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'Sunday Business Post' Article 7th January 2001
Are You Sitting Comfortably
One of the down sides of the booming economy is the unprecendented levels of stress it has caused in the workplace leading to hjigh absenteeism. Ciunas uses the power of hypnosis to assist with the stress management and help employees to reach their true potential.
Report by Gabi Thesing.
Therese Hackett knows all about stress. Formerly a high flying marketing executive in London's buzzing IT & Telecoms sector, she knows how positive stress can act as a terrific motivator hut how the negative elements of it can also damage your health.
Having been at the cutting edge of business, she says she understands business people and suggests that this experience might help lower the scepticism barrier for those who might think of using hypnotherapy as a stress management tool.

"I am not a New Age traveller, which might he an image which would frighten some business people. Hypnotherapy is excellent for managing stress, establishing goals and applying new expertise, as well as finding out what is possibly holding a person hack in his or her career," Hackett says.

She has just set up Ciunas (Irish for quietness) a hypnotherapy and Neuro Linguistics Programming clinic in Dublin. She also operates in Leitrim, from where she hails originally. Apart from individual clients, she is also actively targeting companies offering bespoke Hypnotherapy and NPL courses.

She left Ireland 12 years ago for London "to become a manager." She was a secretary at that stage. She started on the career ladder with mobile phone company One2One and steadily moved up the ladder with all the downsides it brought of working longer hours and longer commutes.

While she had always dabbled in alternative medicine it was when she was made redundant and put on a personal development course as part her severance package that a change in career seemed like a viable option.

Why hypnotherapy, though? "Hypnotherapy is recognised by both the NHS and BUPA and the course I did was actually approved by the NHS. To me it seemed to be the most professional course and it had standards, which appealed to me.

She enrolled at the London College of Clinical Hypnotherapy and qualified in 1998. "1 felt 1 wasn't ready to practice 'yet and throughout the course I continued to work in the marketing industry".

Hackett got the opportunity to relocate to Ireland last year with Cable & Wireless. "It was a great opportunity for me, as 1 though I knew it wasn't a long-term job. After a couple of months I took a very generous redundancy offer and decided finally to set up my own practice."

"It is cry fashionable at the moment to he stressed. I am stressed, therefore I am part of the Celtic Tiger, therefore I am important, can explain some of the growing phenomenon," she says. At the same ttme she acknowledges that the condition can seriously affect people's performances and companies' success.

Before setting up her practice she also studied Neuro Linguistic Programming, a performance enhancing technique that is quite well known as a training tool for sales executives.

"Hypnotherapy and NPL are an ideal combination for both individuals and group sessions. Hypnotherapy involves relaxation while NPL evaluates the processes of a problem, situation or behaviour, and then applies the resources necessarily to achieve the required result.

"The classic example is where one member of a sales team is just not performing well, even though the person is on the same package as everyone else on the team. I can work out with them what the issues are. It could be that they has e a problem with the work environment, that they lack confidence, or that maybe they are comfortable with the whole idea of being involved in sales in the first place. I am just a different pair of eves giving a different perspective," he says.

BUPA and the VHI do not cover Hypnotherapy here even though BUPA in the UK recommends and pays for it as part of a stress management regime. It also recommends it as a preventative measure for heart disease, another affliction of overly stressed executives.

Ireland is still behind in recognising the benefits of alternative medicine and the use of hypnosis on the cabaret and comedy circuit where people are often asked to expose themselves to the most ridiculous situations surely doesn't help.

"I appreciate the scepticism but I usually give managers a free trial session where they see that it is not scars and that they don't lose control. Usually they arc converts afterwards, men in particular. They appreciate that it is not about putting people under my spell but about increasing productivity and personal development. In the current climate companies are also realising that money and big company ears do not satisfy e very need. A lot of employees are now asking for some form of personal development and this is an area where they could start."