your mood
• Explore alternative therapies like massage, reflexology, or aromatherapy
• Visualisation exercises — imagine your emotional weight floating away in a balloon or drifting out to sea (yes, this really works!)

Most importantly: give yourself permission to pause.

Start Balancing Your Bucket Today

This term isn’t just a nice metaphor — it’s a real way to understand your mental and emotional health. If yours feels unmanageable right now, please know that you’re not alone.

Through coaching and hypnotherapy, we can work together to create space, release what’s weighing you down, and build the emotional resilience you need to thrive in 2025 and beyond.

If this resonates with you, please do go to my contact page and drop me an email or book a call to discuss how coaching and hypnotherapy can benefit you to keep your emotions balanced so that you have fantastic yet simple ways to control your emotions.

Emma Langton has over 13 years experience in supporting leaders to enhance engagement, performance and wellbeing. Her coaching, training and speaking is valued by individuals and organisations across the UK for getting results quickly with her straight talking Yorkshire style.

Often referred to by her clients as the boundary queen and the resilience goddess, she shares her passion for progress with practical tips and advice so that her clients improve leadership skills, reduce stress and pressure and elevate wellbeing. She regularly provides insights for BBC, Forbes, Metro and also has a podcast called Lessons for Leaders with 100 episodes.

Yet true hypnotherapy is no daft party trick; it is a reliable strategy for people to overcome detrimental behaviours, like fear, anxiety, overeating or smoking. We can do this by effectively rewiring the depths of the mind and changing the way we respond to certain situations and changing the way we view those situations.

However, it is sensible to ask ‘Does hypnotherapy work?’ if you’re wondering about trying it out for yourself. Since there is much misunderstanding about this type of hypnotherapeutic approach, it’s important for you to learn about the way it helps and what rewards it can bring.

Do Hypnotherapy “Put me to sleep?”

The word hypnosis comes from the greek work ‘hypnos’ which does indeed mean sleep.  However, when hypnosis was originally used, it was thought that the person was asleep.  It was later proven that a person is imply in a deep state of relaxation.

I know I’m stating the obvious here but hypnotherapy is hypnosis PLUS therapy.  We all experience hypnosis naturally, many times in our everyday lives.

• Have you ever got lost in the story of a book or totally absorbed in a film, tv or programme so that you didn’t notice how much time has gone by?
• Do you ever lay on a beach or in the garden and you are so relaxed in the warmth of the sun that you can’t be bothered to lift your head to see what that noise was, or even what the kids are up to?
• Are you a jogger or cyclist who can lose themselves in the rhythm of the repetitive action of moving your feet – sometimes called ‘being in the zone’

All that and more are hypnotic trances. You are not asleep. You are in a deep state of focused awareness and this can be a state of relaxation or during an upbeat activity too. As with these activities, during therapy your visual and auditory awareness is usually retained during a hypnosis session. However, due to the fact our perception of time shifts when we are in a hypnotic state, numerous people are dumbfounded by the span of time that has passed in the hypnotic aspect of the session.

Whilst in this ‘state’ using different therapeutic tools and techniques and by making use of the subconscious mind I can then work with you to change unhelpful thinking with new constructive thoughts. The subconscious remembers all of what we have seen or dealt with, unlike the conscious mind which rather quickly forgets the majority of our experiences.

An hypnotic approach works by gaining access to these concealed images and beliefs to create new, more favourable beliefs and behaviours.

Is there Genuine Success with Hypnotherapy?

Since Matt Damon said to Jay Leno on TV seeing a hypnotherapist was “the greatest decision I ever made in my life”, it seems that it became the coolest thing to do in Hollywood. Stacks of sports stars, movie stars, politicians, and other famous people are turning to  hypnotherapy for addictions, phobias, fears  and weight loss.

• Britain’s Prince Harry used hypnotherapy to quit smoking
• Pregnant Kate Middleton used Hypnotherapy to regain appetite following morning sickness
• Supermodel Kate Moss used Hypnotherapy for pregnancy
• Mel B was getting hypnosis for stage fright
• Actress/model Eva Mendes had hypnotherapy to overcome her arachnophobia – an irrational fear of spiders.

Even though a hypnotic approach might have only just acquired widespread awareness, it is definitely not a new strategy – at the end of the 19th century, a commissioned study by the British Medical Association found that “as a therapeutic agent hypnotism is frequently effective in relieving pain, procuring sleep, and alleviating many functional ailment.”

