
The Role of Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy
I like to think of the mind and body as our hardware and software - our hardware being our physical body and the software being the part of us capable of thought (the mind). When the physical body is hurt or sick it's going to impact your level of happiness and ease and visa versa, when you are feeling depressed and down you will be physically more sluggish with less energy and vitality.
We've all used terms like “I feel sick to my stomach”, “what a pain in the neck”, “my gut is telling me something” and we also understand that high levels of stress increase risk of heart disease, alzheimers, diabetes and gastrointestinal conditions.
Conversely we understand that people who utilise mind and body techniques such as breath work, exercise, emotional support, mindfulness activities, visualisation etc. have better health scores, increased immune response, faster healing and recovery after illness, injury or surgery.
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This is the mind and body connection and the study of psychophysiology.
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The Conscious, Subconscious and Unconscious Mind…
The conscious mind accounts for around 6% and is responsible for critical and logical thought, our ‘conscious’ awareness and will power. The sub and unconscious (the other 94%) holds our language, beliefs, values, memories, experiences, core needs, instincts, triggers along with all our learnt and automatic behaviours.
One of the roles of our unconscious mind is to keep us safe from both real and perceived threat. Eg. it will warn you not to walk across the road in front of a car (real threat). But, it may also warn you against going for that big promotion at work because of a perceived fear of rejection (keeping you stuck).
The average person has over 6,000 thoughts per day with 70-80% of those what would be considered negative thoughts. They are often not the thoughts, beliefs or stories we would choose for ourselves and may come from sources like culture, religion, family, media or something that someone has told us. Interestingly 95% of these thoughts are repetitive thoughts playing over and over in our mind from the day before and the day before that.
Most commonly, in the fertility world, these 'unconscious' thoughts, beliefs, stories or fears sound like: 'I can’t fall get pregnant', 'I'm not healthy enough', 'I'm too old', 'I'm too stressed', 'what if we turn out like our parents', 'what if our relationship isn't strong enough', 'what if I loose my freedom', 'I'm scared to be pregnant / give birth', 'what if I'm not a good mum' etc.
Giving ourselves messages like this, could be interpreted that it’s not safe to conceive, be pregnant or become a parent, creating emotional blocks in the body, blocking us from what we want.
The truth is many of us are completely unaware of this constant internal chatter and although we can't 'control' what thoughts enter our mind, we can absolutely change the relationship that we have with these thoughts so they don’t end up controlling us!
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​​​When we experience stress in our lives (real, imagined or assumed), our body goes into a sympathetic (stress) state of fight, flight, freeze or appease. The body responds by releasing stress hormones into our bloodstream. Oxygenated blood is redirected to the defence systems of the body (which the reproductive system is not a part of), this is a cave man response to protect us from the dangers of that time in history (conception was not important if we were in famine or danger - again, real, imagined or assumed). Conversely, when our nervous system is regulated and we regulate short term stress well and move back into the parasympathetic state it is better equipped to support normal functions of the body like immune, healing, digestion and reproduction.
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Stress is a normal part of our lives however, long-term or regular stressors are known to impact health and wellbeing. Regulating the stress response and balancing our nervous system can not only positively impact our fertile health but our wellbeing as a whole and women are definitely worthy of feeling good in their everyday lives along the journey.