Girl in Hypnosis: This could be you!

              Hypnosis is not a magical, mystical state in which miracles occur.  While the results obtained using hypnosis can seem magical or miraculous, hypnosis is naturally occurring state of mind/brain. There are specific and measurable brain wave frequencies that occur when a subject is said to “be in hypnosis”.

Hypnosis works because it guides subjects into a natural state of enhanced learning. At the same time, in this state of enhanced learning, the “thinking and reasoning” part of the brain relaxes its critical filtering system so that information can make changes to the original “blueprint” with less interference.

The other important component of hypnosis is that the brain’s critical filtering system (the conscious mind) becomes less engaged. This enhanced learning state (hypnosis) plus relaxation of the conscious mind (the thinking and reasoning part of the brain), is what we call hypnotherapy. That, in a nutshell, is how hypnosis works.  Relax into daydreamy imaginings and those imaginings create your reality to come.

Let’s look at the procedures, protocols and suggestions that we would use for any hypnosis intervention.  The first thing would be to take a good intake.  Where do you feel it in your body?  Describe how it feels in your body? When does it occur?  What triggers it?  What relieves it? Questions like that will provide the specific responses that we want to change.

Once the triggers have been discovered and the way those triggers feel in the client’s body is determined, the client is taken into hypnosis.

Suggestions might be understood as being the self-talk we use all day everyday but when used in hypnosis to effect change, the self-talk will involve the changes we want to create. You might of it as the self-persuasion we do to ourselves when we are trying to get something to change in our lives.

There are a number of different ways we deliver suggestions.  A direct suggestion is based on exactly what behavior change we want to occur.  “Each and every time you feel the sensation of nausea beginning, you will stop, breathe, and your nervous system will become calm, still, placid and you will experience complete comfort.”

An indirect suggestion might be more like: “It may be that when you begin to notice that sensation that might mean nausea is soon to follow.  Of course, I can’t know exactly when you might feel that or where, exactly, in your body, you might feel that, but your subconscious mind knows exactly how to handle that sensation so that you remain calm and comfortable.”

Indirect suggestions might include metaphors, stories, allegories, similes because the subconscious mind understands symbols better than it does language.  Why? Because language has to be translated into symbols for the subconscious mind to experience and understand it.

Different subjects respond differently to the various kinds of suggestions, so the type of suggestion is chosen individually for each subject.

Pictures are presented to the subconscious mind.  Feelings, emotions and sensations are presented to the subconscious mind.  Choices are experienced and decided upon.

The object of the hypnotic intervention is to “sell and persuade” the subconscious mind to begin to behave in the preferred way.

If you’re curious, call for a free consultation.

Here’s to your success…

NOTABLE  QUOTABLE

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.

Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005)

________________

Part 1 of 3

Have you ever noticed that when people argue or disagree that the supposed issues don’t really seem to be worth fighting over?  Maybe you notice that a vague feeling hovers around like a bad smell; that the “topic” is not quite what is wrong?  But, you ask yourself, “What is it?”

Let me explain the concept of  ”It’s not about the socks on the floor.” Years ago I was a working wife and mother; my former husband was a very hard-working business owner.  We both really like a super clean, neat home.  He worked way too many hours and would come home exhausted.  I was busy too, but I really loved to scrub and spit shine our wonderful big house. My vision: when he got home on Saturday night, everything would be perfectly perfect.  We could both kick-back and enjoy what was left of the evening.  I saw it as my gift to both of us.  I eventually got household help but that was then.

One Saturday evening, after I had been scrubbing and straightening all day, he came home and  trudged up the stairs as exhausted as I had ever seen him.  He plopped down on the bed, yanked his shoes and socks off and threw them into the middle of the floor.  I was devastated, hurt and confused…and madder than hell.

We looked at each other and then at the socks and then back at each other again.  For a moment we were both mute.  Our faces were like stone, beet-red and frozen.

Fortunately for us, we looked back at the socks on the floor… and started to laugh.  Somehow, we could see that our feelings were really about:  “If you loved me, you would understand how exhausted I am and wouldn’t care if I threw my socks on the floor” and “If you loved me, you would understand how hard I worked, how good it felt to have everything finished and you wouldn’t throw your socks on my perfectly perfect, clean floor.”

From then on, it was easier to spot when “It’s not about the socks on the floor.”  The real issue was usually some variation of “If you really loved me…”  It can also be some variation of “I want what I want when I want it and you can’t deny me,” but that’s a different discussion.

I see this all the time in my practice, friends, family, and even in myself. When an argument feels wretched but doesn’t quite make sense, the chances are very likely that you’re dealing with an issue like “It’s about the socks on the floor.”

The “topic,” without context, is often fairly neutral. But the perceived intention is that each is being hard-headed, stubborn, unyielding, unsympathetic, disrespectful, unloving, selfish, and will never understand how you feel.

