Dealing With Frustration

(This blog was originally posted on July 15, 2014)

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

        What frustrates you? Being stuck in rush-hour traffic? Having to chase your dog around the neighborhood to catch him after he jumped the fence? Sleeping through your alarm and being late for work? Pop-up ads that block the computer screen and impede your work until you figure out how to get rid of the advertisement? The list goes on. Following are some practical relaxation and visualization techniques that you can use to help you relax when you experience stress during such moments of frustration.

• Diaphragmatic breathing. Draw a slow, deep breath through your nose; hold it four three or four seconds and then release the air through your mouth. Breathing this way not only relaxes the tension in your physical body; it also provides a tangible example (proof) that you can control a specific physical behavior. Repeat this exercise several times until you notice that your pulse/heartbeat returns to its normal (resting) rate.

• Let your conscious awareness of the situation help you out. According to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas,Ph.D.’s Theory of Mind, your subconscious mind is likely following a mental script about how it thinks you “should” respond or behave when you are frustrated. When you are in a situation with which you regularly associate anxiety and frustration, you are likely to experience these negative emotions as soon as your SCM recognizes similar themes in that environment. Practice diaphragmatic breathing while you focus your attention on specific physical characteristics (message units) of the stimuli you experience around you. What do you see, hear, feel, taste or smell? Directing your conscious attention to these individual details in this way will not only help to relax you by distracting your attention away from the source of your stress or frustration. It will also inundate your SCM with these new message units and help to create a new, different (innocuous) mental script about this formerly stress-inducing environment.

• Focus on your options/solutions. As Gil Grissom, one of my favorite characters from the original cast of CBS’ hit series, CSI, used to say: “There is always a clue.” Once your physical body is relaxed and your mind is calm, you can turn your attention to finding solutions to the problem that is causing your stress. Once your subconscious mind has created new associations (knowns­) between feeling calm and your ability to focus, it becomes easier to create new solutions for reducing your frustration or even access previously proved (success) mental scripts to manage your frustration.

• Be polite and gracious to the people around you. Good manners go a long, long way to preventing the development of additional social/emotional stress in your environment. For example, if there is a long line at the drug store when you go to pick up your prescription, you can be pretty sure that other people, including the clerk, are also experiencing frustration about the wait. The simple physical action of smiling at the people around you transforms your negative energy/emotion into a positive response. As Dr. Kappas liked to remind his clients and students, it is impossible for two opposite emotions to exist at the same time. In addition, positive emotion has stronger energy than a negative emotion such as anger or frustration. When you smile, you not only convert the negative energy but also (metaphorically) invite solutions that will resolve your problem, including another person offering to help you out.

Finally, hypnotherapy and therapeutic-guided imagery are great tools to help you learn to relax and manage/control stress and frustration. I will teach you simple breathing and relaxation exercises that you can use to help reduce stress and create a hypnotic script to help manage your frustration during specific situations. I will also give you a recording of your hypnosis to keep that you can listen to and reinforce the relaxation techniques that we worked on during your hypnotherapy session.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2018

Schadenfreude and the Law of Attraction

(This blog was originally posted on March 14, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

There is a scene in International Velvet when a horse on a rival Olympic team knocks down a pole and incurs a points-error. When the protagonist’s aunt Velvet sees the error on television, she shouts, “Good!” The opponent’s error has made a little more room for her niece, Sarah, to secure a team gold medal if she can get around the course without making any mistakes. (Of course, she does.) But that doesn’t happen before Velvet’s partner, John, raises an eyebrow and comments, “That’s not very sporting of you!”

Schadenfreude.

I came across this word in the context of the plot in A Trick of the Light, a novel by Louise Penny, which I finished reading a few weeks ago. Basically, it means “deriving pleasure from someone else’s misfortune.” In the book, one of the characters is finally enjoying the critical recognition of her talent at a private show for her paintings, followed by a celebratory barbecue at her home. However, her husband and some friends discover the body of a former friend/enemy their garden the following day. The artist wants to celebrate the success of her show and budding career, but she feels guilty about wanting her art to be lauded even after the crime that happened in front of her home. Perhaps more disturbing to her is the eventual realization that her husband, a successful artist, has actually been jealous of her talent for many years and secretly hoped that the murder might derail her success a little bit. 

In addition to the scenarios described above, Urban Dictionary lists several common examples of this experience: hearing someone shout “Hold the door!” while running for an elevator, only to reach the lift just as the door shuts. Or, a straight-A student missing one question on a five-question quiz to bring the test score down to a B (80 percent). How about when the quarterback on the opposing team gets sacked after preventing your team from scoring a touch-down? Another example might be watching the value of a company’s stock shares plummet right after you have been fired. And so on.

It is not uncommon or even unnatural to feel happy about or want to get a small bit of compensation for our own misfortune. But, how “good” does it really feel? Does it make you feel happy? Relieved? Or, do you scramble for all of the reasons why the other person deserved this misfortune or inconvenience so you can justify feeling good about it? Human emotions can be very tricky things. They can be accompanied by physiological sensations such as palpitations, change in breathing, trembling, etc. Sometimes censorial thoughts from the conscious mind (and conscience) intrude on these celebrations, too: Why do I feel good about someone else feeling bad?

