Lost...and Found

(This blog was originally posted on September 22, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

 

There is a platitude about never really losing something that truly belongs to you. If it is truly yours and you are meant to have it, eventually, that object or person or pet will return to you. In the past 36 hours or so, three things I truly believed were gone for good returned to me in the most unexpected ways.

The first was a quote: “You don’t do that to people, you don’t do that to people, you don’t do that to people!” The line just popped into my head one night earlier this week and I had no idea why or where it was from, but the quote was so familiar. I tossed and turned for about an hour, wondering who said it, where had I heard or read it? Maybe it was from one of my favorite movies, Truly, Madly, Deeply? No. I have seen that film and many times and read the screenplay; I know the dialog for all the key grief scenes practically by heart, and that line wasn’t in any of those scenes. Finally, I did an Internet search and found a scene from Grey’s Anatomy that had a similar line. Similar, but not the same…. So I put the line out of my mind and went about my day. When I woke up the following morning, the answer to my quote puzzle was solved: the line was from a scene in Circle of Two, a 1980 film starring Tatum O’Neal as a sixteen-year-old girl who falls in love with an artist portrayed by Richard Burton. (FYI: The scene in which O’Neal says this line is at 1 hour 28 minutes into the movie.)

The second item I found was a notebook that contained notes I took during Charlotte Dujardin’s dressage symposium at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in March 2014. Earlier this year, I reorganized my room and packed away a lot of magazines and other items to store in our loft. The notebook “disappeared” around then. From time to time I considered climbing up to the loft to go through those boxes and look for the notebook; but as the months passed and the weather got hotter I just put it off. I knew it had to be somewhere in the house. Sure enough, when I was sorting through some notebooks for inspiration for a new blog I happened to glance at the corner of my bedroom and saw the notebook. It was on the floor next to a bookcase and probably had been there all along, I just never noticed it before. I quickly picked it up and placed it next to my computer; I referenced some of the notes in yesterday’s blog about the Olympic gold medalist’s tips for training a young horse for dressage.

I found the third item this evening. Actually, there were two items, but I didn’t know I was looking for the second one—which I found first—until I discovered it. When I started to become involved in advocating against cetacean captivity, I wanted to work on a counted cross-stitch pattern of orcas (killer whales). It was strange to me that even with the popularity of Blackfish and growing awareness about the plight of these animals at marine parks, there were no embroidery kits or even patterns of the mammals. I looked on-line and inquired about these kits at every craft shop I could find on San Juan Island, Washington, where I attended the Superpod 5 event in July. As it turned out, I actually had a pattern in a collection of embroidery designs of wild animals tucked away in a box in my closet. I’m sure I purchased the book for the patterns of grizzly bears and grey wolves, and it probably had been languishing in that box, never opened, for at least ten years.

The amazing thing to me was that I only found the patterns because I was desperately searching for something else. Last weekend, I noticed that a small plastic horse I displayed on top of my dresser was missing. My mother gave me the horse to celebrate when I bought my first real horse, Geeves, in 2004. Both my mom and my horse have since passed away, and the sudden disappearance of that little horse really upset me. So this evening I started pulling boxes out from beneath and beside the dresser in case the horse fell behind or even into the items I was storing. (This was when and where I found the orca pattern.) What if I knocked it into one of the dresser drawers? I wondered. Ta-da! When I opened the one in which I store my t-shirts, I could see four tiny plastic hooves sticking up.

My hypnotherapy training really helped me find these items because it allowed me to relax and allow the inspiration and items to come to me rather than slip into a frantic search mentality. I was able to engage the logic/will-power/reasoning/decision-making faculties of my conscious mind to strategize about where I should start looking: Where was the last place I saw the item/heard that line? But I also knew that when the item didn’t appear after a reasonable time of searching, the best thing to do was stop the active search and allow my subconscious mind to do the heavy-lifting part of this work. The conscious mind can only store a limited amount of information at any one time, but the SCM holds millions of message units just waiting to be re-discovered. I just needed to be patient, relax, wait and let the treasures return to me.

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

Don't Second-Guess Yourself

(This blog was originally posted on February 25, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

Our ability to remember facts and information is astounding. Millions of pieces of information enter the human brain each day; some of it is processed and internalized as memory and the rest is “dumped” as irrelevant (unrelated, unfamiliar, an “unknown”) to the “known” facts we have already stored in the subconscious mind. Other pieces of information get buried so deep that we’re surprised we actually know or knew it in the first place until someone asks the right question and jars that little nugget loose from its storage area. Or, we recently learned the information but it isn’t immediately accessible to the conscious mind, which sends us into a panic and then self-recrimination for not having “remembered” what we were supposed to know.

Students recognize this phenomenon as a version of “tip-of-the-tongue syndrome.” It often happens in moments of stress, such as during a test. Musicians and actors experience a similar experience if they suddenly blank out or forget a portion of the music they are supposed to play or a line of dialog they need to recite. This can also occur during moments of leisure or recreation. Even though the stakes are comparatively lower, the perceived pressure of getting an answer right or hitting the right note and not let anyone down can produce a lot of pressure.

This evening, I met some friends from my professional network group, NRG, for a meal at a local restaurant and play a game Trivial Pursuit. There were approximately nine teams in the restaurant, including ours. I admit that my knowledge about many of the topics was not as good as a few of my teammates. What surprised me most of all was when I realized I knew—or thought that I knew—an answer to a question even though I have no knowledge or expertise in the topic. Another time, even though I was positive that I had the correct answer, I immediately started to doubt my certainty and lost a bit of confidence when it was time to submit the response. Everyone is counting on you; you said you know this answer. You lived in England for seven years, you should know this answer. Quick, quick, the moderator needs the answer!