Einstein is even believed to have used it!

With more than one hundred years of favourable feedback, and many personal successes, hypnotherapy gives a tried-and-tested solution to solve a large selection of issues.

Find our more here about the hypnotherapy I provide and read about testimonials from people I have worked with.

Why Do You Need Hypnotherapy for Phobias?

If you’ve been living with a phobia for some time, chances are it’s bothering you more than you’d like to admit and that’s why I always recommend hypnotherapy for phobias, above all other options such as coaching, CBT or exposure therapy.

Do you have a phobia? Not sure? What’s going on with your phobia anyway?

The dictionary defines a phobia as

“a compelling fear or dread, especially of a particular object or situation”

What’s Going on with Your Phobia?

Let’s face it, we are not born with phobias or fears so why do they occur and what can we do about it? Phobias are irrational fears that are a lot more extreme than a general feeling of worry or dislike.

We might be fearful of something and that creates a fear response in a part of our brain designed to keep us safe from danger. However, a phobia occurs when there is an irrational fear of circumstances (like a fear of the dark) or objects (like mice).

How Can Hypnotherapy Help Your Phobia?

Even though frightening, the phobic reaction has often been established by the subconscious part of our brain to protect us from that perceived threat. The sufferer experiences a strong psychological reaction if and when they are exposed to the phobic trigger. For some, simply thinking about their fear is sufficient for a severe sufferer to actually feel anxious and panicky.

That’s why we’re scared of horror films!  It doesn’t have to be real – it can be ‘perceived’ as a threat and that’s where hypnotherapy for phobias is really helpful.

Because hypnotherapy guides you into a relaxed state of mind, it means that hypnotherapy for phobias works by gently accessing the underlying cause of the phobia and eliminating the any associated conditioned response.

Some signs of a phobia can be:

• Fast heart beat
• Shortness of breath
• Shaking or trembling
• Hot flush or sweating
• Feeling dizzy or nauseous

Often when people come to see me for hypnotherapy for phobias, they say others in their lives have said they are being silly. This is because others do not perceive the trigger as posing the same level of threat or danger. However, a phobia or fear is not something we can just switch off or stop reacting to!

Can we Get Used to Living with Phobias?

Sometimes a person may find a way to live with a phobia by avoiding situations where they may be exposed to the fear.  They might get their partner to remove the spider!  They may organize their life around the fear, like the person I saw who travelled for days over land just to go on holiday and avoid flying! Maybe they just cope somehow, but not exposing themselves very often … like having the fear of the dentist, where a person just doesn’t go or manages (sometimes badly) with the twice yearly visits.  Sometimes a person my just avoid or restrict their lives, like a person with agoraphobia who avoids going out.

How Do You Use Hypnotherapy for Phobias?

Phobias are really common and the majority of them are quite easy to resolve. People with phobias usually respond quickly and very well to the use of hypnotherapy for phobias because it works on the subconscious where the root beliefs reside.

Hypnotherapy for phobias uses relaxation strategies to help with the anxiety that is raised then desensitise the situation. This enables you to receiving the hypnotherapy for phobias treatment to get into your subconscious, sometimes we can identify the root of the phobia and overcome it.

For many people hypnotherapy offers a way to get rid of a phobia quickly and easily regardless of how long they have had the problem.

So, if you’ve been struggling in some area of life because of a phobia, perhaps now is the appropriate time to get it sorted for good.

Hi, I’m Emma, Hypnotherapist in York with a particular interest in helping you with anxiety, stress, fears and phobias so that you can take back control of your thoughts and feelings.  That way you can quickly and easily feel more able to cope with your busy life! There are no magic wands or quick fixes instead I give you personalised tools that work for you and fit with your lifestyle.

So, are you ready to let go of that old anxiety, fear or phobia? Do you want to live a happier, stress free life? Book your complimentary consultation here and find out how you can reach your goals and really enjoy life!

Find out more about hypnotherapy here and read about testimonials from people I have worked with on phobias and fears. 

Anxiety can differ from person to person. Some people have lots of similar symptoms and others only have a few. It’s very much based on individual perceptions of the situation.  There can also be intense fear which can happen suddenly and just seem to take over the body.  When this happens a person might notice a mixture of symptoms and these can differ from person to person. Often there can be an underlying cause for anxiety and for others there seems to be no reason at all.

