Chris People Therapy and Coaching

18/06/2026

On Procrastination...

This is such a common barrier to change, it comes up regularly in my practice. And in truth I do it too (and my guess is you probably do as well). It's become a bit of a pet interest of mine...when I can be bothered (ok - I'll see myself out for the dad joke).

I don't know Duhigg as a journalist, but this is a nice post. Procrastination is an emotional regulation problem.

It's essentially a similar principle to the classic 'marshmallow test' of delayed gratification for adults. We put off things which we know are helpful or beneficial for temporary and short-term relief. Its a classic 'vicious cycle' in cognitive behavioural terms. The more we put things off to feel better in the moment, the harder it becomes to do the thing we are struggling to do and the worse we actually feel. The key then is to find ways to break the cycle.

Some great work on procrastination has been done by Timothy Pychyl PhD. I use his book "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change" with clients and myself regularly.

17/06/2026

Mindfulness as a performance tool...

I've spoken before about the many different benefits of mindfulness as a therapeutic tool, but also in the pursuit of enhanced performance. Here is a great (and short!) article about the possible mechanisms of action through enhancing attentional control and emotional regulation as well as some possible neurophysiological mechanisms.

"...mindfulness does not eliminate stress, but rather enhances our ability to regulate attention, modulate emotional responses, and perform effectively"

What I particularly like here is that the authors end with some simple suggestions for implementing mindfulness-based practices into everyday life. These are very similar to the exercises we use in my practice. "It's no use only meditating in a cave" as I heard Jack Kornfield say in a podcast once - What really matters is not how much practice we do when we have nothing else to do, or things are going well, but how we apply this in our lives (although I may have totally butchered that quote, sorry Jack!).

Today, people are expected to perform at a high level in every area of life—as parents, physicians, friends, family, athletes, etc. There often isn’t protected time in our calendars for rest and recovery due to the constant expectations placed on individuals, which heightens stress and pressure ...

25/05/2026

‘Stop being nice at the expense of being real’.

This post by Jefferson Fisher reminded me of Andrew Salter’s work on emotional freedom and authenticity. He describes that many of us are caught up in ‘emotional constipation’, which ranks up there as one of my favourite phrases in psychology and psychotherapy!

Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t be kind or appreciative or giving. Those are traits or values I deeply admire - but they need to be authentic. An issue arises when ‘being kind/nice/generous etc.’ stops being a genuine expression of care and is instead becomes a rigid rule based on fear of judgement, ridicule or conflict.

Do check out Jefferson Fisher - he provides a very cool resource for skilful communication, conflict resolution and assertiveness.

19/05/2026

I love James Clear and Atomic Habits. He manages to simply communicate concepts that are key in our individual practices. In this extract he simply separates outcome-based goals from process and values-based goals and practice. This is a distinction I try and help my clients also make.

Outcomes are good yes, and we should still strive towards them, but they are only an indicator (a 'KPI') of our progress in our process and connection to our values.

There is no finish line for love, education, fitness or any other value-based goal. We wake up every morning and re-commit to being the version of ourselves we aspire to be. One of the many benefits of process and values based goals is that they are less impacted by unforeseeable life events than outcome-based goals. We can (almost always) still make some small, incremental progress towards our values, even if we can't do everything we'd prefer. If the outcome we desire is to run a marathon, and we somehow break an ankle during our training (and so the outcome is no longer possible), we can still commit and take action towards our process/values-based goals of increasing our fitness through regular training. We might just need to focus on, for example, upper body strength training for a while instead. The original outcome is no longer available but the process and values-based action can still continue.

In the words of Ryan Holiday (The Daily Stoic) "Our job today is the same as its always been, and this is true tomorrow too. Nothing changes that, nothing exempts us from that, nothing prevents us from doing that."

04/05/2026

May the 4th be with you! To all my fellow Star Wars nerds out there, have an force-filled day.

A few years ago I wrote a very light-hearted analysis on the lessons to be learned from both the light and dark side and what we can take from some of my favourite moments using a cognitive behavioural lens. Please feel free to check it out:
https://www.brighton-hypnotherapy.com/post/may-the-4th-be-with-you

01/05/2026

Haha! Love her. We do love a metaphor

20/04/2026

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐚 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐭?
PART 4: Building Skills

Starting to get into the nitty-gritty now, good and effective therapists help their clients develop the skills needed to progress towards the life they aspire towards.

