Whatever the reasons for your binge drinking it is possible to help you to change by using hypnotherapy and NLP.
Some people engage in binge drinking deliberately. Many, however, find themselves caught in patterns of thinking and behaviour that they would rather change. Some find themselves drinking to excess after having begun with the intention of just having 'one or two', others drink to ease social anxiety, become more confident socially and then find that the situation spirals away, seemingly out of their control.
Binge drinking problems affect people from all walks of life
We see about 70% men and 30% women for this. Virtually all have been binge drinking for years and now they often hold a senior position at work, are often married or with a long term (and increasingly upset) partner. The behaviour they began years ago has kept going, same old thoughts, same old feelings, same old pattern.
How are you going to help me to stop binge drinking?
Last summer I (Steve Tromans) was driving into work one morning thinking about how to help people to stop binge drinking. I had seven new clients to see that week who wanted me to help them to stop drinking to excess and I began to mull over the difference in thinking between someone who goes out every Friday, or once a month or whenever, and always gets trashed and someone who goes out in the same group and regularly has a good time, drinks reasonably moderately with his or her friends/colleagues, gets the last tube, late cab etc, goes home, gets a good nights sleep and wakes up with a clear head in the morning.
One thing I was certain of was that if you asked these two theoretical people, on the day they were due to go out, what they expected to happen that night you would get the following types of answers.
What's the difference that makes you binge drink?
The binge drinker would say something like 'I will probably get hammered, I usually do', or, 'I really hope I don't get drunk tonight, I am going to try and control myself for a change, my wife (husband/partner) will kill me if I do it again'.
The non binge drinker would say something like 'I expect I will have a good time with my friends, have a few drinks and be home by midnight.'
The difference is that the binge drinker either imagines they will drink or hopes they won't but in either case excess drinking is on their mind. The non binge drinker doesn't think or worry about it.
One of the challenges with the human mind is that, unconsciously, you don't process negation. For example, don't think of the Britney Spears schoolgirl video, don't think of Brad Pitt in his Troy skirt. Think of a dog not chasing a cat through a park, forget the number 23.
You have to think of those things, don't you.
So you can't, literally, NOT think, or worry about binge drinking.
Training your mind to plan for what you want, rather than what you don't want.
Fortunately, there are neuro-linguistic techniques that create a sequence of thinking that get the brain to move from the thought of drinking to excess to the thought of just having a moderate amount of drinks and enjoying the feelings of being in control.
In addition, there are a host of hypnotherapeutic approaches that recondition the thought processes at a more automatic, or unconscious, level.
So we won't be going over your childhood to find 'causes' or 'meanings', we will just train your mind to go in more useful directions.
How long is it going to take to stop my binge drinking?
By using a combination of NLP and hypnotherapy we aim to be able to 'reprogram' the behaviour within 1 - 3 hours work. Many people find their experience of learning to control their consumption of alcohol (and feeling comfortable within themselves as they do so) a liberating experience.