Anxiety can be a very personal issue so let me share a personal story with you. Ashley came to see me after struggling for quite a while with anxiety. Ashley told me it felt like there was a new problem every day. She was overthinking every little thing, then worrying about the negative thoughts, then becoming frustrated because it all became a vicious circle.

Ashley was getting really upset, crying a lot and had no motivation. She was unable to focus, feeling sick and really tense, particularly in her jaw.  She was getting angry and frustrated at having these feelings all the time and just didn’t want to go out – which was totally unlike her.

So let me tell you how I helped Ashley in just 5 sessions to go from

I’m scared and feel like I’m dying”

to

I feel much calmer and more focussed and I enjoy doing things again.”

1. Free Initial Chat

We’d had a chat on the phone before we even began to work together. (I offer a 15 minute telephone consultation so that enquirers can explain a little more about their situation and I can explain about how I work.  Everyone needs to make sure they feel comfortable with me; I need to ensure that their situation is something I believe I can work with too.  So this Free chat is a good way to check that.  Occasionally I might suggest someone needs to go to their GP, or refer them to someone else.  Sometimes we discover that our availabilities don’t match and I can direct to other therapists too.)

After a brief chat with Ashley we agreed on my 4 Session Anxiety Package and booked the dates into our diaries. 4 sessions is often enough although because each person is different additional sessions are added on if needed.  As I began working with Ashley we realised that we would need to add one more session to help Ashley overcome her anxiety.

2. First Meeting

When I met Ashley I could see a glimmer of the bubbly, smiley person that was clearly struggling underneath all this anxiety.  She explained that this anxiety had started around the time her younger sister had become ill.  It had been quite a long, traumatic time for her and all her family.

Towards the end of the first session I guided Ashley into hypnosis and gave her some tools and relaxation tips to take away and practice at home.

3. Implementing Changes

We discovered, through the use of hypnosis, that during the process of staying strong for her sister and being supportive to her mum, Ashley had hardly cried and kept all feelings locked in, so that she could cope with everything else going on.  She also began to recognise that she felt sad, scared and even a bit helpless.

I gave Ashley an audio to use at home to enhance the work we did in sessions.

4. Anxiety in the Body

We worked on therapeutically releasing those stored up feelings so that they no longer felt trapped inside.  Ashely described her anxiety as feeling like “bubbling butterflies in her tummy”.  This release method also helped Ashley to change those feelings and be less trapped with her anxiety.  These are tools that can be taken away and continued to be used each day.

Anxiety can have a big impact on our bodies and bodily functions too.  So we discussed what happens and ways to improve general health and wellbeing on a daily basis.

We also worked on de-sensitising the thoughts and feelings which were still vivid in her mind from when her sister was ill.  We can’t take away the events but we can make them less painful to remember.

5. Last Session

Ashley was now sleeping much better and woke feeling she wanted get up each day.  She said

I feel much calmer and more focussed; my head’s not racing and there’s no intrusive thoughts.  I feel more motivated and able to function.  Best of all I enjoy doing things again.”

We round off the therapy sessions by pulling together all the tools, techniques and progress in a final hypnotherapy session so that these new ways are deeply embedded into the subconscious mind.  That way, all the new ways of reacting and responding that we achieve in therapy, become much more automatic and part of everyday life.

Do you suffer from anxiety? How does it feel for you? Perhaps you can identify with Ashley’s “bubbling butterflies in her tummy” or perhaps anxiety feels completely different for you.

No-one wants an anxious child!  Anxiety in children can come from a number of different sources although it can often be anticipation of events causes the issue. So what’s going on and how can you help your anxious child?

For example, as my daughter heads back to school for a new school year with some new teachers, new timetable and other new things, I can see her anxiety rising. It’s common, for her and for other children.

The world is a complex and sometimes a confusing place, so children can quite naturally feel a little anxious every once in awhile. Short periods of anxiety don’t appear to do any harm as long as the anxiety is short lived. For some children, however, tension and anxiety can become a commonplace and regular response to daily events, and this is where it can become a problem.

How Do You Spot the Anxious Child?

An anxious child may be affected physically in a range of ways. They may complain of headache, tummy ache or feeling sick; they may have faster heart-rate, shallow breathing, be fidgety or fussy, quieter or more talkative. They may also seem to have difficulty listening or following instructions (think about how you feel when you are worried or anxious!).