There's no one way to 'cut this cake' of different skills in therapy. You could define these any number of ways. My favourite, again inspired the great Donald Meichenbaum, is to divide skills broadly into 3 categories -
* Internal or intrapersonal skills, which tend towards being around working with, or shifting our emotions/feelings and cognitions/thoughts (such as judgements, predictions, dwelling on the past, memories, images, rules we make or have about ourselves, life and the world, and many others). These skills can take a huge array of forms and approaches but in my practice will often include aspects such as emotional regulation, relaxation training, attentional control, distress tolerance, self-monitoring and awareness, urge surfing, emotional authenticity/freedom, mindfulness, self-efficacy (self belief), bolstering positive emotions (such as gratitude and awe) & motivation, and helpful self-talk, as well as self-hypnosis.

* External or interpersonal skills, which tend towards how we interact with the world and other people. These might for example include skilful and effective communication, conflict management, assertiveness & problem solving.

* 'Wrap-around' skills - which may include helping a client live a more complete or full life and helping to guide them towards skills that I can't always directly help them with. Examples might be for example how to access business, legal or financial advice, or working on a CV, or finding ways and places to socialise.

You might notice that some skills cross these categories. Problem solving for example cwould probably be considered both an interpersonal and intrapersonal skill.

Often when clients get sufficiently skilful, they naturally start coaching others in the same skills. Don Meichenbaum refers to this as being in 'consultative mode' and tends to show the skills are really starting to bed in.

The development of these skills helps the client to develop a pathway or stepping stones towards achieving the goals and aspirations we will likely already have articulated and agreed upon in our work together. A central idea throughout will be on understanding, normalising and preparing the client for future 'wobbles' or relapse. Understanding that almost all of us will indeed wobble, and if/when we do, we will be ready.

Next up in this series...Personal experiments

18/04/2026

POV: Missed all my personal training this week and my inner critic starts going wild! 🤣

Anyone else?

10/04/2026

"𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡…𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑝𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑓"
Adam is the real deal. An academic who teaches a no-bullsh!t approach to hypnosis and actually walks the walk and applies what he does in his own life and pursuits. I’ve learnt a huge amount from his materials on sports performance.

Aside from just discussing weight lifting and reducing perceived effort in athletes, he nicely summarises a modern, ‘non-state’ approach to hypnosis here which I share, the importance of the brain as a prediction machine, and also gets into some great Self-instruction Training. Check it out!

09/04/2026

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐚 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐭?
PART 3: A Hopeful Future

Helplessness and hopelessness are commonly associated with mental health concerns. We need only think about issues such as anxiety, low mood/depression, and stress (all of which are super common: data from the NHS indicates common mental health conditions affect about 1 in 6 people) to see the impact of this.

Good and effective therapists should help ignite that beacon of hope that helps you to see that life doesn't always need to be this way, and it doesn't need to be the way it's always been. They (we) do this frequently through goal setting, and helping their clients to start to see the existing strengths, resilience and 'islands of competence' that they are already demonstrating in order to cope with what challenges them. These strengths are important to us, we can leverage the heck out of what you have already shown you can do, and every single one of us has something we can draw on.

If our clients are not hopeful about the future, why would they bother to come to therapy at all? For me, this has always felt like a particularly important, if not the most important, Core Task in psychotherapy.

As an aside, I've literally just been to see Project Hail Mary, which is being described as a 'Hope-Core' genre. I came away feeling incredibly uplifted. See it if you can!

My takeaway? Find a therapist who ignites that beacon of hope in you. Someone who helps you see your strength and competence and what you've achieved 'in spite of' the challenges you face. Someone who can help you set effective SMART goals for a more hopeful future, and then helps you achieve them.

As I have mentioned before, this series is inspired by the great Dr Donald Meichenbaum and my work with Don and the UK College of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. For anyone who is interested Don expands on his original 7 Core Tasks further in his blog post here: https://www.donaldmeichenbaum.com/blog/on-deliberate-practice-the-pursuit-of-expertise-in-psychotherapy

Finally, the eagle-eyed will notice this was always supposed to be a 7-part series but I mistakenly called it 6 in the first 2 posts. Oops.

Next up in this series...Building Skills.