Therapy

Havening Therapy: A Guide for Therapists

by John Nolan
1st January 2025

Havening is a powerful and versatile psychosensory therapy that can be used by therapists to help clients heal from trauma, reduce stress and anxiety, manage pain, improve relationships, and much more. It combines touch, attention, and positive visualisation to alter brain activity, and facilitate emotional and physical well-being. It can be used by itself or alongside other therapies. A key benefit of Havening is that it can be done with or without the client disclosing the content of their trauma, making it particularly useful for those who find talking about their experiences difficult. Havening is also easy to learn and can be self-applied, making it a valuable self-care tool that empowers the client. This makes it a very powerful technique that is both gentle and effective. It is a rapidly evolving therapy and is hoped to be adopted more widely as the benefits are better understood. Havening also has the advantage of being able to protect the therapist from vicarious traumatization.

Havening Practitioner Can Help with Anxiety6th January 2025
A Havening practitioner uses Havening Techniques, a psychosensory approach, to help people overcome their anxiety by addressing the root causes of their distress and promoting relaxation and wellbeing. In addition to Havening touch, a practitioner may include other strategies such as mindfulness, values orientation, and self-care. A Havening practitioner could be a better choice for many people due to its focus on addressing the core emotional content of anxiety, the safe and gentle nature of its techniques, the rapid results, and the emphasis on self-empowerment. The ability to integrate Havening with other modalities, its versatility, its basis in neuroscience, and its holistic approach make it a powerful and effective tool for promoting healing and resilience.
Productive Anxiety: Harnessing Your Nervous Energy6th January 2025
Productive anxiety is about transforming your relationship with your anxious feelings. Rather than seeing anxiety as a negative force to be eliminated, it encourages a way of viewing it as a source of energy, focus, and foresight. By reframing anxiety, accepting its presence, understanding its purpose, using specific tools and techniques, and shifting your mindset, you can transition from being controlled by anxiety to harnessing its potential to improve your performance, pursue your goals, and ultimately live a more fulfilling life. This approach promotes action orientation, self-honesty and kindness, and encourages the acceptance of discomfort as a normal part of growth.
What you need to know about Social Anxiety6th January 2025
Overcoming social anxiety is possible through understanding and applying a range of strategies. These include challenging negative thoughts, gradually facing feared social situations, using mindfulness, practising self-compassion and relaxation techniques, acting in line with values, and using other helpful techniques such as distraction and exaggeration. Remember that progress may take time, and it is okay to seek professional support when needed. By being consistent with these methods and being kind to yourself, you can beat social anxiety and start living a more fulfilling life.
Psychological Flexibility: The path to mental freedom.5th January 2025
Psychological flexibility is a powerful approach that helps people relate to their inner experiences in a way that promotes well-being and a more fulfilling life. Rather than focusing on eliminating unwanted thoughts and feelings, psychological flexibility encourages a way of relating to them. This approach empowers people to engage in valued behaviours even when uncomfortable or challenging situations arise. By developing the six core elements of psychological flexibility - acceptance, defusion, present moment awareness, self-as-context, values, and committed action - individuals can learn to navigate life's challenges with greater ease, resilience, and purpose.
The Havening Technique for Anxiety:Based on the new neuroscience of trauma.5th January 2025
Havening is a psychosensory treatment that uses touch to eliminate negative feelings associated with distressing memories, promoting relaxation and well-being. Unlike some approaches that primarily focus on managing symptoms, Havening targets the root cause of anxiety and trauma by depotentiating encoded memories in the amygdala. The technique is rapid, gentle and can be used alongside other approaches, making it a flexible and powerful tool for addressing a variety of conditions.