Fortunately, thanks to my hypnotherapy training and years of helping clients overcome this exact same challenge, I was able to talk myself down from the panicked ledge I found myself on. I knew that I knew the answer, and that the first answer I gave was most likely the correct one. I had to trust my subconscious mind to produce the information about this topic that I had stored there. I knew that if I wavered, if I continued to question and re-examine my reasons for suggesting that response, I was more likely to give the wrong one. It had been so easy, when I heard the question, to come up with what I knew and believed in my bones to be the correct response. I had to trust that gut instinct, and go with it. I was right. (The answer was United Kingdom or Great Britain. I can’t remember the exact question, but it had something to do with 10 Downing Street being the residential headquarters of the place of government for which nation.)

Another question later in the game was about the United States Stock Exchange. The acronym NASDAQ popped into my mind right away. One of my friends also playing the game was much more knowledgeable about stocks and investments, so everyone deferred to his expertise to provide the correct answer. The term he provided sounded reasonable and right. Wrong. If I had given my answer and my teammates had agreed to submit the response, we would have won that point. But I hadn’t spoken up because I doubted that I might, just possibly, be right.

This experience was a good reminder that the human brain acquires and processes so much information that even the most unlikely tidbits and facts may very well be stored in the subconscious mind. We just need to give ourselves permission to take that deep breath (or several) and take a leap of faith, or trust, or whatever, that we do know what we’re talking about. Sometimes, often, we know even more than we think or know that we know.

For information about this topic, I invite you to read my blogs titled Hypnosis and Memory Recall and Hypnosis to Overcome Test Anxiety.

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/.

© 2016

Hypnosis and Memory Recall

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

 

 

 

                Have you ever struggled with a problem or couldn’t think of the perfect response to a question or comment, only to go away and have that answer suddenly pop into your mind when you stop thinking about it? Do you sometimes forget where you set down your keys (I was just holding them!) or can’t recall the name of your absolute favorite movie when you are describing the plot to a new acquaintance? How about suddenly remembering that you needed to buy milk just as you are driving out of the grocery-store parking lot with your shopping? Have you ever had the answer to a test question (metaphorically) on the tip of your tongue but suddenly can’t access this information to write it down on the exam paper or quiz?

                Almost everyone experiences these kinds of situations from time to time. Such instances of forgetting important information are usually not indicators of illness, but they are definitely annoying and inconvenient. Once a medical doctor has ruled out a medical/organic/chemical issue as the cause or contributor to frequent memory loss, temporarily “blanking-out” information can usually be attributed to the fact that the conscious mind is overloaded with sensory/cognitive stimuli.* Once we leave the stressful situation or remove the external stressor(s) from our environment, the answer or solution to the problem seems to miraculously surface in our conscious mind. Here are some suggestions to help you access and recall information when you need it:

·         Pay attention to your body. It is easy to forget to do something when our conscious mind is so busy dealing with whatever is going on around us. However, our SCM has likely processed and stored this information, which it tries to communicate via subtle, physical sensations. If you start to notice that sense of unease or discomfort when you have the niggling thought, “I think/I know I am forgetting something!” pay attention to that inner voice.

·         Take a deep breath (or several). Deep breathing helps to relax your mind and body by sending more oxygenated blood to your organs. It also provides a momentary respite from the stress and frustration of trying to access the blocked information that you are trying to recall.

·         Play word/letter association games. It doesn’t matter whether or not you even know the first letter of the word you are trying to recall. Just start going through the alphabet slowly to trigger this association. You may have to repeat this process several times to get the answer you are looking for. That’s okay: the more you distract your mind from the emotional or cognitive stress of consciously looking for the information, the more likely you are to free your SCM to find and retrieve it for you.

·         Eat nutritious meals that contain protein—especially before a test or doing a presentation at work. According to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., eating food that contains protein prevents a sudden drop in blood-sugar level that can contribute to memory problems, increased anxiety and physical symptoms associated with this state. The less anxious you feel during a stressful situation, the easier it will be to retrieve information you need from your SCM to do well on your examination or answer questions about the material you discussed during a presentation.

·         Avoid saying/thinking, “Don’t forget…” The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between reality and fantasy; it also doesn’t recognize negative words. When you say or think that you should “not” do something, the SCM will process the message that it should do whatever you want to avoid. Instead, give yourself an instruction to remember to do the desired behavior.

·         Hypnosis can help you improve your memory/ability to recall information and relieve test anxiety. During your hypnotherapy session, I will teach you simple breathing and relaxation exercises to help you reduce stress as you prepare for and take your test. I will create a hypnotic script to specifically address your recall and memory issues. I will also give you a recording of your hypnosis to keep and listen to, to reinforce the relaxation and positive recall techniques that we worked on during your hypnotherapy session.

 

 

 

*California law allows access by California residents to complementary and alternative health care practitioners who are not providing services that require medical training and credentials. The purpose of a program of hypnotherapy is for vocational and avocational self-improvement (Business and Professions Code 2908) and as an alternative or complementary treatment to healing arts services licensed by the state. A hypnotherapist is not a licensed physician or psychologist, and hypnotherapy services are not licensed by the state of California. Services are non-diagnostic and do not include the practice of medicine, neither should they be considered a substitute for licensed medical or psychological services or procedures.

 

 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®, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.