Hypnotized Sharks

(This blog was originally posted on August 14, 2014)

Image courtesy of Microsoft

 

According to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., people escape or flee into hypnosis when they perceive a threat or danger.  As I learned during my hypnotherapy training at HMI: “Hypnosis is created by an overload of message units, disorganizing our inhibitory process (Critical Mind), triggering our fight-flight mechanism and ultimately resulting in a hyper-suggestible state, providing access to the subconscious mind.”

Apparently, sharks do a similar thing.

Last year, I watched a fascinating documentary about shark behavior in a Shark Week episode titled Zombie Sharks on the Discovery Channel®. In it, Eli Martinez, a shark expert, explained a neuro-physiological phenomenon called “tonic immobility.” According to Martinez, sharks can be rendered immobile whenever they are turned over onto their backs or, in some cases, by touching an area of a shark’s face. For all intents and purposes, tonic immobility temporarily paralyzes the shark until the contact is removed and/or it may rotate its body to a normal position.

Apparently, this area of the face and down the back is loaded with sensors which can quickly become overloaded by sensory stimuli. For example, an overload of sensory stimuli would occur when a researcher places his or her hands on the animal’s face or flips the fish onto its back to subdue it when inserting a tracking device, or if a larger predator, such as an orca, catches it and turns the animal onto its back as a predatory behavior. To complete this picture, imagine the psychological stress that a shark experiences when another animal—whether it is a human or another predator(s)—is swimming and lunging with hands or an opened toothy mouth, to catch it. There would be even more stress and anxiety for its survival when the fish is cornered and caught. In some instances, as in the case of the researchers and videographers for Shark Week, there would be additional sensory stimuli from the cameras and extra lighting in the ocean. By the time the shark is subdued on its back, it has endured an incredible overload of sensory stimulation. It is no wonder that the fish zones out.

 

This phenomenon sounds a lot like hypnosis to me.

For more information about tonic immobility, check out the articles at the following links: 

• “Tonic Immobility on Sharks”: http://www.sharkaidinternational.org/report_tonic_immobility_on_sharks.html

• “Discovery Channel’s ‘Zombie Sharks’ Explores Tonic Immobility”, Woodlands Online at  http://www.woodlandsonline.com/npps/story.cfm?nppage=53506

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

Micro-Aggressions

(This blog was originally posted on May 3, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

Someone is finally doing it. Someone is finally suing Starbucks® because the company “shorts” advertised quantity of coffee in iced beverages compared to the ratio of ice. O-kay, then.

The company argues that ice is supposed to be in an iced beverage. Isn’t that implied—even explicitly stated—in the names of the beverages like iced coffee, iced tea, iced-green-tea latte, etc.? Even the Frappuccino beverages made with a lot of ice. Considering how many units of iced beverages Starbucks® sells each day, I doubt that the plaintiff in this case is the first person who noticed the imbalanced of the coffee-to-ice ratio. Most people who order an iced beverage simply pay and happily walk out of the store or take a seat along the coffee bar and enjoy their drink, end of story. I wonder what inspired this person to actually sue the company over this imbalance instead of simply ask the barista to prepare the beverage with less or even no ice, or simply stop buying coffee there in the first place?

Last year, one of my nephews introduced me to the word “micro-aggression.” I remember laughing at the concept of micro-aggressions. I didn’t laugh because I believe some complaints and perceived injustices are truly funny or deserve to be dismissed out of hand, but because the word itself is demeaning and yet so accurate. In the context of the many injustices (real or perceived) that are occurring in the world, not receiving the advertised amount of coffee in your iced beverage doesn’t seem like a big deal, or even that it should be. Taking the company to court for a $5 million payday over this imbalance is a bit extreme. And yet, it’s happening. My question is: how did this and similar situations get so far?

A couple years ago I posted a blog titled Passive-Aggressive Behavior in which I explained the origins of this behavior, which typically begins during early-childhood. A youngster naturally starts to become more independent from his caregivers between the ages of two and five. However, if the adult does not provide options and opportunities for the child to demonstrate the desired behavior, the youngster may adopt passive-aggressive responses to these requests in order to display some kind of autonomy. Rather than ask directly for something, the individual hints and insinuates that something is wrong/must change until other people in the environment change behavior to accommodate him. Over time, this strategy becomes a subconscious known—a go-to behavior to get what the person wants. I can’t help but wonder if passive-aggression is at the root of so many examples of micro-aggression we are seeing lately.

