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In this audio episode of The White Room I talk you through emotional and behavioural boundaries. What are they really? Are they actually necessary? And, most importantly, if you struggle with them, how do you build them?

The answer is both complicated and simple. In order to build and maintain healthy, in-tact emotional and behavioural boundaries, first you need to be sure of who you are and what you actually want from life. If you’re thinking, I have no idea! This is the problem beneath the problem! Don’t despair. It’s really not as much work as it sounds. You might feel like you have no idea who you are or what you want, you might feel very, very lost, but your unconscious mind remembers. It remembers everything. All your thoughts and feelings and memories are stored there in a great archive. That’s why you FREAK OUT when your boundaries are repeatedly transgressed. What I’m trying to say is, your boundaries already exist — you just need to find your way back to them. That’s what this audio is for.

In it, I share a little anecdote from my own life about the moment when I realised I needed to learn to set a clear boundary or risk collapsing under the weight of another human being I was carrying — like carrying in the most literal sense of the word. (To be fair, he was a toddler and he was heavy and he had a perfectly good buggy AND he knew how to walk! But two-year-olds, if you’re ever met one, can be ruthlessly self-absorbed. Don’t be fooled by the innocent cuteness in the photo above.)

I should also say, this deep sleep hypnosis is for paying subscribers only. So if you’ve listened to some of my free episodes and you’re interested in going a bit deeper, do consider giving it a try. For a few bucks a month you also get access to my full audio archive, which will help you to fall asleep while at the same time teaching your brain healthy habits and better ways of being. I mean, how many other subscriptions can you say that about? Sleep! Well-being! What’s not to like? It’s simple and it works without any effort. If it doesn’t work, you can quit (but you won’t, because it WILL). Sales pitch over and out.

Please join me.

LMx

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Of course you can listen whenever you like, but rest time is what The White Room is really for. This is sleep-focussed hypnotherapy audio, crafted to help you unwind, let go and drift off to dreamland. It’s a clean quiet space to slip into at the very end of your day with a singular purpose and goal: Do nothing. Do less.

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Because without good rest and sleep, we can’t learn or heal or be effective in our conscious, waking lives. Without rest, there is no action, no energy, no life. Many of my listeners come to The White Room every night as a part of their bedtime ritual, others come on occasion, when they need to fully recharge.

I post one free episode a week, and paid subscribers get full access to my archive, which means they can pick and choose the audio that works best for them.

Now find a comfortable, quiet place to relax, lay back and just… listen.

And when you wake up tomorrow morning, please drop me a line in the comments. I welcome all your feedback and I also take requests!

Enjoy and sweet dreams.

Love,

Leah

xxx

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The optimistic pessimist in me often reasons that life is just a series of problems, one after another.

This might sound like quite grim view of the wonder and miracle of life, but I promise you, there is great comfort in it. Accepting that bad shit can, does and will happen, involves a kind surrender that, over time, minimises the shitty knock on effects unexpected shit when it inevitably arises.

The first challenge, I think, is in learning how to observe, reflect upon and (to the extent that we can), resolve each problem as it arises, and by extension, how best to do this whilst also doing as little harm as possible to the planet, other people and ourselves. So when you get a flat tyre, your tooth breaks, your cat dies or you get fired, instead of thinking, ‘WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? WHY ME? WHY NOW?’ You might instead have a more quiet thought along the lines of: ‘Right. Okay. Well. This sucks.’

Then, instead of raging and throwing things around the room, flinging yourself off a bridge or getting so drunk you can’t speak then sobbing a river of hot tears while shaking your fist at the heavens, instead you might just go home and sit quietly for a while breathing and listening to the pounding of your own heart thinking, Shit, shit, shit.

And then a few minutes or hours later, you might think, ‘I’m going to get through this day and go to sleep. And when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll get through that day and go to sleep. And maybe on that day or the day after that, I’ll make a plan for what to do next.’

But what if you can’t get to sleep or stay asleep? Well then you have a whole other problem.

Because being unable to sleep — either get to sleep or stay asleep — diminishes your ability to put life into perspective. It drains your energy, your physical health and cognitive function. Sleeplessness makes all the shit life has to throw at you much, much shittier. And once bad sleep becomes a habit, it not only prevents you from resolving the problems you have, it becomes The Problem.

As a hypnotherapist I’ve treated many clients for sleep problems of all kinds, from chronic insomnia to broken, intermittent and restless sleep patterns. Bad sleep is probably the issue I’ve had the most consistent success with as a therapist, perhaps because it’s one I’ve struggled with on and off for most of my own life. Sleeplessness was what brought me to hypnotherapy in the first place. After a few treatments, I was able to effortless fall to sleep and — most crucially — stay asleep. The results were so transformative, I decided to study and practice hypnosis myself.

This week’s audio is intended to help you fall to sleep and stay asleep. It was made for a client who’d tried everything before she arrived in my shed. She’d been to sleep clinics, taken melatonin, sedatives, tried meditation, cut out caffeine and alcohol for periods, scrubbed and polished her sleep hygiene ritual to a gleam — but in the end, nothing helped. She had no other deep underlying problems, unhealthy habits or traumas she could connect her sleep problems to in talk therapy. Bad sleep was her primary problem and it was severely and negatively impacting her life. We had three sessions and, last time I checked, her sleep had improved dramatically — just as mine did, at a time of my life when I was in a full fledged crisis.

So if you’re struggling with sleep try this free audio. If it works for you, that’s great. If it doesn’t you always book a one-to-one session via Zoom or in person via my website and we can work on your specific problem in a more personalised way.