For something school related there may be worries regarding their performance in class and even criticism from teachers, tutors and friends can all result in feelings of prolonged panic or anxiety. There could also be issues with friendships, peers or even bullying. The issue is that when a child develops panic and anxiety they can become withdrawn, difficult, uneasy or fearful and this can have a serious effect on their development. They may begin to avoid places or people that cause that reaction in them. For instance, tension and anxiety at high school can lead to absenteeism, as they try to avoid the negative feelings or the circumstances that cause those feelings.

An anxious child can have trouble sleeping, become moody, exhibit a lessening of concentration at school, neglect social events and even try alcohol and drug abuse if the matter is just not addressed early enough. Early resolution of anxiety stop these problems being adopted as normal behaviours and therefore affecting them for his or her entire life.

What Can You Do?

As a parent or carer of an anxious child you can be empathic about their behaviour and responses. Try to always see that the behaviour is a way of communicating how they feel. Tell them you understand they must feel worried or anxious and that it’s OK to have those feelings.  You can also probably make some educated guesses at what is going on (as I did with my daughters’ time for return to school). Sometimes we don’t know the reason though, and sometimes we can’t do anything about the cause, but we can still help the child with their feelings. Here’s a technique I teach many children which can help them control their breathing, which in turn reduces their anxious feelings.

Balloon Breathing

How Hypnotherapy Helps an Anxious Child

When a child is battling with anxiety and the cause is unknown or the child is struggling a lot, it is likely that the behaviours will be triggered as a result of the beliefs held at a subconscious level which is where hypnotherapy comes into play. By using hypnotherapy an anxious child can be helped to understand these feelings and address the underlying beliefs.  Learning tools and techniques can help them change the way they think and respond in those previously anxious situations.

Children are more open to hypnosis than adults because they’re more likely to enjoy daydreaming and have active imaginations. Hypnosis is our natural learning state, which children adopt frequently, so they normally relax and really feel comfortable very quickly. An anxious child can imagine ways to let go of their troubles and create powerful visualisations to help their anxiety.

Find out more at www.emmalangton.co.uk and read about testimonials from people I have worked with.  

If you need help incorporating any of the above get in touch for a complementary telephone consultation and learn how I can help you incorporate easy things in your life.

How many Easter Eggs did you get? How many are left????  Have you ever wondered why you need chocolate?

Research shows that, on average, Britons enjoy about 11kg (24lb) of chocolate a year, making the UK one of the biggest consumers of chocolate in the world. Only the Swiss and Germans eat more.

Now, 11kg equals about

• 90 small Easter eggs or
• 60 medium Easter eggs or
• 40 large Easter eggs!

What about the feelings?

What makes us reach for chocolate in times of stress or difficulty? How come we need to use chocolate as relaxation or calming aid? Well, when we look at it in a psychological and sensory way it may explain.

What senses are most active when we eat chocolate?

• There’s the look of it – highly attractive packaging, smooth dark sultry shapes
• There’s the smell – chocolate, vanilla, sweet, bitter
• There’s the taste – firing all those taste buds across your tongue, sweet, bitter
• There’s also texture – that smooth, silky, sweet, stick to the roof of your mouth

In addition, we know what to expect, there’s a learned response in us, so we think about chocolate and our mouth waters; we remember the previous experiences of calm, joy, comfort, relaxation or whatever. So we enjoy the feeling that eating chocolate produces in us.

Here’s the other thing: when we are babies, our first soothing experience is when we get milk sensation in our mouths, with the smell of our mother, the taste of familiar sweet, smooth, comforting milk. So it’s one of the closest things to replicating our early soothing experiences.

Do you prefer your chocolate with nuts in or hard and cold from the fridge? Then the need for crunch is, in sensory integration terms, related to other emotions being associated too! (That’s a whole other blog of information about emotional and sensory eating.)

Does this make you a chocaholic?

However, remember too, we can learn behaviour from our experiences.  So as a child were you given a ‘treat’ for good conduct? This practice of using food as a treat or as a mood enhancer then means that when we find ourselves feeling stressed, tired, fed up, our mind is wired to desire those same foods because it believes that is what makes us feel good again. Does that make you a chocaholic or just someone searching for something to help us feel better?

Chocolate does also produce those “feel good” chemicals yet some scientific people would argue that our bodies regulate those chemicals so that if we have too much our body try to create a balance. These researchers at University of Texas say that we could become desensitized to the effects if we have too much over time! Well, I for one, would be happy to be their guinea pig in that study!

