Open Mind Hypnotherapy
The halfway mark of my 100 Happy Days project!
Day 41: A family day out in the sunshine at Birches Valley – this was my favourite shot from the whole day 🙂
Day 42: A gorgeously sunny, client-filled day in London
Day 43: A visit with the girls to Amerton Farm – here they are choosing a gingerbread man each from the bakery
Day 44: Making chocolate Easter nests with the girls
Day 45: Stuck indoors thanks to Lola having chickenpox = getting creative and messy with the paints!
Day 46: Lots of cuddles with my spotty girl who is still smiling even though she’s feeling poorly
Day 47: Escaped the house for half an hour to go for a bike ride in the sunshine
Day 48: Making bracelets with the girls on a rainy afternoon
Day 49: People watching at Euston station after a busy day of clients. I love observing people’s interactions with each other (and their outfits!)
Day 50: The aftermath of Easter-egg-eating fun #messyfaces
In my original post I mentioned that I would be conducting a bit of an experiment within this photo project.
I told you about the research that I’m involved in, which (through a couple of short questionnaires) calibrates my clients levels of anxiety, depression and general sense of wellbeing from session to session. The results (gathered over a period of time) are to be used in order to provide solid evidence to the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) that Cognitive Hypnotherapy is effective at helping people to overcome these kinds of issues.
I decided to fill in the same questionnaires that I give to my clients on days 1, 25, 50, 75 and 100 of the project, to see what a difference taking these photos has made to my levels of happiness. In theory, the anxiety and depression scores should reduce and the wellbeing score should increase.
On Day 1 of the project, my scores were as follows:
On Day 25 of the project, these were my results:
Now, at halfway through the project (day 50), it’s time for me to fill in the questionnaires again. These are my results:
In all honesty I’m quite surprised at my results. I know that tasks like ‘3 gifts’ and ‘Random Acts of Kindness’ that I ask my clients to do between therapy sessions do work to help them get better. I’ve seen the evidence in their research scores and listened to their personal accounts of how they’ve felt they’ve improved from one session to the next. It’s different when you see and feel it in yourself after trying something new.
I didn’t think I had much to improve on. My original scores were below the thresholds for ‘caseness’ in terms of anxiety (8) and depression (10), and my wellbeing score was above the minimum suggested (20). I do occasionally still have days where I don’t feel as good about myself as I could, but overall I consider myself to be very happy, and there are a lot of exciting things going on in my world right now – both business-wise and related to personal stuff.
I have definitely felt a difference in my mood over the last 50 days and the only thing I can put it down to is this project – nothing else has changed. It’s convinced me enough so far to start introducing the 100 Happy Days photo project as a new task for my clients to complete between sessions – a lot of the clients I work with are very creative and artistically talented in a variety of ways, and they are all loving it so far.
I’m really curious now to find out what my scores are going to be on days 75 and 100 of the project.
If any of you have been doing the project along with me, I’d love to find out how you are doing, so please feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts and feelings about the effect it’s having on you.
🙂
Phone: +44 (0) 7794 595783
Email: chloe@openmindhypnotherapy.co.uk
