Think yourself happy in 2023

Well, Christmas and New year are now a distant memory, and it’s back to work I go. This time of year is the busiest for me as people make the decision to look after their mental well-being. Over the weekend I was booking people in the diary, everyone feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to turn, it got me thinking about a saying I often use, “Fake it till you make it”! 

You see the brain does not know the difference between imagination and reality, so we can actually think ourselves happy. Thanks to the thriving field of Positive Psychology we have learned how to attain and sustain happiness. There have been thousands of studies in the last two decades, researchers have watched babies share toys, put Tibetan monks in brain scanners, asked college students to do kind deeds and explored databases, among other strategies, and one major finding emerged: Happiness is, to a great degree, in our own hands, or more exactly, our own minds.

This made me think about the placebo effect. One of the mysteries of how the brain works is our response to placebos, no one quite knows how they work, for example, pills can do everything from relieving pain to reducing symptoms of depression, if we expect them to be effective (and sometimes even if we know they are a placebo), but the effect occurs in non-medical contexts too: researchers have found that placebo treatments can enhance creativity, and even boost cognitive performance.

There are over 400 types of therapeutic interventions in this country and every single one will work for someone if they believe it is the right approach for them. Beliefs, often called 'core beliefs' in therapy, are the assumptions you have made about yourself and the world at large. Beliefs are formed from our past experiences. As a child your brain registered your experiences as the way things must always work, a sort of personal doctrine.

In solution-focused hypnotherapy the placebo effect demonstrates how positive thinking can improve treatment outcomes. Placebo treatments induce real responses in the brain, believing that a treatment will work can trigger neurotransmitter release, hormone production, and an immune response, easing symptoms of pain, inflammatory diseases, and mood disorders like anxiety and depression.

Hypnosis involves suggestion, placebo effects also involve suggestion, like placebos, hypnosis produces therapeutic effects by changing clients’ expectations. My core belief as a therapist is that every client I see wants to make a positive change in their lives, and my job is to facilitate that change.