This need and desire for chocolate is not a new thing. There are stories through history about cocoa and chocolate and under “discovering chocolate” section on Cadbury.com they say that “in the 17th century, the Dutch … brought cocoa beans from America to Holland, where cocoa was greatly acclaimed and recommended by doctors as a cure for almost every ailment…”

Some researchers say that Dark Chocolate

• Has many powerful antioxidants
• Is rich in minerals such as Iron, Zinc, Magnesium and Copper
• May reduce risk of heart disease
• May improve brain function
• Increases “feel good” chemicals

There’s a neuropsychologist in US who works with and writes about people with brain injury and says that dark chocolate is great for brain health.

Is Chocolate Good for You?

According to Rebecca Boulton, Nutritional Therapist from http://simpleandcleannutrition.co.uk the flavanols from the coffee bean have excellent health benefits.  She says they can:

• Lower blood pressure
• Reduce bad cholesterol and increase the good cholesterol
• Help boost brain function and increase focus and concentration
• Reduce stress hormones
• Have anti-ageing effects and are great for skin health

“of course I’m not talking about the sugar laden milk chocolate that is so popular nowadays.  Dark chocolate of 70% or more, retains the flavanols and raw cacao has antioxidants and magnesium for an extra boost”

So, whatever is driving your need to eat chocolate remember the sugar intake that goes alongside consuming large amounts of chocolate is another issue. Consuming more dark chocolate is considered much better because of the higher amount of cocoa, so has more health benefits than milk chocolate although there are similar calories in both dark and milk chocolate!

You can still enjoy your chocolate and still find ways to de-stress, relax or feel good. It just doesn’t have be outside of your control. Using hypnosis and hypnotherapy you can recognise what is driving your desire for chocolate you can then address the root of any problem. So then, instead of needing to implement all of your self-discipline to avoid temptations you can address your underlying issue in a safe and appropriate way and still enjoy chocolate in moderate, healthy amounts.

What do you think?

Emma x

Find out more at www.emmalangton.co.uk and read about testimonials from people I have worked with.  

If you need help incorporating any of the above get in touch for a complementary telephone consultation and learn how I can help you incorporate easy things in your life.

Let’s face it! All our lives are busy these days. Lots of us can have difficulty getting to sleep from time to time particularly when we have a lot going on. So what can we do to ensure we get a good night’s sleep each and every night, regardless of what else is going on?

We can still improvement the quality of our sleep and here are my top 5 tips for improving sleep generally.

1. WIND DOWN & CALM DOWN.

We all live very busy lives and you and your body need time to let go of the activity of the day and shift into sleep mode. Find a way to let go of, park, put aside those stresses or worries that have built up through the day. Spend the last hour before bed doing a calming, stress reducing, resting activity – such as reading. Find something that is right for you.

For some people using an electronic device such as laptop or phone can make it harder to fall asleep because of the particular light from the screens is activating the brain! If you have trouble sleeping, avoid electronics before bed and if you wake in the middle of the night.

2. ROUTINE!

Stick to similar bedtime and wake up times, even on weekends.

This helps to regulate your body’s internal clock and could help you fall asleep and stay asleep for the night.

3. TO NAP OR NOT TO NAP?

Power napping may help you get through the day depending on the reason for your tiredness. However, if you find you cannot fall asleep at bedtime then eliminating even short catnaps may help.

4. EXERCISE!

People who exercise say they sleep better than people questioned who have no exercise.

Vigorous is supposed to be best, however adding just a 10 minute walk to your day can help. Anything that increases your heartbeat will in turn lower your blood pressure and so help you to relax and rest at the end of the day.

5. A CHANGE IS AS GOOD AS REST (so they say)!

Do you need to change your bed? Or perhaps even just change the bed linen?

In 1988 a ground breaking study found that by switching an uncomfortable old bed to a lovely new one meant an extra 42 minutes of sleep! You can put your own bed through an MOT at the site and find out if changing it could lead to better sleep!

Personally I love it when I’ve changed the bed linen and it has that lovely spring fresh smell. There’s no better time to snuggle up under a cosy duvet!

Just about everyone has had to deal with a busy and restless mind when we turn in, where all the day’s troubles are spinning around showing no signs of stopping.  However, things only become an issue if they are ongoing.