Enjoy and sweet dreams.

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Do you regularly find yourself having silent raging arguments with yourself or imaginary others as you go through the motions of your daily life? If so, you’re not alone. Many, if not most of us, of us walk around in a semi-dissociative state. We are living our lives in the present moment but in our minds we are somewhere else: fighting epic invisible battles. Children engage in such battles as a form of play, a healthy processing mechanism, but as we grow older we lose the ability to do this. For adults, engaging in epic internal imaginary battles quickly becomes an exhausting and stressful way to live.

This kind of internal warring is not about processing trauma or resolving conflict. It’s a dissociative state that prevents us from being present, keeps us from noticing and connecting with the world around us — a kind of mental torture prison we create for ourselves, not out of a wilful impulse to harm ourselves but sheer unconscious habit. Negative thought loops repeat and repeat, spinning us further away from ourselves, our work and the people and things that we love. Internal states of conflict make us less self-aware, distancing us from our deeper emotions, like vulnerability, empathy, curiosity, pleasure, contentment, confusion and discomfort. They wall us off from nature, connection and the simple pleasure and sheer joy of being alive.

In internal conflict, your opponent (whether it’s your partner, your boss or Elon Musk) aren’t actually present adversaries, literally or figuratively. They are mental apparitions, stand-ins for other parts of yourself. You are both the superhero and the super villain. Your ego states have separated and are engaging in a war of attrition in which no one wins and everyone dies (or ends up exhausted and unhappy).

Once habituated, patterns of internal conflict can lead to all kinds of real problems in the real world. They make us angry and distracted, less productive and able to connect with our loved ones. They lead us to mistreat ourselves and others and numb ourselves with substances to drown out the noise.

The good news is, through hypnosis and guided meditation we can train our ego states to put down their weapons. In the audio above I walk your unconscious through a peace-brokering journey that will give you the gift of peace and calmness of mind.

Listen, enjoy and I hope it helps you to raise the white flag in your own mind.

Love,

Leah

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I’ve been away for a bit on holiday but I am back with this short guided meditation on setting boundaries.

This audio was originally created for a private client who came to me because they were struggling with people-pleasing in their romantic life, to the point that it was resulting in a deep sense of confusion and conflict. The audio is designed to help the client set better boundaries, first by tuning into their own wants and needs and asserting them calmly and reasonably to their partner. However, this skill could just as easily apply to work, friends or family relationships.

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And believe me, if you want to have healthy, happy, productive relationships with the other human beings around you, boundary setting is essential.

People-pleasing is something women, in particular, are socially conditioned to do, but men are by no means impervious to it. The concept of being a ‘gentleman’ is loosely defined as putting the needs, comfort and desire of others before your own. And while this is a lovely idea in many ways — basic good manners, really — when we internalise this value deeply, over time, it can cause us to lose track of who we are, what we want and what we truly desire. When we people-please habitually and unconsciously, this behaviour can become so ingrained that we feel our life is no longer our own. A sense of dissonance and confusion sets in, leading to suppressed feelings of resentment, unhappiness and even anger.

Ironically enough, chronic people-pleasers can often be avoidant, temper-mental and explosive. This isn’t because they are selfish by nature, but because their habitual selflessness, over time, causes them to snap, run away or shut down completely. The solution is to set boundaries and assert them. Sounds easy, but for chronic people pleasers and codependent personality types, this can be very frightening at first and takes practice. This audio will give you the tools to begin the process of setting healthy boundaries and sticking to them in all aspects of life.

I hope you enjoy it. It’s free so please feel free to share and let me know what you think in the comments.

If you’d like to book a private session to work with me personally on this issue or anything else, just respond to this email or check out my website here to find out more about the broad range of issues I treat as a coach and cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist. My rate is £150 per session, and I also offer discounted package rates.

For access to to all the audio in The White Room archives (which deals with a broad range of issues, from focus to anxiety to insomnia, weight-loss, habit-change and loads of other stuff) do consider buying a paid subscription. For just £9 per month you’ll get access to a wealth of targeted guided hypnosis and meditations that can help you with whatever you happen to be struggling with.

FINALLY, if you have any suggestions for issues you’d like me to deal with here I welcome your suggestions in the comments.

Enjoy and see you back here next week.

LMx

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This personalised hypnosis audio was created for a client who came to me seeking help with an online shopping habit that started as an innocent collecting hobby — purchasing vintage china in antique shops — which had, over the years, evolved into an all-consuming online trawling obsession that was having a serious deleterious affect on her finances.

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LMx

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Everyone is welcome, I do hope you can come!

This is a soothing passive exercise — I talk and you close your eyes and listen —a bit like a ‘mental massage’ to help you get centred and set up for the week.

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So much of everything we experience in life is about the relationship between tension and release. Both inside and outside of us, stuff is forever building up, up, up to a crisis point which then in turn boils over and dissipates, only to become something else in turn, repeating the tension-release pattern all over again. This process is normal, it can be both exciting and stressful at times, but it can also be terrifying, painful and make us feel perilously out of control.

With effort practice and effort we can exert some gentle control over the waves of thoughts and emotions we experience inside ourselves. The idea is not to even-out our perceptions and emotions to a dissociative flatline but to stave off helplessness — that feeling of being a little skip being tossed about on emotional high seas. I could go on and on about the science behind breath work but what you really need to know is this: If you are feeling fragile, fearful, sad, anxious or overwhelmed, this exercise will make you feel a lot better in twenty minutes. Just find a quiet place to listen, close your eyes, relax and tell me how you feel in the comments below.

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