There is a huge difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness/passive-aggressiveness. In the first case, an assertive Starbucks® customer would immediately, politely, tell the barista that there is too much ice in the beverage and ask for it to be remade. (There is a sign on the counter of every Starbucks® that states the store’s policy about re-making a drink to a customer’s satisfaction.) If the new drink still wasn’t made to the person’s satisfaction, the person could ask for a refund and stop going there for coffee. Maybe even a letter to the CEO would be in order. Conversely, an aggressive customer might rudely complain about the drink, demand the refund/reject apologies from the company, etc., and even stomp loudly off the premises and tell everyone about the lousy experience. The passive-aggressive customer may take the beverage as it was originally prepared and then complain (loudly or discretely) about everything that is wrong with the drink. The final step on this path would be to take the complaint to court.

I do not know all of the details about this customer’s lawsuit. Perhaps the individual has made many attempts to change how the company prepares its iced beverages and even had a one-on-one meeting with the CEO to vent frustration about this perceived rip-off. But is this issue so important to press legal charges, knowing that the cost of hiring a legal team to defend/prosecute this injustice may become financially prohibitive? Sure, the ultimate pay-day could be worth this effort—if and when it eventually comes. The question I have about this issue is whether having a disproportionate ratio of ice-to-coffee symbolic of another more personally meaningful perceived imbalance in this person’s life.

Maybe it isn’t about the coffee, at all.

 

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

The Addictive Curve

(This blog was originally posted on May 24, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

The “addictive curve” is a model to describe the formation and perpetuation of addictions. For example, a person takes heroin and gets a “rush.” He then starts coming down, going lower than the state where he started, which creates a new “bottom.” Most people shoot up again as soon as they start to come down, which triggers the addiction. However, if the person waits to take the drug until just before reaching the level he normally should be, he will get even “higher” with this dose and then come back to normal.

A person can take any substance that has an addictive property—including coffee—and never become addicted to it if the individual doesn’t fall into the addictive curve. “What makes a heroin addict a heroin ‘addict’ is the feeling of coming back down,” Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., explained. If you avoid the addictive curve (usually 12 hours) and wait to take the drug until you are back at that normal level, you won’t become addicted to it, he added.

Dr. Kappas demonstrated how he would help a client overcome a heroin addiction during one of his clinical case history sessions. The process entailed taking the individual off the drug “cold turkey,” then having him experience all the symptoms of withdrawal very quickly during hypnosis. Meanwhile, the hypnotherapist had the client release the feelings and go back to homeostasis while giving the hypnotic suggestion that the person did not need heroin. Dr. Kappas’s complete hypnotherapy-treatment strategy entailed taking the client from the homeostatic state back to an artificial high, then bringing him back down to experience withdrawal symptoms again, for 14 days.

“We can duplicate in hypnosis any feeling you can get from any kind of drug, from heroin, marijuana, cocaine, etc. many times we duplicate that feeling artificially so we can get the client down here to create artificial withdrawals,” he said. After the therapy program described above, however, “there’s no feeling (addiction) for heroin at all.”

A caveat: while alcohol addiction follows a similar pattern in terms of the addictive curve, hypnotherapists do not deal with alcohol addictions. “The alcoholic is much harder to deal with than the drug addict because alcohol is an accessible social drug, and there’s too many ways to cheat on alcohol. It’s a way of life,” Dr. Kappas said. The physical dependency on alcohol also tends to be stronger than the physical dependency on drugs, he added.

As I have explained in previous essays, the Business and Professions Code 2908 limits the scope of hypnotherapists’ professional practice to helping people achieve vocational and avocational self-improvement goals. Hypnotherapists must also seek a referral from licensed mental-health and/or licensed medical professionals when there may be a physiological or psychological origin of the client’s discomfort, which is outside of the scope of hypnotherapy. Hypnosis and hypnotherapy are great tools to help a person follow Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous, etc. guidelines during rehabilitation from a substance addiction. However, when I work with an individual to help break this addictive curve I usually ask that the person continues to receive support from a sponsor and/or 12-step program during this process.

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