Try this simple technique to get a different perspective about what is going on inside and around you: Draw a deep, calming breath and hold this air in your lungs for four seconds. Do not think about the situation, your emotions or why you think/imagine you felt the way you do or did when the situation first occurred. Instead, focus your attention on your breath and someone or something that brings you a lot of love and joy. Perhaps it is your spouse, or your kids, a pet, your job, a hobby, etc. Then, as you exhale, release the breath on the word love. Repeat this exercise several times to reinforce this positive direction of your attention. 

In his book, Success Is Not an Accident: The Mental Bank Concept, Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., explains how the mental scripts we program into our subconscious mind determine the outcome of our actions. Whether we imagine a positive or negative result, the SCM follows that subconscious mental script to actualize the goal you “want.” When we focus on enjoying the negative outcome another person is experiencing, we may also be reinforcing a subconscious desire for a similar negative event to happen to us. Conversely, when we send out positive, encouraging energy to celebrate another person’s success, we are also telling the subconscious mind, I want success, too! Whether that success includes getting into an elevator before the door closes or celebrating your partner’s triumphant art show, wishing another person well is more likely to attract good things to you than the temporary pleasure of schadenfreude ever could.

For more information about the Law of Attraction, I invite you to read my blog titled Intuition and the Law of Attraction and check out the book resources on this topic in Suggested Reading.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2018

Schadenfreude and the Law of Attraction

(This blog was originally posted on March 14, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

There is a scene in International Velvet when a horse on a rival Olympic team knocks down a pole and incurs a points-error. When the protagonist’s aunt Velvet sees the error on television, she shouts, “Good!” The opponent’s error has made a little more room for her niece, Sarah, to secure a team gold medal if she can get around the course without making any mistakes. (Of course, she does.) But that doesn’t happen before Velvet’s partner, John, raises an eyebrow and comments, “That’s not very sporting of you!”

Schadenfreude.

I came across this word in the context of the plot in A Trick of the Light, a novel by Louise Penny, which I finished reading a few weeks ago. Basically, it means “deriving pleasure from someone else’s misfortune.” In the book, one of the characters is finally enjoying the critical recognition of her talent at a private show for her paintings, followed by a celebratory barbecue at her home. However, her husband and some friends discover the body of a former friend/enemy their garden the following day. The artist wants to celebrate the success of her show and budding career, but she feels guilty about wanting her art to be lauded even after the crime that happened in front of her home. Perhaps more disturbing to her is the eventual realization that her husband, a successful artist, has actually been jealous of her talent for many years and secretly hoped that the murder might derail her success a little bit. 

In addition to the scenarios described above, Urban Dictionary lists several common examples of this experience: hearing someone shout “Hold the door!” while running for an elevator, only to reach the lift just as the door shuts. Or, a straight-A student missing one question on a five-question quiz to bring the test score down to a B (80 percent). How about when the quarterback on the opposing team gets sacked after preventing your team from scoring a touch-down? Another example might be watching the value of a company’s stock shares plummet right after you have been fired. And so on.

It is not uncommon or even unnatural to feel happy about or want to get a small bit of compensation for our own misfortune. But, how “good” does it really feel? Does it make you feel happy? Relieved? Or, do you scramble for all of the reasons why the other person deserved this misfortune or inconvenience so you can justify feeling good about it? Human emotions can be very tricky things. They can be accompanied by physiological sensations such as palpitations, change in breathing, trembling, etc. Sometimes censorial thoughts from the conscious mind (and conscience) intrude on these celebrations, too: Why do I feel good about someone else feeling bad?

Try this simple technique to get a different perspective about what is going on inside and around you: Draw a deep, calming breath and hold this air in your lungs for four seconds. Do not think about the situation, your emotions or why you think/imagine you felt the way you do or did when the situation first occurred. Instead, focus your attention on your breath and someone or something that brings you a lot of love and joy. Perhaps it is your spouse, or your kids, a pet, your job, a hobby, etc. Then, as you exhale, release the breath on the word love. Repeat this exercise several times to reinforce this positive direction of your attention. 

In his book, Success Is Not an Accident: The Mental Bank Concept, Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., explains how the mental scripts we program into our subconscious mind determine the outcome of our actions. Whether we imagine a positive or negative result, the SCM follows that subconscious mental script to actualize the goal you “want.” When we focus on enjoying the negative outcome another person is experiencing, we may also be reinforcing a subconscious desire for a similar negative event to happen to us. Conversely, when we send out positive, encouraging energy to celebrate another person’s success, we are also telling the subconscious mind, I want success, too! Whether that success includes getting into an elevator before the door closes or celebrating your partner’s triumphant art show, wishing another person well is more likely to attract good things to you than the temporary pleasure of schadenfreude ever could.

For more information about the Law of Attraction, I invite you to read my blog titled Intuition and the Law of Attraction and check out the book resources on this topic in Suggested Reading.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2017