There you both stand, squared off, arms crossed, jaws set and one thousand percent certain that you alone are totally and completely right and justified.  You have both become “emotionally high-jacked.”  The Berlin wall has just been resurrected.  What to do now?  (Part 2 of 3 to follow)

In the meantime, here’s to your success…

Susan French, MA, CHt

http://www.hypno4success.com

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

[Addiction's] not about placating the bad dog – it’s about feeding the good dog.

You still have to feed the bad dog, but only enough so that the ASPCA doesn’t bring you up on charges.

Robert Downey Jr.,  Entertainment Weekly, 11-21-08

Addicted? Can't stop? Try Hypnotherapy. It Work!

Clients come to me all the time for help in ending an addiction that they can’t shake on their own. Hypnotherapy helps in a number of specific ways to ease the discomfort of breaking an addiction as well as preventing relapse. We’ll look at those in a moment but first let’s take a look at the definition of the word “addiction.”

MERRIAM-WEBSTER

Ad.dic.tion (noun)

1. Quality or state of being addicted.

2. Compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal;broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful

Examples of ADDICTION

He has a drug addiction.

His life has been ruined by heroin addiction.

He devotes his summers to his surfing addiction.

Let me paraphrase. An addiction is a behavior characterized by the inability to stop the behavior without discomfort.

My first question to a person who seeks to be free of an “addiction” is: “What do you fear the most about quitting?” The reason I ask this first is because most people who are “addicted” to anything want to stop. Whether the “drug of choice” is nicotine, heroin, cocaine, crack, meth, overeating, sugar addiction, gambling the one constant is the fact that withholding of the substance causes discomfort.

The biggest obstacle to ending any addiction is dealing with the initial discomfort that follows interrupting the habit.

In fact, the biggest obstacle to ending any addiction is in FACING THE FEAR OF THE DISCOMFORT that follows any attempt to withhold or restrict the behavior.

Why pick these points? A habit is not an addiction. It’s a habit. What’s the difference? When you begin to change a habit you don’t have a gut-wrenching drive to continue it because the result of changing it doesn’t cause pain.

Try wearing your watch on the opposite hand than you usually use. It might be a little annoying but you won’t experience “withdrawal.” Therefore, wearing your watch on a different wrist is not an addiction; it’s a habit. Both physical and emotional withdrawal from an “addiction” are experienced as painful and, more importantly, intolerable.

A little off-topic but relevant is what I ask of clients who are in pain and accused (often unfairly) of being “addicted” to painkillers. My question to them: “Are you addicted to painkillers or are you addicted to being free of pain?” “Judge not lest you be judged” or something like that. Relief often floods their faces when I ask that. “Yes, you’re right. I’m ‘addicted’ to being painfree.”

Herein lies the real issue people deal with when attempting to end an addiction. By its very nature, when you withhold or withdraw the use of the substance, whatever it might be, the individual experiences mental, emotional and/or physical pain.

It is essential to helping an addict out of bondage is to help him to recognize, acknowledge and ease or eliminate this “pain” as well as eliminating his “anticipatory fear of the pain.”

Hypnosis is an accepted technique for relieving pain. When someone comes to me for help in relieving their addiction, the first thing I do is to eliminate both the actual “pain” as well as the fear of the perceived or anticipated “pain” that this person believes will follow his being separated from his “drug of choice.”

Certainly there many other issues involved in ending addiction, such as discovering the unsatisfied emotional need that drives the need to escape, relieve stress, learn coping techiniques, find joy and peace in one’s life without the substance.

However, I find that the very first thing that I need to do is give the client relief from that pain, whether the “pain” is experienced as physical or emotional. And to give them relief from their “anticipatory fear of the pain.”

Hypnosis itself provides easy relief from both pain and the fear of pain. We know that as a proven fact. Once the “pain” is addressed, the addict is then free to explore and discover the driving forces that made him seek out his addiction in the first place.

If you are struggling with an addiction or compulsion and finding that you cannot stop on your own, please consider using hypnosis to ease the pain, discomfort, and fear that stands in your way.

Unhappy? Maybe it’s too much small talk
Posted: 11:27 AM ET
By Elizabeth Landau
CNNHealth.com Writer-Producer

No talk? Small talk? Real talk is necessary for happiness and feelings of connection.

Small talk is part of everyday life, but it’s the substantial, meaningful conversations that may make you happy. That’s one possibility suggested in a new study examining how conversation connects to happiness.

Researchers, led by Matthias Mehl at the University of Arizona, looked at the different types of conversation that happy and unhappy people participate in. The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, was somewhat small, involving 79 undergraduates, but meshes well with established ideas that happiness and social life are intertwined.

Experts found that the happiest people in the study engaged in only one-third as much small talk as the unhappiest participants. Happy people tended to have twice as many substantive conversations, and spent 25 percent less time alone, than the unhappiest participants.

