Candela Hypnosis

By Carol Beagrove - Freelance Journalist

Is your child a thumb-sucker? Does she/he wet the bed? Bite her/his nails? Then hypnosis could be the solution.

Harley Street hypnotherapist Sue Turner is achieving great success in eliminating these potentially humiliating and distressing conditions.

Louise, aged 15, had sucked her thumb all her life. But what was endearing in a four year old was beginning to become an embarrassment to a young woman in her teens.

Under Sue’s gentle persuasion, Louise stopped overnight. That was six months ago and she hasn’t regressed since.

“Whenever Louise felt sad or depressed and needed some form of comfort, she stuck her thumb in her mouth,” Sue explains. “What I had to do was instil in her a feeling of confidence so that she didn’t feel the need to it any more.

“I got her to think about the times when she felt really good about herself, then suggested she anchor those feelings and recall them whenever the need arose to put her thumb in her mouth. In fact, Louise was surprised to find that when she did get the negative feelings that inevitably led to thumb-sucking, she realised she actually didn’t want to.”

The story goes further. Louise had been a rising star in the junior show jumping circuit but now shied away from the jumps altogether following a bad fall the previous year. Impressed with Sue’s success on the thumb-sucking issue, Louise’s mum now asked her if she could tackle Louise’s phobia.

Sue explains: “I encouraged her to think about her relationship with her horse, how she had always felt safe with him, how they had been in harmony when she was riding and, once again, to anchor those good, positive feelings. The aim was to build up her confidence again. However, you have to be careful in eliminating fears – I didn’t want to make her completely fearless attempting daredevil feats!”

The results were spectacular. Louise eventually overcame her mental block, and was cajoled into entering a gymkhana – taking the gold medal in the show jumping section.