The following article was written by Eloise King and features Alistair providing a point of view on 'how to' Break Our Bad Habits - Body & Soul, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday 18 July, 2010

HYPNOSIS AND NEURO-LINGUITSIC PROGRAMMING

The Expert: Psychologist, Alistair Horscroft

The Approach: Horscroft believes willpower usually fails because of the emotional attachment people have for their habits. “The mind doesn’t think in negation, so it finds it difficult to ‘not’ do things,” he says. “The classic example is if you’re asked not to think of a pink elephant. You have to think of it first before you can get rid of the thought. A pink elephant is emotionally neutral, but bad habits, such as smoking or sugar consumption, have a strong emotional attachment that makes them difficult to get out of your head.”

Instead, Horscroft uses hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to target the cause of a bad habit. “In hypnosis, we take people back to the cause of their habit, which usually lies in childhood, and clean up their awareness around the behaviour,” he says. “Someone with an overeating problem may have had to finish everything on their plate as a child, even if they were stuff ed. They may have eaten all their food out of fear and also for the praise received on finishing. Hypnosis allows us to change the subconscious understanding around the habit so it no longer feeds the same need for approval.”

 Reframing and compulsion blowout are two NLP techniques Horscroft uses. Reframing separates the subconscious mind’s need – praise and approval – from the behaviour – overeating – and replaces the bad habit with a positive behaviour. Compulsion blowout exaggerates the negative effects of a bad habit to the point that it no longer serves the person. “I have nail biters hallucinate that their fingers are big chunky things, with nails so short they’re bleeding,” he says. “The heightened awareness then changes the person’s relationship with their habit so they no longer need it.”

posted 2010 Jul 25 by Alistair Horscroft