Symptoms of sleep issues can be experienced in a variety of different ways:

• difficulty going to sleep,
• problems sleeping at all,
• awakening early in the morning,
• waking up during sleep,
• disturbed or restless sleep,

If any of these issues are happening with you, it may be better to seek some help particularly if you are finding daily function difficult because of tiredness, mood swings and low concentration during the day because of reduced sleep.

If you or someone you know has problems then get in touch to find out how I can help. My work is fast and effective and makes great differences in just a few sessions.  You can contact me via the contact page on this website or give me a call for a free initial consultation.

So lie back, relax, and have much more than forty winks.

I’d love to know if there is something you do that helps you get off to sleep regularly and easily too!

Emma x

Do you have Social Confidence or does the thought of mixing with people fill you with dread?  As I sat on a train recently, on my way to a training conference I relished the time I could take on my train journey to have time to my self, to catch up on reading and to do my most favourite pass-time – people watching! Yes, I love observing people! As I did so, I noticed just how much people were “connected” yet in my view, they were connected in all the wrong ways. There were so many sat with not just one device, mobile / laptop/ tablet, but most that I could see from my seat had two things on the go at the same time!!  This is really not going to help our social confidence.

It got me thinking…

Our most valuable communication skills

These days, the way we talk, connect and communicate to each other is increasingly computer based, but the loss of face to face communication and interaction is having a negative effect on our society and our own social confidence. In my coaching and hypnotherapy practice this is all too apparent as I see more and more clients who are socially isolated or socially uncomfortable or lacking confidence in being able to communicate.

As we communicate less in actual face to face social interactions we start to lose some of our most valuable communication skills and even younger people are coming to me feeling a lack of confidence or feeing uncomfortable in social situations or at work and school. As I tell my children

“as human beings we are supposed to speak to each other it’s what sets us apart from other animals on the planet!!’.

OK, so I know that we are using programmes like Skype or Facetime which will help the communication, mainly because we can get some of the visual cues by seeing each others faces when we speak, but it is just not the same as being there with the person. As those young people grow do you wonder just how prevalent this lack of confidence of social skills will affect them? Does it already affect your social confidence now?

Someone without these skills can look and feel isolated and is not prepared to meet the requirements of a social circumstance; things like celebrations, events and weddings are a real problem as well as in work related situations like meetings, staff or shift changes, team work. It can prevent someone from being able to progress in their job or even their life if they struggle with relationships generally too. A person with low social confidence skills can often feel self conscious and worry about

“what will people think”

They also can become panicky, flustered, blushing, have difficulty speaking, believe they will say the wrong thing, will ‘look stupid’ and more then adopt a coping mechanism or a protection for themselves by withdrawing from situations or ensuring they say nothing.

Increase Your Social Confidence

By combining coaching or hypnosis with different therapeutic techniques I can help you feel more comfortable and more socially confident quickly and easily. I can assist you to feel more self-assured but that is just not the whole story. Sometimes there are particular events which have happened in the past to knock their confidence like being picked on or mocked at school. Continual comments from critical teacher perhaps or some other person of influence are also causes of diminished self-confidence. When the power and emotion connected to these old events is reduced or even removed then you can move forward more easily without those old emotions being triggered in your current everyday life

Of course, coaching and hypnotherapy treatments have limits and it is only part of the therapy. I do not have the elusive magic wand (sorry!). So as well as the work with me in the therapy room I would also advise practicing making more social contacts and having more physical connections with people.

Using Visualisation to Help You

We can rehearse these in particular way first – called visualization. When we visualize an event or situation happening whilst in the therapy room, the benefit is that when we do it for real our brains believe we have already done it, so it is easier and more comfortable. (There’s a nice bit of neuroscience working for you!)  When you increase these new social relationships, possibly just be joining a book club or going to a meeting – (the type of social gathering is irrelevant) as long as there is a communication and interaction with real men and women it becomes easier and easier.

So with this process, I will be helping you to feel assured and at ease. You can gradually build your self-confidence on the solid foundations we have already laid down. This way you can increase your social confidence to create permanent change in levels and increase confidence in social situations.

Now, stop reading this and get out there and practice chatting!

Emma

I work with people in a private therapy setting providing clinical hypnotherapy, NLP, EFT, EMDR and Coaching.  I am committed to helping people with a variety of issues and do my very best to enable my clients to make positive changes in their lives.

Find out more at www.emmalangton.co.uk and read about testimonials from people I have worked with.

If you need help incorporating any of the above get in touch for a complementary telephone consultation and learn how I can help you incorporate easy things in your life.