These insights fit with what psychologists have seen previously: that loneliness predicts depression, and that feelings of social connectedness are important for happiness, said Susan Turk Charles, psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the study.

Substantive conversations create a feeling of belonging that leads to happiness, she said. Conversely, people who suffer from depression tend to withdraw from others.

The method that the researchers used was creative, Charles said. Instead of bringing people into a lab, as traditionally done in these sorts of studies, they had participants wear a recording device for four days, picking up conversations that they had.

The Electronically Activated Recorder sampled 30 seconds of sound every 12.5 minutes, giving researchers a broad range of conversations to examine in terms of “small talk” vs. “deep conversation.”

The bottom line is that maintaining friendships can help with emotional well-being. Friends buffer negative events and provide support, Charles said. Don’t be too busy to have a meaningful conversation, she said.

“It really is important in your life. It should be something that you prioritize just as much as you prioritize, maybe, working on your career or getting that project finished,” she said.

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

Posted by: Elizabeth Landau – CNN.com Health Writer/Producer
Filed under: Psychology

The human need for feelings of meaningful connection are recognized by Abraham Mazlow in his “Hierarchy of Needs,” Joe Griffin and Ian Tyrrell in the work on the “Human Givens,” and probably throughout history.

I’ve always noticed how nervous I get when I’m stuck in a situation where people are going to talk about “kids and crabgrass” or “Dancing With The Stars” and the latest “Survivor” series.

How about you? Do you ever feel lonliest in a crowd? It sounds like it is a natural human response. On the other hand, if social phobia holds you back, hypnotherapy can help.

Here’s to your success….

Susan French
www.hypno4success.com/blog
hypno4success@socal.rr.com
877-583-2026

Please remember: your comments are valued.  Please make them.  SKF

As an esteemed colleague of mine once said of patients/clients: “laughter is a sign that healing has begun.” It’s so very true.

Norman Cousins is probably our best known example of this Truth. Norman Cousins (June 24, 1915 – November 30, 1990) was an American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate.

At age 11, he was misdiagnosed with tuberculosis and placed in a sanatorium. Despite this, he was an athletic young man, displaying early on the optimistic character that ultimately gave him years of life, long past the “expiration date” given
to him by his doctors.

It was as a professor at UCLA, where he did research on the biochemistry of human emotions, that led him to his belief that positive emotions held the key to healing.

He wrote a collection of best-selling non-fiction books on illness and healing, as well as a 1980 autobiographical memoir, Human Options: An Autobiographical Notebook.

Late in life Cousins the diagnosis was changed to ankylosing spondylitis (AS), a form of crippling arthritis. Though it was later speculated that he actually had reactive arthritis instead, but the result was the same: chronic debilitating pain and disability.

His struggle with this illness is detailed in the book and movie “Anatomy of an Illness,” about illness as perceived by the patient: reflections on healing and regeneration.

Told that he had little chance of surviving Cousins developed his own recovery program incorporating megadoses of Vitamin C, along with a positive attitude, love, faith, hope, and laughter induced by Marx Brothers

It was this belief that allowed him to fight the ravages of his illnesses, even his later diagnosed heart disease. He fought both by taking massive doses of Vitamin C and,
according to him, by training himself to laugh.

Taking his own advice, he prescribed for himself a program of laughter daily: “I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep,” he reported.

“When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval.”

He died of heart failure on November of 1990, having survived years longer than his doctors predicted: 10 years after his first heart attack, 26 years after his collagen illness, and 36 years after his doctors first diagnosed his heart disease.

He proved his theory by being his own best doctor, leaving us a legacy that proves that “laughter really is our best medicine.”

Medical science has come a long way since then, proving more and more completely that our bodies follow the pictures, attitudes and emotions in our minds. Of course, there is no better way to utilize these ideas than with hypnotherapy.

If you’re struggling with illness in any form, hypnosis provides a sturdy vehicle for wellness.

Here’s to your success…

Susan French

http://www.hypno4success.com

Boost your optimism score

Hard to remember when you’re facing a bump in the road or a temporary setback.  Clinical research has shown that attitude and optimism are a far better indicator of success than any other qualities.  Martin Seligman (“Learned Optimism”) did major studies of this phenomenon.

When I stumble in life, particular on an important project, I give myself five to fifteen minutes to sit in the  corner and suck my thumb.  ”I pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over ” as the song goes.

I have a personal saying for times like these: “You might  get me down but you can’t keep me down.”  This is directed at the obstacle, the driver of the obstacle or God/Higher Power and sometimes just at the Outer Darkness.

You haven’t failed until you breathed your  last breath, and even then you haven’t failed because you were almost there.  You just didn’t know it.

If you are having difficulties falling into depression, lethargy, the “I don’t wanna’s,” being your own worst critic, a few sessions of ego-strengthening through hypnotherapy can help.

To your success…

Susan

www.hypno4success.com